I did not think that I would enjoy a tragedy. Happy endings for me only, please! But I am very satisfied with how this show ended, and I enjoyed the entire show.

I would say one of the show’s strengths is that it is pretty well balanced. It’s got romance, tragedy, conspiracies, schemes to claim the throne, revenge, jealousy between concubines, etc and all of these are interwoven fairly well. That way if you get tired of scheming by the empress you’ll soon switch over to another conspiracy going on, or the development of some characters’ relationships. The palace drama builds gradually so part of what may make it more interesting than usual is that you have a greater understanding of all the players involved and what their goals are. Despite the fact that this drama isn’t fast-paced I still felt it didn’t linger too long on certain plot points. While some plot threads do wrap up at different points it always still felt like things were moving forward, so I was compelled to keep watching to see how the rest of it went. This was also one of the few cdramas I’ve found that actually consistently had episodes end on a cliffhanger, so I definitely wanted to keep watching!

I really liked Xiaofeng! I find that dramas often take a naive silly female protagonist and over the course of the show make them more cunning and more ruthless. Even as Xiaofeng does mature and become smarter she still remains foolish because of her tendency to blindly trust people and her incapability to lie or be mean to others. She wants to see the best in other people, and although that means she makes foolish decisions it’s almost heartwarming to see that she still believes that people would treat her with the same sincerity and kindness that she is showing to them. I really liked how her upbeat personality and kindness persisted despite the terrible things that happened.

All the male leads can piss off. Okay fiiiine I may not like the main male leads but they are interesting characters so that’s good. I unambiguously like all the female characters, empress included. Can someone please inform some of these characters that murdering someone’s family *is* a good reason for them to hate you? Thanks.

The costumes were legit 50% of the reason why I started this show and they did not disappoint. Not only did they differ from other shows I’ve watched, they were so incredibly detailed and there were so many! They also made a masterful use of colors. For example, red is Xiaofeng’s color, but as she comes into the palace she wears primarily pink, which helps show how her personality is muted or has to be toned down to be there. The sets were amazing too with lots of unique architecture (the throne room for example) and beautiful details. Even side character’s rooms will have beautiful paintings in the background.

Tl;dr this show is a tragedy, but well balanced enough that it doesn’t feel constantly depressing and terrible, and the plot and characters have quite a bit of variety so it remains interesting throughout. Despite the fact that I think other cdramas have some better parts (the romance in this show was good enough, but definitely other shows have better couples) this show was consistently good at every level. I think it does rank among my top cdramas because I watched all of it and enjoyed almost every part of it!

A slightly more comical version of this review can be found here: https://kdramakitty.tumblr.com/post/616487078421757952