I absolutely loved the entirety of this special. The costumes and setting was still absolutely stunning. If there's anything that "lessened" from the original production quality then that would probably be the accuracy of the makeup, which is still pretty good in my opinion. And of course they wouldn't spend that amount of time on a 6-episode short.

All 6 episodes took me back to the magic of the 70 episode Yanxi Palace. I loved seeing Yingluo again, and compared to the last 1/3 of Yanxi Palace, I could more properly see her as Ling Guifei now. I guess in the original series, it was just a bit weird to see her there having thought of Empress Fucha as the perfect empress and still shipping her with Fucha Fuheng. Here though, there aren't any other characters so I don't feel that conflict anymore.

I think it's impossible to judge the princess without having watched the entirety of the 6 episodes. I quite disagree with the dissatisfied reviews of her character when they've only seen the first few eps of the series. If you've seen until episode 6, you'd know that her rage towards Siwan is because she's literally been trying to drive her crazy since they were children, and no one else could see that. I'm glad she ended up with the Mongolian prince, the same parallel of Yingluo's love, fate, and decision. The Fucha men missed out on great loves, albeit in different ways. Both Yingluo and her daughter gave their Fucha men a chance, but men are idiots so--

Anyway, all in all it was an absolute experience. Might rewatch Yanxi Palace after this. I hope they make more of these sequel-spin-offs despite the reviews from fans. I, for one, will always be glad to meet characters from this universe.