Finally finished it after months of putting it on hold in dread of heartbreak and watching again.

Production: this is the best thing here. top notch production. Action scenes are done super well. The sets are grand and costumes and jewellery of everyone, especially tilan's were mesmerising. The music is nice, especially each of the couples have their own song.

Story:  the story is pretty good, just not what i had expected, honestly since i expected lots of fantasy and less on politics. But i wouldn't say that i loved  the  story, mainly because of how the main men here keep making dumb decisions amd learn nothing. Also, When it comes to teacher student thing, that too in fantasy dramas, i can't help but compare it to eternal love and get disappointed. But that's out of context because the genres are different. I have seen from a lot of comments that the novel is rather very dark and tragic but i like how the scriptwriter made it into a political and not so dark story. The main couple had what I'd call an illusory good time with each other. They met, loved, lived together happily very briefly, only to part ways. Honestly i was more invested emotionally in Di xu and tilan's romance, than the main couple, because after the initial torturous and hostile period, they were consistently in a sweet romance until fate took over. The ml actually went too much back and forth, so i could only feel pity for the fl and not be too touched by their story. Zhe liu and zhuoying had a nice fairytale like romance which was pleasant to see, until it wasn't anymore. A major part of the story was political, so there were numerous villains and i liked how the ml planned and schemed against them. Some of them were shown as villains from the start while some were undercover, which i failed to recognize, so it was not that predictable for me. Shit got really tragic and depressing from ep 34 on. And that absolute fucking bitch of a maid that ruined everything for all of them just for her own selfishness was horrible. Later we had blissful episodes 44 to 46, after  which  shitfest of doom began. However the main villain's revelation just fell flat in reason in the final battle, and all what every villain wanted here was power, that really made the villains shallow. I'd rather it ended at ep 46 , would've saved us the tsunami of heartbreaks they purposely inflicted on watchers. Also the last war happened only because they didn't want us to have happy ending. Logically it could've very well been averted by beating the villains at their own game but makers wouldn't do that lest we get a happy ending for all 3 couples.

Characters: firstly my favourite characters were zhuoying and youdu. Youdu was super cute tho he was just a guest role and zhuoying was the best brother ever, i loved his brotherhood with haishi. Others that i liked were chengqian and shaozi, mu deqing. Who even needs a court jester when mu deqing is there? Lol. I didn't like fang zhu too much as a lover, because he was way too dedicated to the emperor to the point where he forgot that he was a human with his own life and hurt everyone around himself to protect him. That was plain frustrating and i understood that he felt guilty for causing the pregnant empress to die but being the baixi for the emperor and then again his son was just too much of noble idiocy. Haishi, as a character was similar to fuyao in legend of fuyao, so i liked her character, the dedication, determination and loyalty she had. The emperor was plain horrible to everyone in the first few episodes and just disgusting. After halfway through the series, seeing his interactions with fang zhu i felt like am i watching a bl? However i couldn't help but sympathize with his pathetic character, he had a really miserable romantic life and also as a king. Tilan was a gentle yet stubborn character, who put up with everything for no real reason at first, then because of love. There were villains  out of desperate love like Ju qiqi, general tang and out of vengeance and greed like su ming, eunuch shi, princess sister of emperor, and others that i won't spoil. The villains here however had nothing to be pitiful, except one, they were just greedy and vain.

Acting: it was my first time watching William chan, so i don't know how he is but i was satisfied with how he portrayed a stony cold character and sometimes how he got affected by haishi getting close to him. However his love for her wasn't expressed that obviously if his actions aren't counted. So i guess he did that purposely or isn't good at facial expressions of being in love, idk. Yang mi, on the contrary had a character similar to that of fuyao so i compared fuyao and haishi a lot, even though the plots were vastly different, and can't help but choose fuyao. Fuyao was even better acted out and portrayed in the romantic scenes, well there were few romantic moments here, so maybe i felt this way but nonetheless it was believable and good. Xu kaicheng surprised me with his acting here , it was very well done. And chen xiaoyun played both the bubbly zizan and introverted tilan very well and her voice was so soothing, idk who dubbed her? The villain's acting actually got on my nerves,  so i guesshe did well. Nothing to say about others.

I do recommend watching it overall. If for nothing else, for the feast to the eye it offers with the grandeur of production. It was interesting and exhilarating in some scenes. But this is too serious for me to rewatch. As a one time watch, it was worth it.