Story:
It's a good watch, but the pacing was a bit weird for me. The amount of time skips made it a bit rushed feeling even though the romance had good pacing. There were some characters I found did not add much to the plot and were added in only for more romantic plots (ex: Gai Lan) and they did not interest me at all. I wanted to skip their scenes most of the time, what kept me watching the drama was the chemistry between Diliraba and Zhang Bin Bin. Although in our modern time, the romance would not be well received due to the mistreatment of Gong Sun Li, it should be kept in mind that in their time, the king does whatever he wants LOL. When adding his past, you can kind of empathize with him. Personally, I liked the progression of the romance between the two. The characters are all very flawed, and sometimes although human, makes you want to strangle the person for their stupidity. Some poorly written characters aside, the story itself was pretty good, although the ending left me feeling a bit empty. Characters are very one dimensional for a 48 episode drama.

Cast/Acting:
Love the cast, but felt like the acting could have been better. I have high expectations of Diliraba and Zhang Bin Bin. They did well, especially ZBB, but there were moments where the emotions were not as well received on my end. There were scenes however, that damn, ZBB delivered so well I had to rewatch some parts due to feeling the intense emotions and not on what was being said. Major props to the actors of Han Shen and Li Zhong. They did great in their character portrayal and you can really feel their love/loyalty towards Sun Li and the King. As for Jing Ke, I've watched the actor in other dramas and he was pretty great in them, so I will chalk it up to poor writing of his character. He did well for what he was given, but all he was able to show was self pity most of the time, not much to show his acting abilities. I think the rest of the supporting casts did great, from the kings mother to the evil eunuch! The only one that bugged me was the actress for Gai Lan. Something about her acting made it seem forced and unnatural, but she wasn't horrible.

Music:
Standard sad OSTs that sound nice. Will be on my chinese OST playlist but isn't anything groundbreaking.

Rewatch Value:
I will most likely just watch the romance between Ying Zheng and Sun Li due to Jing Ke and Gai Lan being very boring.

Overall:
Keep in mind that the characters are based off of real people, but it is not very accurate in portrayal. Jing Ke 90% of the time was in a mode of self pity and Ying Zheng was not as ruthless compared to in real life. Not recommended to watch this if you want to learn about the history of the characters. They were changed to put more emphasis on the romance. However, if you put that aside, the romance was great between Sun Li and King Ying Zheng. The ending left me feeling a bit empty as it did not show much, wished we could have seen more of little Tian Ming.

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