Yes, I know no one wants to be here, but hey, you’ve all made it this far.
EPISODE 66 -70
First of all, props to Ning Yi and Ning Qi for making it look like my computer screen is cracking open when they cry over their moms’ deaths. Yes, both of their mothers die in the same episode. For equally stupid reasons.
Ning Yi’s mother is taken hostage by Nanyi because he wants to take revenge on Ning Cheng for doing the best thing anyone could ever do in this drama killing Zong Chen.
Unlike most of us who are happy about this death, Nanyi is not too thrilled because Zong Chen used to be his teacher. So later on, as Nanyi has got Lady Yale hidden in a carriage near a cliff, he and Ning Yi have a confrontation where Nanyi delivers the most infuriating line in the whole show: my master (Zong Chen) would never harm the innocent.
Yeah… you know what, Nanyi? We love you, but it’s about time you reevaluated the relationships in your life.
During this conversation, the Bloody Pagoda gang people — who are somehow miraculously still getting paid enough to run pointless errands — drag the carriage that Lady Yale is sitting in down the cliff. And that’s how she dies. Yeah I told you it was stupid. And the carriage wasn’t even locked, she could’ve gotten out of there any time while the two boys were chatting.
In the meantime, Ning Qi’s mother gets interrogated by Xin Ziyan. And in the end, out of rage, he kills her.
Later, Xin Ziyan and Ning Yi have a little talk. And to be honest, they both have their points.
Xin Ziyan calls Ning Yi out for giving up halfway, and Ning Yi freaks out about everything that has happened so far.
Basically, Ning Yi doesn’t want anyone to be sucked into this power battle and get hurt anymore. You see… I don’t really get this abrupt change in Ning Yi’s attitude. Benevolent or not, he has committed to becoming a leader from a very young age. We got segments after segments of him and Xin Ziyan discussing the ways of a good king. And he’s seen with his own eyes that only with power can he protect the people he loves. So with Ning Yi’s personality, wouldn’t it make more sense for him to want to push on? Cause like, even if he gives up now, no one is going to benefit from it, he’s already too deep in the game. With the crown though, he can make a lot of changes. This is why it’s frustrating to have supposedly dead parents suddenly pop up alive, it changes the direction of the main characters and now they get dragged around by the plot.
And you know what? Xin Ziyan agrees with me. He tells Ning Yi that BECAUSE this world is ruthless, we need to get to the highest office if we want to change it and make life better for the innocent.
The bottom line is: this NingYi/Ziyan ship has sunk.
While all of this is happening, Helian Zheng decides that if he stays here with Zhiwei for another month, maaaaybe she would agree to get past first base with him.
Forwarding a little, in a different place, Zhiwei and her “brother” Zhangsun Hong (aka guy from the slave market) have a brief conversation.
He cries about the past and declares that he is happy for Zhiwei since she’s having a good life. Yeah right. How do we know if he’s telling the truth? Well, 100% he’s not.
What do we even know about this guy? So he’s had no dates for the last 20 years and he hung out with Zong Chen every other weekend or whatever, so what? The frustrating thing is, the narrative expects us to sympathize with him just because he identifies as Zhiwei’s brother.
But I guess it’s understandable in the sense that we’re nearing the end of the drama and it’s traditionally crucial for a female lead to stop using her head. Cuz how else are we going to get a tragic ending?
In the palace, during a banquet, Ning Yi and Ning Qi look pretty much like how all kids look when they’re dragged to a family reunion without an iPad.
Yueling, the woman who is the accomplice of Zhiwei’s “brother”, organizes an assassination of the emperor, and plans to pin it on Ning Yi.
Ah, I forgot to mention, apparently the emperor has also stopped using his head. In a short time, he lets this Yueling woman into the palace and lets himself be bewitched by her just because she can produce the same kind of fragrance Ning Yi’s mom used to make. Yep.
Ning Qi has been on board with Yueling’s plan the whole time. But luckily, Xin Ziyan and his gang show up. He doesn’t exactly support Ning Yi, but he manages to shut Ning Qi up. There’s a generous amount of yelling back and forth in this scene.
Ning Qi yells that he wants to save his father (faking it, of course).
Ning Yi yells to let everyone know he’s inherited the crown so they’d all better shut up.
Xin Ziyan yells for Ning Yi to step down because he wants someone else to be crowned instead.
But it turns out: the emperor actually fakes his death, enabling Ning Yi to take the throne and investigate Ning Qi and his accomplices. Great, who else is faking their death? Should we expect Ning Yi’s long dead brother to pop up eventually too?
So, to Ziyan’s bitterness, Ning Yi becomes the new emperor in the very next scene, and we all know what that means: giving your friends promotions, growing a beard, and playing chess by yourself.
Ning Cheng, by Ning Yi’s order, marches to Zhiwei’s brother’s slave market to investigate the people who were behind Ning Yi’s mom’s death. Ning Cheng is more badass now than he was before and he’s acquired a new DGAF attitude, which is very much appreciated here.
Ning Cheng doesn’t intend to harm anyone, he only wants them to surrender quietly. But Zhangsun Hong eggs everyone on and a fight breaks out.
In the end, Zhangsun Hong just throws himself at Ning Cheng’s sword, hoping that his death will end Zhiwei’s relationship with Ning Yi and make her want to avenge him.
Well, lucky for this guy, Zhiwei’s braincells are taking a permanent break so she uses this as another excuse to justify the fact that she must hold some hatred towards Ning Yi even though she knows everything that has happened is NOT Ning Yi’s fault. Not a single one of them is directly caused by him. He is as much a victim as she is.
One night, on a bridge, Ning Yi asks Zhiwei the one question we’ve all wanted to ask her since episode 50: what do you want?
And she responds by… not responding. It’s like she expects him to already know what she wants. Also, I’m confused. Has he been giving you things you DON’T want? Has he ever been pushy and protecting you against your will? Nope, Ning Yi has kept his distance and not made any assumptions about what Zhiwei wants at all.
Also, What DOES she want? Because this is not a case where the character is so well established that we can understand her wishes despite her silence. Nobody understands what the heck Feng Zhiwei is doing with her life at this point.
Anyway, Ning Yi agrees to let Zhiwei go back to Jinshi with Helian Zheng. But things don’t go well for Zhiwei on that day because she’s taking along with her the people of the previous dynasty (or whatever), and because Ning Cheng is still looking to capture the Bloody Pagoda gang for Ning Yi, he stops them on their track.
Another fight takes place and Helian Zheng has to drag Zhiwei away for her safety.
HAH! No, I’m just kidding. He drags her away to make a scene.
Let me tell you about this “scene” he is about to make: earlier in the episode, Helian Zheng took some advice from Zhangsun Hong. Yep, that is pretty much self-explanatory. If there’s anyone who gives even worse advice than Zong Chen, it’s Zhangsun Hong.
Per the “advice”, Helian Zheng puts up an act and makes it look like he’s about to attack Zhiwei, this triggers a reaction from Ning Yi, who pulls out a crossbow and shoots Helian Zheng. Not to kill him but to make him stop.
Zhiwei witnesses this and goes into shock for a bit. She thinks Ning Yi has become a ruthless monster that just kills whenever he’s bored.
Was Helian Zheng prepared to die if the plan went bad? I don’t know, but here’s what happens next:
As Helian Zheng lies on the ground, the Yueling woman appears out of nowhere and stabs him in the heart with another arrow. And Helian Zheng dies. This is the stupidest death I have seen in here, and that’s taking into account Ning Yi’s mom’s death too. If you’re going to kill off an interesting main character, at least have it be done by an equally interesting villain.
After this, Zhiwei follows Ning Yi home and they give us some good stuff. Guess what? After almost 70 episodes of mixed signals, daydreaming, and dating other people, Ning Yi and Zhiwei are finally… sitting next to each other on a bed.
It’s a good scene with good tension. If it weren’t for the poor conflict that gave rise to this tension.
Then, Ning Yi proposes and promises to give her a straight answer about her brother’s death and Helian Zheng in three days, which he does. They even capture Yueling and make her confess to her crimes.
But that’s just not good enough for Zhiwei. Now that she has the answer to everything and knows for sure that Ning Yi is innocent, she’s like: oh there’s too much death. If we stay together, there will be more deaths because of us. How can I? Oh, how can I…
So she comes up with a last-minute plot twist for Ning Yi and jumps off a cliff on the day she’s supposed to marry him. I will refrain from profanity but just know that I’m thinking it.
COMMENTS
More comments will come later. For now, let’s just mull over these things:
What happened to the active female lead who drove the story we were introduced to in the beginning?
What happened to the male lead who was on his way to be a great leader? Did he just become emperor by accident?
What happened to found-family? (Did Feng Zhiwei forget that Ning Cheng and Ning Yi have saved her life multiple times? Did she not see that her “brother” plunged himself at Ning Cheng’s sword? She’s going to rage at Ning Cheng now for doing his job? Sheesh…)
By the end, every character that we care about, Zhiwei is supposed to hate. And every character we can’t wait to see die, Zhiwei is supposed to protect. No no, this is not good tragedy writing, it looks more like the writers’ group chat suddenly stopped working.
Ahhh oh dear my TROP trauma is coming back, brace for trauma dumping. For literally no reason at all I suddenly started watching Chinese dramas during the pandemic in 2020. My mum is Chinese and my dad is English, I grew up in Europe, speaking very poor Chinese and I was never really interested in learning either. My first ever drama was love and destiny, after that I got obsessed with Ni Ni and immediately started TROP. My mum was super excited because I became interested in my heritage, culture and my language skills took a leap and I became almost fluent. Before the pandemic my mum was recovering from cancer, I was attending school in another country and my dad worked in yet another country so we never spent anytime together. So during the pandemic, suddenly we end up watching TROP every single night. It was so strange because my dad never watches tv or films and I think TROP is hard to follow even with subtitles, so we end up pausing a lot and explaining. And I will say WE WERE OBSESSED. I think 90% of my brain for a month was thinking about what Ning Yi is going to do next and we were talking about the characters all the time. I still think it’s the best show I’ve ever watched, the shots are gorgeous, everything is beautifully made and the performances of the actors are outstanding. Personally I think it’s some of Chen Kun’s best work, Ni Ni is always amazing and Ni Da Hong, Zhao Lixin, Hai Yi Tian, Dai Xu were all fantastic!!
I will say I was never a fan of the secret princess setup. Even though it’s well done I felt the story already has enough conflict and enough plot and ideas to work with that this storyline wasn’t necessary to drive the plot, create conflict or have a tragic ending. I thought they would take the route of Feng Zhiwei not being able to reconcile her ideologies with Ning Yi and choosing not to be with him, that would have been more tragic and poetic than the ending they chose because it actually makes some sense.
There’s way too much I can say about this drama, but it was so unique and special, and I had so much emotional investment, when we started to get episode 60 I already felt like some of it was falling apart. We had been so desperate to watch it and find out what happens next but I wish I didn’t even see the last 10 episodes. I would happily watch 200 hundred episodes if they could be of the same quality of the first 25. I’m still a hypocrite because I’ve rewatched it 4 times so clearly I love pain.
Yes, agreed. Ni Ni and Chen Kun are amazing in here. If only we had more episodes in Three Kingdoms style. Just let me see these two scheming and being smart together and leave Zhiwei’s “princess identity” out of it.
So much stuff with potential was left out because they just had to add the last arc with the brother.
Anyway, glad you and your mum enjoyed this drama. Let’s just say the last 10 eps aren’t canon 😀