I watched this drama even though the reviews I read were not encouraging, but were actually discouraging. But I like this actor Deng Kai, so I wanted to form my own opinion.
A drama based on classic themes of love and hate. Two warring countries and their young princes who fall in love beyond the divisions, but unfortunately the situation forces actions that lead to aggression, hatred and pain. Briefly. The initial episodes are full of ML violence towards FL. Even though he loved her, in order to protect her from the hatred of the general of the court and his family, he decided to pretend that FL was foreign to him and an enemy. The only thing is that if the director wanted to convey these emotions, he did not have to use such sophisticated and drastic means as the scene where ML forces his wife FL to watch a scene of lovemaking with another concubine - although in the end it did not happen because he found a bag in the bed with eggs and he thought it was poison, but if he hadn't found it, what would the director have done and FL would have watched them copulate? No, there is no consent to such psychological violence. I don't know why the screenwriter and director came up with such a plot. Mental abuse in the form of showing a pile of bodies with people from FL's country and her brother, although they later explained what it was about, but this scene is cruel mental torture for FL. The opening scenes of Fl and ML's wedding where the general, his hate-sick sister and ML's concubine shoot with a bow at the group of wedding guests and FL is terrifying, but the worst of it all is the hateful expression on ML's face. I don't know why, whether it's a suggestion from the director and the script, or whether the actor came up with this attitude and facial expression, but at the beginning, in the scenes where Fl is already married to him, ML has a look full of hatred towards FL all the time, even when others can't see and they are alone, the expression on his face still didn't change and it wasn't obvious that he really loved her and was suffering because of what he had to do to her. And this was not visible, on the contrary, I had the impression that he took great pleasure in causing her pain... although at the very beginning of the drama, when they met outside the imperial court, he looked at them completely differently, with gentleness and a budding feeling of love. Then, when he found FL after her escape from the palace, the feelings of love for her appeared on his face again, although they were still tinged with emotions of jealousy towards SML, when he tried to find out if FL was his wife who had run away and he didn't know if she really was FL. is the wife of General SML and is she pregnant with him or not.
Finally, after returning to the palace, he changed dramatically and it was clear that he could actually be emotional, understanding, and had no need for revenge (he allowed the release of General SML), unless it concerned the protection of the FL against the family of the evil imperial general.

Now the threads with General SML who helped our heroine FL and did her face change, as we would say now, with plastic surgery, and this is a fantasy thread for me, because looking at those times and skills, it turns us watching into useful idiots, so that be able to accept such skills... the operation, of course, went fantastically well and to such an extent that FL now resembled the general's deceased wife - he was an amazing plastic surgeon, even now they can't make a perfect transplant.
In addition, the ability to heal, especially to deceive the imperial doctor, when he gave FL some medicine to pretend to be pregnant in order to deceive ML... well, bravo, another medical genius... but ok, I assumed that some screenwriters have such a thing that they can't control their lush imagination.
FL herself was so clever in this second part that she was ahead of all the ideas of Prince ML checking her identity and she already knew in advance what moves she would make, so she was prepared for it... it's a bit funny and generally impossible even if she knew him before, but ok I digested the fact that she revealed tactical genius. Generally, from the very beginning, FL lived in violence, first in her childhood, because she had a cruel father who abused her and her mother, so this girl had already experienced trauma in her childhood, and then in her marriage to ML, she experienced further pain and fear, so in fact , then any weak person would have broken down a long time ago, but for me the character of FL had to be mentally strong despite everything to survive it and not hate all those who hurt her. Ultimately, it looks like she forgave her husband ML and the ending shows that she gave him a chance.
In general, to sum up, this drama could have had better reviews if the director had not gone into such far-reaching violence of ML's character towards FL in the initial episodes of the drama, because it could have been shown completely without these drastic violence threads and with threads when FL and ML are together and his eyes , facial expressions and gestures say that he is only pretending to others to protect her, but this was not done, so I am not surprised that most of the reviewers complained that after such traumatic experiences, how can you love your practically tormentor. It may be that the director wanted to show that love conquers all and for these reasons he made these scenes that turned violent...
The themes that still made a negative impression were, first of all, the editing of the film... the episodes were heavily cut up and the episode ends with an open scene and then in the next episode there is a jump and the actors are in a completely different place, there is no connection and coherence.
There is no well-translated English version, so honestly, I don't know if I understood everything correctly because of the translation.
The costumes and wigs were well prepared, the fighting scenes could have been better prepared, the acting of the actors was good, the OST was also ok.