You're doing right to check out Nirvana in Fire. It's amazing and magnificent. It has some those unrealistic fighting scenes (people look like they can fly) but it's really not a lot of that! It's my #1. The rest:
2: Battle of Changsha - family, war and love; just as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Nothing fantasy at all.
3. The sound of the Desert - mainly romance, also palace, revenge. It's wonderful.
4. The Disguiser - it's about spies, family, war and love... more suspenseful than Battle of Changsha.
5: I'm currently watching Sparrow. It's similar to The Disguiser, the same era. I like it a lot too.
Also, I would like to strongly unrecommend Eternal Love/Ten Miles of Peach Blossom. I know that people like it but it has ALL of the things you say you don't want. (But it's pretty to look at and I like one of the pairings! It's not what you're looking for though.)