The Princess Weiyoung

Great series! The story is about the kind princess of Northern Liang (Tiffany Tang). After her kingdom is destroyed, and her family murdered by the greedy Marshall of Northern Wei, she feels revengeful, turning into a powerful and cunning woman while assuming the identity of her murdered friend, Wei Young. The Princess walks willingly into the lion's den when she returns to the family home of Wei Young belonging to the same clan as the Marshall. This household is full of jealous, scheming people. Moreover she catches the eye of two princes/half brothers: the sunny favorite of the Emperor, Tuoba Jun (Luo Jin) and the cunning, ambitious Tuoba Yu (Vanness Wu), causing even more trouble for her. Will she survive the power struggle and keep her humanity as well?

This drama made me think of the popular k drama "Moon Lovers Scarlet Heart Ryeo", but there was much more time to tell the story, to flesh out the characters. The great pro in comparison to k drama is that c drama has more (45) episodes.

The good: The Princess Wei Young is full of gorgeous looking siblings in rich surroundings, planning all kind of evil deeds against each other, playing a game of win or lose, but with a chance to come back again.

The bad: I know these scenes are quite common in Chinese drama, but I'm still not used to the unrealistic circus jumps or the fake horseback riding scenes, lmao.

Verdict: Still I give this drama an 8 out of 10. I couldn't wait for the subs and watched the entire show in Mandarin, it's that good.

This is the first Chinese drama I've watched and I'm hooked! The production is epic. The love story is utterly mesmerizing and the leads, Tiffany Tang and Luo Jin, are sensational in looks, acting chops and chemistry. The palace intrigues are riveting and the intelligence of Weiyong as she tries to prevail over her enemies' nefarious schemes is exciting to watch.

If you like your baddies super bad to the core and relentless then you will enjoy this. The Princess faces many hardships mainly due to other women who are jealous of her ability to make so many men fall in love with her. It sounds ridiculous but as you watch it and experience the hardships she endures you find yourself falling in love with her goodness. Luckily she has friends who adore her and a Prince who watches over her and she loves. She is betrayed by people she trusts and you wonder if she will ever be happy for more then a short time. Acting is superb and pacing of each programme is excellent and you tend to end up binge watching as it draws you in.

After ending the series I kind of felt like I've watched a super long chinese version of Romeo and Juliet. So yes, the plot isn't new and the amount of times the female lead gets framed or is in danger is kind of ridiculous. BUT: that doesn't really matter. My heart won over my mind. I was CONSUMED by this series. The acting is great, the chemistry between several of the series' couples is indescribable and you go through every emotion possible: frustration, happiness, sadness, devastation... you name it, this series delivers.

Conclusion: is this a rationally good series? Nope, but if you need shows that are emotional as hell, then this is definitely the one for you.

I enjoyed the cheeky interplay between several of the characters...love everything about the settings and that genre. What a bonus to be able to brush up on my Mandarin. Netflix rocks with the subtitles .