Starting this drama I knew what to expect – angst, betrayal, tragedy, anguish – and this drama served exactly this to certain extent… plus gazillion of other plotlines that significantly weakened the whole story and made me pull my hair out with frustration. Thanks to that the plot was not executed in a way that would make me actually feel any stong emotions, at least not in the later part of this drama, which is a bummer because isn’t it the whole point of melodrama? To make me FEEL something?

In fact I really enjoyed the begining, the first 15 episodes or so, they were fast-paced, entertaining and played out on the screen like a very classic type of a tragedy. The gradual build up to the massacre of Danchi Clan with that scene where Li Chengyin is literally changing sides on the battleield is amazing (Top 10 anime betrayals btw). However anything that happens later (sans the Second Prince arc. Even if it wasnt the most original subplot) is just a perfect example of filler. Overstretched and mundane scenes with the characters that bring nothing to the plot. Or supbar palace schemes where some of the villains basically handed themselves on the silver platter. And please don’t forget the endless emo escapades of Gu Jian. It all could have been compressed into maximum 10 episodes not 30.

At some point it became clear that most of the the revenge/political plotlie exist to emphasize the tragic nature of the romance but on its own it was really simplified and overall poorly written. Except the beginning arc and the final 5 episodes, it was scattered all over the place. I think it’s a huge waste of a potential, because Li Chengyin could have efortlessly carried that side of the story (not to mention that Cheng Xing Xu showed that he has the acting chops to do so) and there definitely was a time to develop other characters, so they could have been more than walking stereotypes. Speaking of Chengyin, I think he was the IT factor of this show. He was ruthless, selfish, pragmatic, jelaous, but you could understand what shaped him to became like this. He’s definitely the most complex character, but I just wish he was more personally involved with the political part of his vengance plan because most of the time things just conveniently happened in his favour.

I had a hard time believing in Chengyin’s love for XiaoFeng because it wasn’t sincere in their „first life” and in the „second” it was just full blown narcissistic fixation. On the other side we have XiaoFeng who was very young, sheltered, naive and she wasn’t able to look at the bigger picture of things. Let’s face it, she wasn’t the smarterst cookie. I believe that her feelings were more genuine and pure, but her lack of insight and almost childish innocence made the whole dynamics between the leads more disturbing and disonant in my eyes. So I wasn’t on board with the romance and did not particulary care about how tragic and doomed was the fate of their relationship.

Arguably the most important part of the narrative is that the ultimate tragedy didn’t affect only the leads but everyone who was related (voluntarily or not) to the Imperial Palace. So once again the big bad wolf was the human desire to have power and control that in the end turns people into greedy hypocrites. In the grand scheme of things Xiao Feng was as much of a victim as Chengyin (the parallels between him and his father were nicely done) or Sese or General Gao (loved that guy btw) or even entire Clans. They all got their lives influenced, sometimes badly, by the destructive nature of power. How they dealt with that is a whole another story, but eventully they were all thrown into a figurative battleground because that’s just how humans work. I really liked that it was the final message here, it’s a little cliche, of course, but it works most of the time.

So, I think this drama disappointed me, it was really uneven. It started with a blast and it had a lot of room to develope or improve things, but it never fully went there. The characters were interesting (even though I think only Chengyin had the complexity worth mention) thanks to great acting performances, drama was also visually stunning (if you like strong saturation and bright colors), but there is a part of me that will be forever salty that it didn’t reach that level of greatness that would make me think „wow, that was a journey”. In the end I didn’t feel anything.