I don't love romance stories. I've really enjoyed them in the past, for example: Crash Landing on You and The Imperial Coroner. Romance or not I'll watch anything if the premise seems interesting enough. That was the case here. The polar opposite characters, the vast room for growth that was possible, and, if I'm being honest, the humorous potential when they swapped bodies. China has a way of taking a story I'd otherwise care little for and making it pleasant.

I'm going to drop this one though. Let me explain why:

Firstly, I don't think Esther Yu has the range to be more than the silly orchid fairy. I enjoy the sweet innocence of her starting point, an almost dumb person with a fairy tale understanding of the world who gets forcibly launched into enormously complex situations. However, her cartoon character depiction (and writing) had her refusing any and all development along the way. She was like this bubble bouncing along the plot with no actual interaction with it. As dumb as she was, her persistent stupidity could only be explained by "we need tension here, so she needs to not figure this out" which I hate. I understood her being like that for a while in the beginning, but no matter how the plot developed, she remained like this. Don't get me wrong, she could absolutely maintain her sweetness and her innocence, but that's not what was happening here. Every time I thought she'd take one step forward, her refusal to budge was effectively taking a step back. In terms of character development, it felt like the demon lord had to do all the moving. As if, it seemed, her oblivious, idiotic, self-absorbed beginning state was somehow an ideal perfection she had no need to adjust. I didn't understand how someone so obsessed with her own problems could ever think enough to help with the various situations in which her contribution was crucial. And yet, like a rubber band, after she'd display the maturity needed for these situations, she'd immediately bounce back to being a self-absorbed airhead. And airhead who wasn't particularly unlikable, but still. I wasn't sure if this was bad writing or Esther Yu's acting, or some combination, but it was damaging the story in a big way.

Moreover, and here's where I'm not the target audience, one of my biggest pet peeves is the love triangle. I loathe them. Nothing ruins a story for me faster. Not to mention, here at least, the idea that the two most powerful bachelors in all the realms were somehow in love with her strained credulity strictly in terms of probability. But the way this shoved itself into the story and wrenched it into its own shape was unforgivable. Once the love triangle became more prominent I couldn't tolerate it any more. When I watched the Rebel Princess I was pleasantly surprised by the mature and realistic way in which the writers handled what attempted to be an intolerable love triangle. The main female character had evolved and matured, her husband allowed her the space to make her own choice, accepting that it might not be him (and aware that he had other, larger things to deal with anyway), and the other man was depicted as appropriately childish and petty and selfish. It's hard to view actual love triangles any other way. I lose respect for respectable characters who maintain their pursuit of people who are already with someone else. That isn't romantic to me, it's petty. Maybe it would go away eventually, and maybe I could have powered through had the rest not been so lacking, but as it was it seemed to take over the story.

Additionally, the thing that really bothered me about that was that every choice made by Cheng Heng (the other man, here) was because he was randomly and uncontrollably in love with the orchid fairy. Does he want his brother to stop publicly torturing someone? Yes he does. Is it because public torture of an obviously innocent person is extremely cruel? Nope. It's because he's in love with her. Does he want to risk his life to save someone? Must be because he's a good prince who wants to stop his enemy from kidnapping one of his own subjects. No, actually, it's because he's in love with her. His entire character was cheapened by this. How much more interesting would he have been if he was actually just trying to do the right thing considering the situation and his status. Instead all of his actions, which could have been noble and impressive, were instead petty and childish.

Dylan Wang's acting was excellent. His depiction of the demon lord was at once over the top and completely believable. His development was subtle and well-paced and ultimately more profound than the fairy's. When he was acting as the fairy in the demon lord's body, it was perfectly done. Much, much better than Esther Yu's terrible wooden attempts at severity and seriousness when she was depicting the demon lord in the fairy's body.

Ultimately, I stopped watching once it seemed clear to me that this was another one of those romance dramas where the woman is perfect and the man has to bend to her. There are fewer and fewer romance stories these days in which the writers dare to depict the female as lacking or flawed in any way. What's worse is when she is lacking or flawed but this is depicted as not a problem. And the man has to do all the heavy lifting to make himself worthy of her, to change to suit her, to completely accept her, to renounce himself in order to be satisfactory to her. I'm sick of it. It's terrible storytelling. It's nauseating and embarrassing to watch.

I don't understand why this drama is so popular. But there's my two cents.