I have mixed feelings about this drama. On one hand, the political intrigue was very interesting and the action scenes were fun. The chemistry between the couples was very good leading to nicely put together love stories. On the other hand, some characters had very bad motivations leading to very questionable choices.

Prince An was an awful villain. He concocted an entire revenge plot to kill multiple people because of a years old incident where a child accidently knocked over a candle. He had no substance, bats*t crazy motivations, and extreme shortsightedness. His love for Fu Rong seemed very superficial. All he did was plot, manipulate, and lie to her.

ML and FL were cute together and had good chemistry, but FL made some very awful choices. Her relationship with ML had very little trust. Whether it was the murder of her teacher, divorce, or Ruyi pavilion, she never gave ML the benefit of the doubt or allowed herself time to verify the information given to her. Instead, she gave in to rumors and manipulations and jumped to conclusions. For someone who made a big deal about trust, she never trusted the person she supposedly loved. Moreover, the fact that FL stabbed ML on their wedding night should've been the end of their relationship because that was a huge breach of trust. But, that was not the case here.

Even though the second couple also had great chemistry, they became boring because their relationship stopped at flirting and did not move further until almost the end of the show. They were obviously in love, but neither of them made any steps to move forward for a very long time. I ended up skipping most of their scenes after episode 20.

One of my biggest gripes with the drama was young women running around with men they were not married to. This was supposed to be a huge taboo where reputations were ruined. Not the case here. Nobody ever addressed the fact that ML and FL spent the night alone in a cave, that the second couple spent the night alone in a cabin, that Fu Rong was often alone together with Prince An, and so on. This nonsense led to more ridiculous behavior by Fu Rong. She constantly snuck out for one reason or another and was found by ML usually in the company of his love rival Prince An. For someone who was supposed to be intelligent, Fu Rong didn't have enough sense to realize that Prince An had feelings for her and that it wasn't the best idea for a married woman to fraternize with a man who had feelings for her and who wasn't her husband. At that point, it was hard to see what Prince Su, or even Prince An, saw in her. She was reckless and childish, and had no common sense.

A lot of plotlines were a tropey mess. It's pretty obvious that the writers wanted to give ML and FL scenes were ML heroically rescued FL, but it was done in such a clumsy manner. He would go away on a mission then randomly appear out of nowhere and catch her from falling. The plotline where she was buried alive was a cringe fest. Zhang Yan was a very minor character who completely disappeared from the plot after they returned each other's birth cards. Yet, the writers just randomly threw him back into the story to create romantic drama without actually thinking it through.

Some of the martial arts scenes were a bit silly. ML could jump on top of a tower as tall as a skyscraper to admire the moon with FL. But while running away from assassins, he couldn't jump over a river or over a gate.

The story started out well but it turned into a cliche mess of misunderstandings, mistrust, jealous side chicks, and awful behavior. Even after the trust issues were resolved, I couldn't get over the fact that FL tried to kill ML on their wedding night based on sketchy information. There are plenty of historical dramas with good character development and interesting plots. This drama is not it.