Pros: Main leads and third leads chemistry/relationships/happy ending for both sets.

That is literally it. This 40 episode series had no other pros. This is absolutely the worst costume drama I have ever seen; it was an unmitigated disaster. Actually it was the worst drama I have seen from any country. After crawling to episode 30, I waited until the finale aired to decide whether to just watch that or maybe a few more episodes.

Though I'd never read the novel, people in the comments section were excited because the novel had a great antagonist and a flowing storyline. Unfortunately, the screenwriter and director butchered the novel and threw most of it out. What followed was a spiral into a world of jealousy, delusion on a scale that literally went on until the final episode, and just really horrible content.

They wasted a great antagonist by turning him into a Gaston-like (from Beauty and the Beast) joke who laughed evilly, just about kissed his own muscles and walked around like he was Gods gift to existence. Furthermore, out of all 40 episodes, he maybe had one episode worth of screen time. The real "villains" were all over the place and their evilness could only be justified as boredom and jealousy.

The story began with about 4 or 5 men all in love with the female lead who was clever though she pouted so often, I always wondered how she didn't swallow her own chin. The male lead was a righteous man though not without flaws. I personally started watching this only for WZC who played SML. Turned out that his character was the real "villain" but not one that you even wanted to watch. The writers made him so delusional with his unrequited love towards the FL that, even before the halfway point of the show, you wanted him and those like him to just fall off a cliff.

I feel really bad for the actors of this horrendous mess. The SFL somehow ended up getting the most screen time than both leads combined and she was so delusional with her unrequited love towards the ML that she was willing to kill children even to pin things on FL. Both SFL and SML didn't take no for an answer when the ML and FL repeatedly told them they didn't love them, never had, and never would. It was an extremely sloppy script. Even the "battle" at the end I would equate to a fight between two gangs not an actual war. It was so puny, it was laughable.

There was no character development and those that created the most havoc in the show got half-assed redemption arcs in the last two episodes. It was heavy on palace politics and delusional jealousy that went so far beyond the norm that most people couldn't remain sane watching it without fast forwarding the majority or skipping whole episodes altogether.

This is the first time I had ever seen any comment section on any rating site spend weeks actively plotting characters' deaths because of just how deplorable they were. I have absolutely nothing against any of the actors but they deserve better than a disaster of these proportions. The screenwriter and director need to stop taking drugs and go back to school, because they basically failed miserably at doing something actually extremely simple. They had a story. All they needed to do was copy it into a workable script; it's not like they had to reinvent the wheel. But instead, they took maybe 20% of the original book and created this debacle.

I truly wish more novelists would step up and stop selling their rights and instead write the scripts themselves. It would increase the number of scripts as well the quality of them. But to all those reading this review, please avoid this hot mess if you cherish your sanity.