Hi y’all. I’m back. First of all, thanks for being so kind and leaving 51 comments on my last post. Secondly, yes I’ve disappeared for 10 months. To summarize my life (like how I summarize these episodes) I pretty much got a promotion at my old job, and then started a new job at a reputable tech company while going to both Greece and Spain. So… lots of changes.

Let’s begin this drama. I’ve reviewed a drama with Tiffany Tang before and they really photoshopped her face in the promotional posters.

Like c’mon guys let’s keep her faceshape at least somewhat realistic ok? Doesn’t even look like her.

ANYWAYS our story begins with how Xin Er, the princess (obviously our protagonist is always freaken royalty) is born, and coincidentally her dad, the king of Bei Liang (which is a region in China) has to surrender to the Wei power.

So she’s born, and he literally gets imprisoned immediately afterwards.

Ok obviously we start off with the ‘oh-so-playful’ Xin Er going out into public as a man because apparently you are more inconspicuous as a man with permed parted side bangs even though it appears that no man in this entire drama has that look.

Her dad is coming back from imprisonment for her grandma’s bday, and so she’s picking up lanterns to celebrate.

This unknown man kills the lantern shop owner through viciously stabbing him which they could at least have shown some blood splatter on him (hello does anyone watch Forensic Files on Netflix). Anyways he rigs the lanterns.

And of course the female protagonist needs to get saved less than 10 minutes into the first episode. Endangered by what? BY FUCKING LANTERNS.

As per normal drama rules, the person that saves her is our male protagonist, Tuo Ba Jun.

Anyways king He Xi strangely did not age one bit in these 18 years and is reunited with hid daughter.

So Xin Er sets off these lanterns to impress her grandma for her bday.

G-ma’s circle lenses are more intense than mine.

Turns out there are soldiers all hidden in the palace to frame King He Xi for wanting to rebel, led by Li Ming Feng.

 

It was all a trick for King He Xi to come back to his land to celebrate his mother’s birthday, because the purpose of it was to frame him for rebelling, and so the Li family (this is why it’s led by Li Ming Feng) could take control of the land, which was rich in metals. The king was cruelly decapitated in front of Xin Er and g-ma.

So obviously, the rest of the fam run off and try to escape while it mysteriously suddenly becomes daytime for no reason (they literally were just setting out lanterns 30 minutes ago). G-ma sacrifices her life by staying back to stall the soldiers and for some reason that I cannot understand the soldier and Xin Er stay behind to watch her grandma get slaughtered.

Like yes I understand you are putting your hand over her mouth to stop her from her screams but why are you staying around to watch this.

And so everyone decides to try to save Xin Er’s life – her sidekick/servant takes her pink coat and precious discerning jade to run in the opposite direction to lure the soldiers away. Her servant gets murdered by Li Ming Feng so he can gift it to his sister, Li Chang Le.

Xin Er still manages to almost die by rolling down a hill.

Meanwhile, General Ma manages to write down the truth before soldiers of the Li family murder him.

FINALLY MY REASON FOR RECAPPING THIS DRAMA: VANNESS. I haven’t seen him in a drama since Autumn’s Concerto. I think he was in a drama called Chocolate Lover or something but that was absolute garbage so I could not watch it.

In this part of the scene the makeup artists totally fucked up his eyebrows though.

LOOK AT HIM HE LOOKS LIKE SPOCK.

Anyways this kindhearted passerby, Li Wei Young, found our Xin Er and took her home.

Literally 5 minutes into meeting each other they have already sworn loyalty to each other with shit like “YES WE WILL BE JOYOUS TOGETHER AND SUFFER TOGETHER”.

…except Li Wei Young gets assassinated 5 minutes afterwards.

It’s at least refreshing to find a female protagonist that isn’t a big wuss, and Xin Er killed the assassin like a boss to avenge Li Wei Young.

ANYWAYS the back story to this is that Li Wei Young is the daughter of the Li family that just killed off Xin Er’s family, except that Li Wei Young was from a mistress that was lowly servant, so she was forced by Chi Yun Rou to live outside of the mansion all her life. So Li Wei Young has the same hatred as Xin Er.

Since there was a huge celebration for Grandma Li’s 60th bday, they decided to allow Li Wei Young to come home. Except Chi Yun Rou, the first wife, the one that made Li Wei Young leave the mansion, hated her, so sent off assassins to kill off Li Wei Young.

Xin Er, saddened by Li Wei Young’s death, decides to impersonate her to go back to the mansion to get her revenge too.

BTW THIS IS SHEN JU FROM THE DRAMA PRINCE OF LAN LING. I cannot believe they gave you a wizard hat and made you a bad guy. 😥

Xin Er, whom I will now affectionately refer to as Wei Young (because she doesn’t really revert for the rest of the drama, not that I know of at least), gets repeatedly attempt-assassinated by Chi Yun Rou’s people. This means that her place to stay was set on fire.

OBVIOUSLY OUR MALE PROTAGONIST COINCIDENTALLY APPEARS OUT OF NO WHERE AND IS THE ONLY PERSON WITH THE CAPABILITY TO SAVE HER FOR A SECOND TIME.

FYI he literally takes her hand and runs through the fire.

When do actresses know that too much plastic surgery is never the way to go??? Don’t they see all the fake-looking actresses all get shafted and get a villainous role? So Plastie here (ok her role name is Chang Le) is the eldest daughter of the Li family and apparently she is gorgeous in the drama. But forreal her eyes just look really strange to me and you can tell she’s had something done but you cant put your finger on it.

My other fayfut (favourite) actress from Song in the Cloud (or Cloud in the Song, something of that sort) is also in this drama. They obviously did not do any contouring on her face because it looks like a ball and she looks like she’s 15, but maybe what that’s what they were going for. She looked a lot prettier in her other drama though. Her name is Chang Ru.

Anyways, Grandma Li’s 60th birthday shows how big of a dick Chang Le since she intentionally copied Chang Ru’s gift and did it better.

Wei Young decides to do a tiger dance. Chang Le tries to sabotage through trying to roll beads of her bracelets onto the ground, but she is saved by Tuo Ba Yu (Vanness).

Ok all the females in this drama are so useless – why are they either being saved or not saving each other?

So all along they’ve locked up Wei Young’s mom because Chi Yun Ruo hates her. This is because Wei Young’s mom used to be her servant, and Chi Yun Ruo takes it as betrayal that she slept with her husband.

As one of Chi Yun Ruo’s plans to get rid of Wei Young, she plans a series of unfortunate events to frame Wei Young as a bad luck charm… Starting by poisoning her mom.

Lucky that Wei Young gets there in time. Chi Yun Ruo also poisons the fish and someone pulls the third unimportant and less attractive sister into the water.

Do not know her name ^

They tie Wei Young up because they believe that she is evil/bad luck and wipe her with dog’s blood. Grandma Li shows up last minute and stop her torture luckily, but Wei Young develops a deep fever. She’s not allowed to live with the family – and while she is in exile, her caretakers throw her off to the mountains to be fed off by the wolves.

While hiding from the wolves, here comes our main male protagonist as well, just coincidentally stumbling into her in the mountains as he is returning home to his place.

He finds her and of course he nurses her back to health.

… and serenades her because that’s how you cure fevers.

HERE IS THE PART THAT I DON’T GET – I don’t know if my Chinese is too bad or whether I’m watching a cut-version, but ok here we go.

Wei Young’s ‘younger brother’, Li Ming De, decides that Wei Young’s conviction as a bad luck charm by the um, sorcerer (ok back then each rich family had like their own wizard to read the stars) so he goes to find out more info.

And from there they find that the sorcerer had hidden a child. But somehow they determined that he was a fraud? Was it due to the child? I mean yeah, it makes him a pedophile and all, but doesn’t make his astrological skills defunct either.

As per drama rules, male protagonist and the female protagonist fall in love almost immediately despite only have met a few times. Blah blah he admires her as she gracefully plays with butterflies and flowers.

Wei Young wakes up and Tuo Ba Jun is gone. The letter that he wrote to her is conveniently ruined by the servant, because you know, drama.

Meanwhile Tuo Ba Jun rushes home to his mom, under the false impression that she was sick. He weirdly rests his head on her shoulder/chest even though he is a grown man.

Li Ming De gets in trouble for outing the sorcerer as the sorcerer had a lot of ties with powerful people. But now that the sorcerer was determined as a fraud, they wanted to invite Wei Young back home.

 

Wei Young returns home and holds her fake mom like her real mom – am I the only one that finds this weird? That’s not your mom. And you know that.

Chang Ru is apparently worried sick about Wei Young seemingly only have interacted for less than 3 hours in total of their whole friendship.

The back story of Tuo Ba Jun is that he is the son of the crown prince. So his dad is supposed to be Emperor one day, but unfortunately the crown prince is dead. Tuo Ba Yu is his uncle, and this means the Emperor spot is up for grabs, either for Tuo Ba Jun, or Tuo Ba Jun’s uncles.

Chang Le hears that Tuo Ba Jun is back in town, and is hysterically happy because Tuo Ba Jun is hella bae. More like Tuo BAE Jun.

Small thing in the plot ^ Wei Young releases bugs while Chang Le is bathing to steal her jade.

Another small thing in the plot – remember how General Ma wrote the truth about the framed rebellion of king He Xi? Well this guy comes in and steals it.

The soldier’s like pretending to be all cool and cold by saying “No one gets out of here. No one”, which makes me think… like c’mon. If you knew that the truth was written somewhere, and you didn’t want anyone to know the truth, why didn’t you just destroy it? Like c’mon. Either I’d make a great villain or all these guys don’t know how to villain very well.

The sisters (except the 3rd unimportant less attractive one) get invited inside the royal palace since Tuo Ba Jun is back, and Tuo Ba Jun’s mom (whom I’ll just call Mrs. Crown Prince) set up a grand welcoming party and invited everyone. Mrs. Crown Prince has a special liking for Chang Le, and wants them to get together.

Ugh.

I’m not a big fan of this pairing so I’m going to just skim over it. Li Ming De meets the royal princess, and she’s a brat. Long story short she plays pranks on her, and it’s obvious that they’re going to fall in love.

So Wei Young is just wandering the palace and she hears an instrument… and can immediately discern it to be Tuo Ba Jun!

Like what the hell don’t instruments all sound the same? I sure cannot tell when Yimura’s playing the piano or if it’s someone else. Maybe I’m just an uncultured swine.

They see each other and are elated. Look at them.

They even hold hands.

Chang Le’s reaction to this reminds me of when Ralph Wiggum’s heart got broken.

Remember? I choo-choo-choose you?

Did I just date myself?

Anyways, Wei Young finds out that Tuo Ba Jun is the son of the Crown Prince – directed to the Wei power that wrecked her family and imprisoned her dad, and she’s devastated.

A royal uncle comes in and breaks up the awkwardness.

And proposes that they all play a game. This is all unimportant so… das all. Wei Young starts acting weirdly and unfriendly with Tuo Ba Jun.

Chang Ru is in love with Tuo Ba Yu. Since they’re my favourite actors and actresses in this drama I’m so excited to watch this couple flourish. Can someone tell me if Chang Ru has circle lenses on?

Tuo Ba Jun is frustrated over how Wei Young is not reciprocating his affections and is confused.

Meanwhile, Chi Yun Ruo sees how cunning Wei Young is, and starts wondering if she is a fraud.

Chang Le realizes her jade is fake (remember the switcheroo during the bath scene) and somehow Chi Yun Ruo somehow derives from this that perhaps Princess Xin Er isn’t dead because there was no way Li Ming Feng could have been able to tell between the princess and the servant, especially if the jade is fake.

The drama so far is ok – it’s something you can put in the background while you clean or something. I’m really waiting for the budding romance between Chang Ru and Tuo Ba Yu… or if Wei Young turns evil because she’s got the evil make-up in the previews.

Thoughts so far?