Okay so….I can safely say now that Zhang Ling He is a master of complicated romances! If one has watched The Kuning Palace or My Journey to you, one would understand from where I am coming. I was waiting for the show to complete airing, but once it did, I read some negative reviews and avoided watching it, even though I like Zhang Ling He. Then I watched Love’s Rebellion, loved Zhang Ling He and Sally Jing there, and decided to take a gamble and watch this one. I’d say I was surprised that I found the show interesting from start to finish. A lot of politics for power, strife between the throne and noble houses for power grabbing, political marriages, and mercenaries who wanted to bring about a change! The concept doesn’t sound new, but what was new here was the submissive role the ML needed to play. He was clearly a very intelligent, and highly capable official, stuck at the lower rungs because of being a commoner, and was made the prince consort for the princess who was not only weary of him, but also had feelings for another man, our second ML, with memories from a past life where she thought she was killed by the ML and regretted not ending up with the second ML. While this all might sound confusing to someone who is reading the review before watching the series, the plot of the story can be summed up as having a tragic ending in life and getting a second chance by travelling back in time when things were still alright. What’s new here is that it was not one but three people who got to time travel to change their fate, and when similar situations kept cropping up, the self doubt, doubt on others, and the helplessness of not being able to change things made the series interesting. In the second chance, however, we see everyone getting what they wanted, people ending up with right partners without political considerations. Our leads married thrice in the entire series, the FL got pregnant in episode 37, and even though the story jumped three years forward, we never got to see the outcome of the pregnancy. As for the acting, I liked everyone’s role, I could criticise Zhao Jin Mai for her not-so-emotive acting if I become over-critical, but other than that, I liked everyone. Zhang Ling He was amazing as usual, and looked his best in episode 38 when he takes back his family seal from his evil uncle. I can keep going, but if I had to summarise this drama, I’d say it is an interesting story well performed, could have been better with better acting by Zhao Jin Mai, but still very watchable.