Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 4 out of 5 stars
SYNOPSIS
*From MyDramaList*
A love story revolves around the 9th Princess of Western Liang as she journeys to the Central Plains to fulfill a marriage alliance with the Crown Prince.
Having received overwhelming love and admiration as the 9th Princess, Xiao Feng is forced to leave the life that she has known in order to become the Crown Princess. Her husband, the black-bellied Crown Prince, holds the highest position second only to one, the Emperor. However, the Eastern Palace is the most dangerous place to be. For political reasons, the Prince has no choice but to marry the Princess from a foreign land. He has his own favored concubine while she has her own life. Two parallel lines begin to intersect in a place fraught with danger and deadly power play and buried somewhere deep inside are memories that have yet to resurface.
RAMBLING
*beware of spoilers*
I haven’t written a review in so long, I hope I remember how. Unfortunately, I finished this show many months ago in 2020, and I’m fuzzy on the details. I initially hesitated writing down my thoughts on this show because it didn’t end the way I wanted. I didn’t go into this knowing it was a Shakespearean tragedy.
Coming at this a few months removed from the finale, I can honestly say it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever watched. It’s heart-wrenching in so many moments, and it takes you on an emotional journey with our heroine Xiao Feng. The show essentially covers her transition into adulthood. She’s a naïve, petulant little princess with an unusual amount of independence, and her perfect life gets turned completely upside-down and her innocence, so to speak, ripped away from her. I can say now that it was a worthy show to devote so much time to, and the brokenness that the characters experience is weighty.
The first third or quarter of the show ramped up the blissful romance between Xiao Feng and Li Chengyin, or Gu Xiao Wu as she knows him. Although there is much political strife in Li Chengyin’s own life (I mean, his older brother, the Crown Prince, is slain right before his eyes) and within his country, he manages to let his guard down enough to seduce (but in a good way) Xiao Feng. She’s got such a wild, restless nature about her, with her exotic, bright wardrobe and the way she carries herself. It reminded me of an unbroken horse, so carefree and lovely but a little dangerous. I think that’s what attracts Li Chengyin to her. She might be completely ignorant of foreign affairs and proper etiquette, but she’s a breath of fresh air to his tumultuous life in the palace. He certainly exploits her to his benefit, completely lying about who he is and even his name, but he falls deeply in love with her in the process of his deception—and that’s what makes the betrayal so gut-wrenching to watch.
Once Li Chengyin slaughters Xiao Feng’s beloved grandfather, I knew that they couldn’t be together. But I still hoped. I hoped that maybe their relationship could be repaired and maybe she could understand him or… nah, she saw him murder her grandpa; all bets are off. I still remember the lump in my throat when she wakes up after her fainting spell and Li Chengyin is in the room, how she freaks the fuck out and wails and moans and tries to kill him and can’t stand to be near him. His pained expression, his hopeless and fumbling words. They’ve just been married; their wedding was merely hours before this, and look how fractured they are now. It was almost too much for me.
The voluntary memory wipe via supernatural water reminded me a lot of Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms. I quite liked how terrible Chengyin is to Xiao Feng once she enters the Eastern Palace. It made the show more of a melodrama because the audience, and just a couple characters, know about what happened between them before the memory wipe. The fact that Xiao Feng still struggles with her growing feelings toward Chengyin despite him throwing her under the bus on so many occasions played into the idea that these two are ill-fated lovers, and she just can’t help but fall into old habits and emotions. Their chemistry was just that believable, and their magnetic attraction to one another is like C-drama crack. When she finally recalls what she’s forgotten, she separates Chengyin’s two personas, even letting him believe she loves a man named Gu Xiao Wu, which is his own fake identity. I loved that he was a raging lunatic, jealous of himself.
The ending had me up in arms, but it wound up reminding me of The King’s Woman finale. Both leading ladies commit suicide to basically benefit her ruling lover and snap him back to reality. Sure, Chengyin finally remembers their shared history and trauma and definitely didn’t deserve to have Xiao Feng, especially since he was somewhat content to start a bloody war with her home country now ruled by her bloodthirsty and prideful brother. She sacrificed herself on the altar of love for peace between the countries, which was the intention of her marriage alliance in the first place. I thought that her Pocahontas act would wrap up with the two countries, her brother, and her lover Chengyin walking away from the fight and with her staying alive, but the damage was so done. She’d had enough emotional turmoil, and she slit her own throat, which was particularly brutal.
Chengyin survives into old age, a good king leaving behind a good legacy and voluntarily stepping down from the throne, leaving it to his brother’s son. I like the fact that he keeps the peace he promised Xiao Feng and that he never had a child with another woman, whether out of sheer guilt or because he could never find a woman he loved half as much as Xiao Feng. He says that he’s going off to find Xiao Feng, who he believes still waits for him in her native lands where they were once so happy. It’s sad that he’s now a senile old man with nothing but the delusion that she’s still alive to keep him going. I guess that’s karma for you. Did he find her out in the rugged sand dunes, with her fiery red veil waving in the winds? Maybe. In fact, I think he did find her.
The costuming was astonishingly beautiful, and the performances matched. Some stray observations I had were: (1) It seemed like the second Crown Prince (Brother #2) had a homosexual relationship with his cousin; there was some weird but palpable sexual tension between them. (2) The fucking eyebrows on the queen were ridiculous.
All in all, I highly recommend this one. It’s challenging but in a good way.
Did you see Good Bye, My Princess? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!
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