story - 10/10

the story is not based on the love story of the leads and was super interesting itself. i liked how almost every character was explained well, so there was not anything unreasonable in the series and you can not directly tell who is black and who is white. another thing to mention is that the drama was not dragged, which is an uncommon thing for chinese costume dramas.

acting/cast - 10/10

overall acting was amazing, and i'm gonna say a few words about the main characters:

changge - i was not a big fan of dilraba, but i really loved her there.
a'sun - it is my first drama of wu lei, and he did so good (i mean, who didn't cry on alir's death scene?). from cold and introverted general to an actually caring and sentimental person, his character development is underrated.
le yan - the biggest character development there. from a shy and timid girl to a matured and caring princess. also, the most kind-hearted person out there: even when she faced all that hardship, she never let hatred to take over her mind and remembered only good in people. even if she is not physically strong, i think she has a strong personality. as always, the role suited zhao lusi so well and she had a great chemistry with hao du.
hao du - as a person who initially started watching because of lyn, i totally fell in love with hao du there. hao du was a person who hides his feeling deep inside himself and i find him really selfless (not only his love for leyan, but also the fact that he placed his adoptive father's orders above his values), and liu yuning did really AMAZING, i mean, all these microexpressions---
and as for wei shuyu, one of the few characters that i didn't like. he is indeed spineless, but i can understand him, as it was quite a common thing for the member of a political family at that time tho.
i also liked the side characters as well, my favs were li shimin, du ruhui, a'dou :_), gongsun heng, mu jin, xu feng, etc etc etc (even she'er). it is the first time for me when i liked almost all characters sm, feels like i can write mini essay about each of them, lol.

music - 10/10

osts for this show were extremely good, i mean we had zhou shen, sa dingding and liu yuning for this. i especially loved "cocoon", "a love like before" and "falling sand", they suited the drama so well and helped to understand the characters. personally, i liked all ost's of the drama, and all six of them are in my playist now.

rewatch value: 10/10

it is the best costume drama of 2021 for me so far and i'm surely gonna rewatch it number of times for sure (been doing it whike waiting for new series to air). mb one thing which was quite annoying was cartoon scenes lol.