Chemistry and romance are fine and good but it shouldn't be the core of a truly good historical. Sadly this one is precisely that. A barebones romantic drama dress up as a historical. If you are expecting an engaging story from start to finish then prepare to be disappointed. This one had a good and interesting start. Sadly the writer lost any sense in writing a proper story and instead it became some lousy romantic drama with LYF playing the "I'm always right" Miss Perfect female lead to the hilt. She had great chemistry with ML. That is obvious but it's clearly not enough to warrant for this to be considered a truly good drama.

I was expecting this drama to reach heights but it never got more exciting than the first few episodes. The writer tried to write in an all encompassing and mysterious under current but even that fizzled in the end and became a complete fluke. From the first moment one would expect a great political conflict brewing in the imperial court. It look like it was headed that way, sadly it never materialized. We did get the Gao girl acting outrageously, screaming at the emperor to plead for the FL. That scene was probably inserted to quench the thirst of those yearning for political drama. I was rolling my eyes at that nonsensical and ridiculous scene. In the end all that scheming in the imperiaI court was just use as a plot device to get rid of the FL's former fiance who turned evil. I was waiting and waiting for the story to move forward and it never did. The poor attempt at court politics they managed to throw in the end was a sad excuse for not writing a complete story that was consistent with the story they started.

I was not envisioning for the story to turn out this way. Just literally meddling for most of the drama and then they suddenly remembered they had a story to finish. What was the purpose of introducing all these characters of the imperial court when the writer had no intention of fleecing out their story and roles properly. The sassy waitress, the joker guild leader and his fat sidekick got more airtime than I had expected. They had zero relevance to the overall backstory but got extra time because of the writer's laziness to build up this drama to a good end.

The writer was just obviously time wasting and extending episodes until they got to the end. Three quarters of episodes spent on pointless business drama and the FL acting mighty and standing on a pedestal towards everyone. Cross her or you'll be sorry. If the writers thought they could get away with relying on her romantic entanglement with the ML to carry this drama they are really big chancers. Sorry I am not so gullible to be satisfied with how the story went about and ended.