The main story is about one woman's quest for marriage. Then there are two seperate revenge stories interwoven around that, yielding a long list of secondary characters.

The FL wasn't a push-over, immature, or an idiot, though truth be told, she needed constant saving from those around her.

Some of the side character story archs were far more interesting than the main plot. The ML, was a philandering jackass in the beginning (Hey, I caught that homage to 1962 Tom Jones!) , but gradually became a loyal friend and then a lover to the FL. That transition was nice to see. The FL had no character developement at all. She simply used her maturity and diplomatic skills to survive court life as best she could.

The FL's story arch was one of pure survival, as she really didn't have the lifestyle to do anything but try to keep her head attached to her body. She was smart, but I couldn't understand why three men were running after her, except for the fact that she was the FL. I mean, are survival instincts that rare and attractive to so many men? She looked rather average, if I may be so bold (besides her beautiful skin, that is). The actress playing the FL either had absolutely no emotional range, or the director decided she must be stoic and emotionless for the whole drama. Are emotionless Hanfu humanoids smarter looking by default? I don't know, but I hated that she couldn't emote through her facial expressions at all, this really bothered me a lot. To me, acting is reacting, and reacting means facial expressions. She also had a really bland personality.

Prince Zhou managed to survive court life, and was a very serious character without being a completely expressionless icicle. Likewise, the crown prince was largely stoic, but still managed to emote through his facial expressions. Only the FL remained annoyingly icy throughout. Also, incredibly stubborn, since at some point she has the ability to escape court life (which she voluntarily committed to, and knew what she was getting into, so I didn't feel any empathy for her at all). She decides to go back to court, without knowing whether this will literally kill her or not, for no damn reason!!!! I mean, come on!!

That just made her unbearable and I didn't watch the last few episodes because of this. Xu Kai was excellent here, but he didn't outshine the Crown Prince and the other prince.... whose name I will look up.... Prince Zhou. Prince Zhou had more chemistry and interests in common with the FL (FL had no personality, so that wasn't even an option), so it made no sense why she would choose the ML instead, since she was such an icicle of a character that I don't believe she knew where her heart was located, and if she followed her head, she would pick the man who is most suited to her, which was Prince Zhou.

Most storylines apart from the two princes and the princess, were so melodramatic that I couldn't stand them. I mean, two of these side stories were about tricking men into gaining sexual power over them, and in both these storylines, the female character, who had shown a certain level of intelligence, at least, devolved into a perpetual victim, making one bad choice after another. This one trope of a female tricking a male character into sex with her by pretending to be someone else is nothing short of rape. Imagine if a male character did that!!! This trope needs to stop immediately!

And lastly, the love stories of the ML's brothers were super cute, and relatively simple, and less is more when you have 7-8 seperate character stories in one drama. Overall, the cinematography was excellent, the storylines were a mixed bag, but there were two cute side ones, and one at least interesting one with the Crown Prince, even though the Crown Princess didn't deserve to be pardoned ever, and I don't even care if she felt slightly guilty after what she did.

Oh, there was the best romance story of all with the ML's sister and her prince husband. But my heart was with the best character in the whole drama, which was Prince Zhou, and he was the saddest victim of circumstance of all, and deserved better than he got. Also, my god he had a low and sexy voice, completely wasted on the FL, who was supposed to be smart, but evidently wasn't smart enough to recognize a diamond when one falls in her lap, so to speak.

There were some intolerable melodramatic side character stories as well, but I don't want to waste my time writing about those. It's a tolerable series, if you skip over large chunks and entire storylines from it. It did start off really well, besides the FL having no personality whatsoever, and only in the mid-later episodes did it devolve into unrealistic melodrama. I would watch it just for Prince Zhou.

Ahhhh... Prince Zhou.... a manly man character with the sexiest baritone voice in Chinese dramaland. It was worth it just to meet you, my friend. I would give you my real phone number. Call me.