Daebak K-Rambles

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Re-watch value: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis

*partially taken from Dramafever*

Adapted from the historical fiction novel The Legend of Qin: Li Ji Story, The King’s Woman is directed by Liu Xin. The drama is a highly fictionalized account of the Warring States period, when real-life king Yin Zheng united China under one banner and began the Qin dynasty.

• Gongsun Li (Dilraba Dilmurat from Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms) is the granddaughter and student of a famed military commander. Intelligent, fearless and beautiful, Gongsun Li wins the heart of anyone that crosses her path.

• That is what happened to Jing Ke (Liu Chang), the first disciple of the same military commander. The two have loved each other since they were young. They know they are inseparable.

• One man disagrees. Yin Zheng (Zhang Bin Bin from Love O2O) is the king from the rival state of Qin. Ambitious and ruthless, he is equal parts cunning and vicious. Yin Zheng is respected–and feared–throughout the kingdoms. Yet his heart belongs to Gongsun Li, the woman who saved his life when they were young.

When the Qin armies attack Gongsun Li’s kingdom, she must make a sacrifice. In order to save Jing Ke, she agrees to marry Yin Zheng. The marriage is just the beginning of the real ordeal. Gongsun Li faces conspiracies in the palace at every turn. She also learns that she is pregnant with Jing Ke’s child. In an odd twist, she also learns that Yin Zheng is actually a kind, misunderstood soul. As she slowly grows closer to the king, Gongsun Li’s life seems headed in a better direction. That is, until Jing Ke arrives, seeking to reclaim his love and assassinate the king. As she gets caught in the battle between husband and his innumerable enemies, the queen soon learns that being the king’s woman is no fairy tale.

Rambling

*beware of spoilers*

This is Dilraba Dilmurat’s first show where she’s headlining, and I thought she rose to the challenge admirably. She was an important side character in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, which saw her mostly wallow in petulant unrequited love, but she thrived in The King’s Woman, that’s for sure. Give a woman a sword and suddenly she’s killin’ it. (Bad joke?)

Zhang Bin Bin was also a familiar face from Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (I’ve never seen Love O2O). He played a sort of moaning demon king who died pitifully, so it was just wicked and satisfying to see him get nasty as Yin Zheng.

Now, this was one of those dramas that made me rethink how I felt about characters long after they’d already been established. I also couldn’t guess the ending—something that rarely happens. Thus, I will separate my scattered thoughts by characters.

Gongsun Li

Gongsun Li was such a noble, righteous character, and it was unbelievable (in a good way) to see her so compassionate toward everyone, even those who wronged her. Like, for example, I would have slaughtered the woman who fed me poisoned soup to make me miscarry my child and then shamelessly admitted to it in my face, but maybe I’m in the minority here. She saw the good in the ruthless Yin Zheng, which is a crazy feat. I would have preferred that Li was a little stronger physically? Not that her martial arts skills didn’t make her strong, but her stamina was too ridiculous. In Episode 2, she only got jabbed by a dagger in a non-vital location and she passes out immediately. What kind of lifelong warrior wouldn’t be able to take even this much?

Yin Zheng (King of Qin)

Yin Zheng was riddled with insecurities and daddy and mommy issues. At one point, the phrase that came to mind was “school shooter” (his bloody return to his hometown Handan), and at other points I was just like, “The man needs serious therapy” (his subsequent pity party when Li finds him surrounded by dead bodies). Early on in the show, it seemed like Yin Zheng couldn’t bear to do anything that would hurt Li. Therefore, it was a head-scratcher when he had Li imprisoned and tortured after finding out she helped the Crown Prince of Yan escape to his home country. He went super overboard, and I couldn’t quite understand what his beef was? If his love for her was shaken by all the accusations, which she truthfully confirmed and denied accordingly to his face, then he never trusted her to begin with.

Continuing that thought, I’ll skip ahead to the finale episode.   We come to find out that Yin Zheng pulled a Gladiator move, impairing his superior opponent before the fight so that he’d have a guaranteed win.

COWARD.

Yin Zheng also has Li drugged and put under house arrest; she’s late to the final showdown between Yin Zheng and Jing because she has to fight her way through an endless supply of palace guards. When she arrives (too late to make any difference) and Jing dies, Yin Zheng has the gall to say he hindered her to “protect her,” because he didn’t want her to “be upset” by the death of her Senior. I love that he used Li’s closest maid Qing whom she considered her “sister” to do all his snooping and deliver the poison to Jing: “She works for me,” he proudly declares. He didn’t leave her a leg to stand on with that below-the-belt hit. “You never trusted me,” she sobs.

Romance – Yin Zheng and Li

Despite having such a deplorable male lead, this show blind-sided me thinking Yin Zheng would be redeemable and he would have a happy ending with Li. Everything fell apart in episode 44: he didn’t need to kill Madam Chu. He knew she wasn’t guilty. She just wasn’t “useful” to him anymore… what. a. savage. Episode 45 is when the avalanche hit me, though. With his private conversation on display, Yin Zheng shows his true colors: everything he does is to coerce or trap Li into staying with him. Geez, define “abusive relationship.” All he ever wanted to do was possess her, and his “love” for her was outrageous. Unfortunately, Li sees through his lies belatedly. The moment he said he’d use Tian Ming was the moment he could never win her back.

The best WTF moment between them happened in episode 45. Li confronts Yin Zheng about his brutal, unfounded killing of Madame Chu, and she says, “One day you might sacrifice me [for your ultimate goal of uniting the states] like you did Madame Chu,” AND HE DIDN’T DENY IT! Wow!

Lastly, I want to touch on their ending. Li passionately exclaims that she’ll pick up the mantle that Jing Ke left—she will kill Yin Zheng “for all the world”! So far so good. It’s when they charge each other in slow motion that I settle into the thought that she’ll kill herself instead just to spite him. He took away her freedom, threatened her with everything she cares about, never trusted her, and then killed her beloved Jing—the father of her child. She had every reason to rob him of her presence, the one thing he seemed to treasure above all else. BUT I was still hoping that she’d kill him or injure him at least.

Except she flips her blade at the last second, leaving him unharmed, while he thrusts his blade deep into her. Slight difference in my prediction, but OK. She answers his pleas of “why?” by saying breathlessly that only by him losing the one person he loves could he “empathize” with his subjects. Only this loss would make him a “good ruler.” WHAT?? I was fully expecting an “I hate you” or possibly (even if a bit unlikely) an “I love you,” but I didn’t expect her to help him essentially. She did kill herself, but not for vengeance. She did it hoping the act would reverse his tyrannical reign, so that he could indeed become emperor but at least be a benevolent one.

It was not the satisfying ending I wanted. Yin Zheng is left alone to live with the consequences of his bull shit, sure, but I wanted something more. Our heroine Li deserved more.

Jing Ke

Out of all the characters, Jing Ke actually got on my nerves the most. I didn’t expect him to go apeshit when Li returned to the palace in episode 17. I couldn’t contain my annoyance when he spent the next two episodes drinking and bitching and moaning “woe is me”! He himself said it best in episode 19: “I’ve wasted too much time wallowing in self-pity.” YEAH BRO. I KNOW.

Nevertheless, Jing had a hella strong moment in the finale episode when he brings out the dream drawing Li drew all those years ago (he saved it like a champ) and explained her peaceful and loving vision for their life together, quoting Li verbatim IN YIN ZHENG’S FACE. Balls. The man had balls of steel.

Madame Chu

Let’s talk about episode 44. Madam Chu. Damn, what a character arc! I went from laughing at her to hating her to respecting the hell out of her. She was so petty half the time, but she said it best herself: she was “naive.” I couldn’t believe how noble she was in episode 44: with saying her quasi-goodbyes to Li and giving Li the most sound advice ever (i.e., don’t trust Yin Zheng, “leave yourself a way out”), all the way to confessing to a crime she didn’t commit in service of her homeland Chu—she was the most sophisticated I’ve ever seen her. My favorite part was her tense and awkward hug with Yin Zheng. The close-ups of her stone-cold face crying silent but strong tears were just stunning. I know it’s common for Asian dramas to feature perfect criers, but holy hell, what a virtuoso. Bravo!

Senior Han Shen

This was one of those rare third male leads. He, of course, was deeply in love with Li, but they treated each other like siblings, and he did literally everything he could to help her. She didn’t deserve him or his undying loyalty, so I wholeheartedly agreed with Li’s own words when she told him, “I could never repay you in this lifetime.” I admittedly didn’t find him remarkable until his death in episode 47, and we get pointed flashbacks of important moments of him and Li. After that, I was sorry to see him go. BTW, I got taken aback when the four Qin warriors slashed Han Shen’s Achilles heels. You don’t see that sort of lowbrow strike in wuxia fight scenes, and it somehow seemed like a line was crossed.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Episode 1 started out very fast. They needed to slow down talking through political affairs as if I did the assigned reading already. Notably, we got a deer head in the bed a la Godfather! I got more interested when we hit the battle of Puyang City—major LOTR Helms Deep vibes.

There was some serious brutality that wasn’t necessarily shown, but just the mention of punishments such as having the “flesh peeled from fingers” was enough make me blink twice. It made General Fan’s decapitated head on a copper dish later seem like nbd.

It goes without saying that Lan, our second female lead, got the shortest end of the stick. She spends a decade with Jing openly vying for his heart and he still develops zero feelings for her. Poor girl. I did think Lan and Li becoming sworn sisters like two minutes after they first meet is absurd. There was no foundation for that sort of devotion.

One thing I really liked about this show was that it didn’t lag. Tuning in to 48 episodes always poses the risk of snoring through some fatty bits, but I never had a moment where I thought, “Yeah, I could have skipped this entire episode.” Kudos. — LOL, that being said, there were too many episodes where when we cut to Jing and all the Yan people, they kept talking about assassinating the King of Qin (aka Yin Zheng) with very little action. Things certainly picked up when Jing killed General Fan and Senior Han showed up to break the baby daddy news (I literally gasped when he dropped that bomb), but other than that, events in Yan were a total bore!

I need to harp on this for a hot minute: must we always get a story where our main couple met as children? Can we get more original than destined-since-childhood plots? Please? That would be heavenly.

All in all, it was a wild, intense ride—one that I would recommend. Although I wish things turned out differently, in the end, I don’t feel disappointed enough to dismiss the whole show.

UPDATE: After looking up a slew of facts about China (because my job), I realized that Yin Zheng is actually Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China, aka the emperor who was interred with the famous Terracotta Army. 0_o

Did you see The King’s Woman? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!