Fast food entertainment at its finest. Highly addicting, but you’ll feel hungry 30 minutes after finishing the meal, realizing you just ate a bunch of nothing - empty calories. Was it fun? Sure. Was it actually good? Debatable. Saying this drama is a quality one is like saying McDonald’s is a healthy meal - false advertisement. That said, there is a reason we all crave fast food from time to time.

Starting from the good aspects - Xue Fang Fei. It’s impossible not to love her. Even the villains appreciated how smart, cunning and brave she was. Seeking revenge without abandoning your morals and principles, when the people you fight against have no true honorable values that hold them back is not an easy task, and yet she managed to achieve that. While her goals were important, they were never more important than people in her life. She never took the easy road that could unnecessarily hurt others. What I appreciate the most about how her character was written: she was strong, but still presented in an extremely feminine way. Beautiful, loyal and smart, empathic, emotional and caring.

Her revenge turned seeking justice arc was quite well developed and paced. Her plans were realistic enough, I never thought she had some superpower type of skills (excluding her playing zhiter - that’s some borderline xianxia magic) - she knew her strength and the advantages people around her have, she understood the strengths and weaknesses of her enemies and acted accordingly to what was most beneficial. The risks she took were understandable and the ways she survived all the crisis made sense in the context of the show. Great female lead to follow throughout 40 episodes.

Princess Wan Ning - the way I went from hating her to loving her. By the end of the show I would love to see a drama from her point of view - filled with pain, helplessness, tragedy that leads to her becoming the villain, because no one cared for her when she was the victim. Her arc is for sure my favorite and feels the most completed. Fang Fei’s tragic past truly did not feel that tragic when we got the full picture of what Wan Ning had to go through and how she was used and abused. Her resentment and selfishness started to weirdly feel justified, even if at times directed towards wrong people.

Shen Yu Rong is not a character I loved, but it’s for sure a character I loved to hate. In my eyes, he was the true villain - weak and pathetic, not wanting to die, surviving like a cockroach - and for that I am grateful. What a consistent and delusional pain in the ass this man was, it’s impressive. Blaming other people for his mistakes, for the decisions he made, till the end not willing to face his past. His obsession over Jiang Li made perfect sense - it was his way of erasing his mistakes, living as if they never happened, starting from the beginning, clean slate.

The visual presentation - how stunning! The way they shot the movements, how they used the costumes to their full potential, how some moments honestly became breathtaking - especially for the female characters. There was something graceful in how the camera framed women.

Then we have the acting. Wu Jin Yan and Li Meng easily stole the whole show. Somehow Wu Jin Yan was able to present both immense strength and vulnerability at the same time. Li Meng was just mesmerizing as the egocentric princess broken by her traumatic experiences. When either of them showed up, they just made you focus on the screen.

On the other hand, the men in this show served nothing, but looks. Duke Su was delicious to look at, but sadly he was mostly talk and no action. For the majority of the show he truly did nothing except fly around and flirt with Jiang Li. While her revenge was detailed and well presented, his felt like an afterthought.

Ye Shi Jie, while cute, with some of the prettiest eyes I have seen, was painfully underdeveloped. What’s the point of showing he has feelings for Jiang Le, when it leads to nowhere? Other male characters were just a way to push the plot forward by either randomly saving the day, or annoying ruining the plans.

Seeing how technically speaking the politics of the show had a major impact on the plot and the characters, they were boring and lacked detail for me to care about. I did not care who is against whom and why, who has more and who has less power in the court, who is safe and who can be killed - they started to explain the big picture way too late for me to even pretend it’s engaging.

The biggest issue I had though, was the structure of the show - everything seemed uneven and mismatched. Jiang Li is this tragic heroine who lost everything and is set to seek revenge, but then we find out she did not really lose nearly as much as they present at first - everyone came back from death, her included.

First episode presented a makjang level of drama, and then it never lived up to that crazy hype, slowly becoming more tamed and boring. And what’s more that became tamed and boring? Duke Su. At first presented as this domineering and extra in his entrance man having a national emergency level of extreme fire chemistry with female lead, to them lead to nothing - these two were taking their sweet time with the romance. This was such a slow burn romance, it barely moved. The candle kiss traumatized us all. They led us to believe we will get some proper romance, and what we’ve got was an eye staring contest between Jiang Li and Duke su every episode.

They also had a really weird way of introducing characters and villains - there was no subtle set up for them. Out of the blue we are getting scenes with a new threat we are supposed to fear, but I’m like: who is that and why should I care?

Last two episodes were full clownery. I never laughed so much watching scenes that are supposed to be moving or tense. Some highlights include Jiang Li saying she can do archery, when she held a bow twice in her life. Another one was the random cheap death of two guys working for Duke Su - why did it even happen? Why did the war even happen? They never presented it as a major threat, so why even make it a last minute plotline?

Overall, it was fun and disappointing at the same time.