I came looking for an epic revenge plot since political intrigue is actually my preferred genre. Although I wasn't expecting Langya Bang level, it turns out this is not a plot driven drama, or a mystery, but above all a love triangle romance. The way that everything happens requires suspension of disbelief because the plot is clearly there to facilitate the romance and make the characters look cool. So to summarize in one sentence: this drama is very similar to 'Who Rules the World' i.e. the infamous "Double bking drama", but the leads have a bit more personality.

The setting requires patience. Pirate Ren Anle/Di Ziyuan enters the palace with 30 000 soldiers she collected in order to carry out her revenge plan, developed over ten years: to find the truth of her family's crime... using the strategy of acting like she's stupid and in love with the prince to infiltrate. And it works. The Emperor knows she has no experience but appoints her, a woman who doesn't know the basic articles of law, to vice minister of judicial review. OK, money opens doors... so the emperor basically shrugs and invites his enemy into his home.

Seems promising for Anle to now show her ability and carry out her grand revenge plot. Anle and Han Ye are meant to exchange blows, using but also competing with each other. However the big difference from revenge drama like Langya Bang is that the leads are simply put, not smart! So the plots are not clever or exciting; it's not an epic face off between Han and Di forces, but just a mid off, and a slow one. Ten hours in and we haven't made a speck of progress on figuring out why her family was killed off.

Take the first case Anle solves for the kingdom. The Prince does nothing except hang around her all day so they can make sizzling eye contact when he could have basically solved the case himself in an hour. Unfortunately she is isn't the brightest either. Her way of solving the case is basically to convince the evil sidekick not to be loyal which for some reason takes 3 full days and gets some innocent ministers flogged in the process when she could have betrayed the rich young master the very first day. By the way the Prince also takes credit for the case and gives a flowery speech about justice though he did nothing and arguably even delayed things.

Then Han Ye, who as we've mentioned is a bit slow, begins to find Anle's origins suspicious. To distract him, Anle has the incredible idea of bringing forth "fake Di Ziyuan". This makes the love triangle spicier, but how does this stop him from investigating her backstory? Well conveniently, in this drama, it just works. You get the idea-- plots are so basic that you wonder why everyone can't see through the "10 year revenge plot" from the beginning. By the way if it was this easy to come down the mountain Ziyuan could have just changed her name temporarily in order to investigate her parents' murder years ago, and avoided all this angst. Speaking of which if Han Ye really cared why didn't he look into it himself?

I do think Dilraba is very suitable for this flirty role and Gong Jun is not bad. Anle actually has a lot of chemistry with Luo Mingxi (Liu Yuning) who unfortunately doesn't do much, besides lurking charismatically in the background and occasionally popping out to remind Anle to do the revenge. So the acting is not bad, and there's plenty of flirting, fan service and pretty sword fighting, but there's little plot to speak of. Good for fans of romance I guess.