This remarkable drama captured my heart and mind and made me feel like a true witness to each characters happiness and pain. The characters were well developed, the production was amazing, the OSTs are crafted to make you long for the sweet happiness that comes with belonging to a "home" that all of the characters are searching for. There are multiple moments, happy and sad, where the scene is so captivating, I found myself tunnel visioned into the characters emotions and experience, as if I was there with them.
The actors, Pang Xiao Ran and Cheng Xi Xui completely transformed into Xiao Feng and Gu Xiao Wu (Li Chenying) and had me believing that these two characters are real human beings with complex personalities and lives. The characters are shown as young and pure of heart. That purity is never completely lost, eventhough we see Li Chenying make detrimental decisions that causes death, destruction and pain at the expense of Xiao Feng. He has remorse for her, but at the same time, because he does not understand the loving world outside of the treacherous imperial family, he cannot control who he was molded to become and continues to make selfish self depracating decisions, forcing his one chance at happiness to move further and further away from him.
On the other hand Xiao Feng, who is easily accepted into the imperial family, wants nothing to do with the imprisonment that comes along with the riches of being a part of the imperial family. She only wants to find a place in the world, that can be home. As much as she loves Li Chingyin, he will never be able to give that to her. Had he truly been Gu Xiaowu, they would've enjoyed true happiness, building a home and living for each other instead of for their states.
Any future remakes of this drama will be hard pressed for comparable success, as all of the pieces for this version of Goodbye My Princess, which includes all of the side characters and their experiences, so don't fast forward anything, worked to make this the most epic historical tragedy that I've ever seen.