Historical drama recommendations?

What you want to check out are the so-called taiga dramas--a year-long period drama, aired on NHK, about historical figures. If you never watch any of them, I'd recommend Atsuhime or Yae no Sakura , because they're easy enough to follow without dumbing down the narrative for easy consumption.

But you can just look at the list of taiga dramas and pick one that you find interesting, I think. Perhaps you can use these for reference:

MDL Taiga Drama Voting List

Taiga Drama List (Wikipedia)

 ArniA:

I'm really interested in things like:

- has to have romance

- hidden identity (secret princess) or something

- imperial family

I don't know any J-dramas that have all 3 of these things.  Judging by a quick MDL search, romance doesn't seem to be common in taiga dramas.  My advice is to just pick one of the popular taiga dramas, and not worry about whether it has romance.

For the non-taiga dramas, you might be interested in Nobunaga Concerto.  A high school student swaps places with a lord.  I guess that counts as a hidden identity.

If you're interested in anime, you might like The Rose of Versailles.  There's a royal family, and a little romance.  I don't remember if there are any hidden identities.

Edit: I also recommend the C-drama Princess Pearl if you haven't seen it yet.  It meets all 3 of your criteria (romance, secret identity, imperial family).

Yeah like @mjf314 wrote above, Nobunaga Concerto might be a good start for newcomers. It has a bit of romance and the typical political plot style you would often see in other Japanese historical...and it was made in a fun and interesting way too with only 11 episodes plus movie.

Since you have watched Ashi Girl, I would say that's roughly what you would expect from other J-historical as well, in terms of the social structure and visual representation.

That is because medieval Japan has the feudalistic and localized politic system, unlike the Emperor ruled countries like China and Korea. Yes Japan has the oldest Royalty but they have no political power for most of time in history and also not strong economically as the Samurais were the one who collect all the taxes starting from the 12th century (while China was still under Song dynasty).

Also, don't get discouraged when you see small wooden house but claimed to be the castle of a big lord....lol By historical fact, stone castle like Osaka and Edo only come to existence at around late 16th century....before that it's always a wooden one.

The romance, unfortunately wasn't always the focus of most J-hostorical. There are several reasons to this but I don't want to write a long reply.  I'm just letting you know ahead of time to avoid future disappointment.

Thanks @kura2ninja for sharing the voting list!