Using my personal rating system of "loved," "liked," "meh," & "nah," this rates a “meh”—which is kind of surprising since I actually got all the way through it (albeit with a lot of fast-forwarding). There are way better dramas out there I have on my on-hold list, so I’m not entirely sure what the appeal was here.

Things I liked:
The leads’ interactions were cute and there was no forced chemistry between them (which I guess makes sense since this is apparently where the two actors met & fell in love?). I liked the grandmother of the Li family who always stuck by LW no matter what—and, of course, her “mother” who unconditionally loved LW even when she knew she was not her daughter. I also liked that LW’s character had a great deal of loyalty and affection towards her adopted family—she never tried to use them to get meet her goals. I also liked her cousin, his crush on her was cute, but I did FF through all his interactions with the 9th princess—yawn.

Things I did not like:
To be fair, this is a classic telenovela-type drama where characters make decisions to further the drama of the plot and logic never really comes into play. So to criticize its lack of logic is like criticizing rain for being wet. ;P

I (personally) do not like inaccurate historical settings/stories. If you’re going to go so far off the reality that you’re basically only using the names of real historical figures then just make up a fake dynasty, country, world, whatever, if you need to instead. That’s just a personal preference.

Like any good telenovela, most of the characters were two-dimensional. And one bat-$*** crazy jealous woman trope per drama, please, it was a bit exhausting to have two of them in this one. All the ‘bad’/’evil’ characters’ obsession with LW was tiring after a while. She’s literally ONE woman, a minor member of a noble family with ZERO power and yet everyone thought that killing her was the solution to all the world’s problems. The cycle of crime, frame LW, LW exonerated was so boring. Once or twice, sure, but constantly!? And each time, everyone took the frame-up seriously until LW proved her innocence. Seriously, if she’s innocent EVERY TIME, surely we should start believing her!? That or acknowledge that she’s just a really clever serial killer and have her executed.

This probably says something about my personality, but my favorite character was Tuoba Yu, the main antagonist. He was probably the most “three-dimensional” of the characters, but he was also written to make decisions based on drama and letting the good guys win, rather than what someone with his planning and scheming ability was actually capable of—in real life, I’m sure he would have won if he was as clever as he was initially portrayed. Though, SERIOUSLY, wtf with the hair style!?

And it was a toss-up as to who would make the better emperor. To the common people of the day, as long as there was no war—or if they were at least winning any wars they fought—I doubt they particularly cared. And corruption and incompetence was such a foundational part of the government systems, that not even a ‘good’ emperor would be able to do much about it. I would have been equally satisfied with an ending not based on historical events (however loosely) where TY gets to be emperor and TJ & LW elope to go live as commoners somewhere.