shiofmedea

Still don't understand your point. Even if it was normal to have political marriage, it is her right to not be happy about it. Why should she be the one to sacrifice herself? Again it's easy to preach greater good if you are not the one to be under the knife. Why don't you hate her father, who only think about his power, the Emperor who allowed his son frame General Yu, the guy who helped him gain the trone, because he is now afraid to lose it, even those princes who knows they are agreeing to injustice as they are afraid to loose the game? Or you can just blame The Game itself. But what you do you villainize the victim.
But I agree with the point that famales here are just accesories to the plot, it is the man world, lol!

How is it her fault? She is victim here. Even oh so great Prince Langya low key blackmailed her in the end.

I read it but it doeas not have those answers, It has some but not all. Anyway as the plot progressed I may guess some but not all. I don't think I saw anything about Sikong past from before he lost his memories. We know what happoned to some from 8 masters like Lei Mengsha or Xie Xuan and Prince but I do not remember others to be mentioned?

well, he was :) even if he was victim as well, But he seems to inherit the worst after his grandfathers and used his victim card to justify all his actions at the end so I have a little compasion for him

I agree with you, he means Prince Qing as Prince Jinyu did not show his true nature till much later. But, to be fair Prince Jinyu should know about previous arrangements (emperor knew and Prince Langya knew as well), but he would not care anyway as disregarding poilitical reasons, he just wanted her.
General Ye at some point was willing to agree to that marry YRY to XS but she said she was not interested.

It is easy to talk about sacrifice for bigger picture if you are the one who is not doing it and even more, directly having profit form others doing it. Thinking about it XR fate was kind of karma but at least he followed his believes at the end.

12 minutes into ep1: Master did it?

Concept of "best friends" here is different from what we have in mind, It is more what was once described in Word of Honor: with some people you are strangers even if you know them for life, with others you are brothers from the first meeting. And they were close from childhood.

you read the novel? Do you mind spoiler me? I have three questions: what is going to happen to Mr. Li? What is the secret of Sikong past? Did the 8 masters we did not meet in TBOY died in novel?

I think it's the actor thing, both Su are supposed to be more or less similar age as the leads, I think as Dark River in time line is after DY and before TBOY

so when novel ends? before the war?

The same version is presented inTBOY novel, I read somewhere here that in DY they introduced some characters earlier then in novel so I guess thats why Lei/Li family time line got disrupted.

Interesting, as I think in TBOY there was explanation that previous emperor before Xiao Yi was tyranic so he led rebelion. But maybe they used that phrase as the name of state remainded? I am not familiar with Chinesee, thank you for this explanation.

They even may start good and idealistic but reality and politics drag them down, voluntarily or not

it's between this one and TBOY in terms of timeline

I guess I am always conflicted watching such stories. I feel for the fallen

Knowing TBOY makes watching it like watching greek tragedy, you know the doom is unavoidable but still you want to know how it happen.

ups, sorry!

It seems to me that it's more the curent dynasty that is that old? I think, the first ruler was rebel to previous dynasty. It's relatively new kingdom that was build by conquests of neighbour kingdoms, (seems that mostly unprovoked as the last two 15 years ago) which is of course normal in history but kind of funny as they are posed as good guys in the story, when those who want to resurect their kingdoms are bad guys. Winners are writing history.

Being evil is relative here, their kingdom was destroyed, they are fighting to bring it back. If the story was writen from their perspective, the curent protagonists would be bad guys.