After watching Princess Weiyoung, I read that this was a spin-off/sequel to that story, so I decided to watch it next. However, I found there was almost no overlap at all it really was just set in about the same time period and in a competing dynasty. The Chinese titles do have the same first two characters, but that’s about it. The disappointment from that aside, I did enjoy the show itself and felt much happier about the relationship. There were also some great battle scenes.
Major thanks to cyn lynn for the little recaps that helped me remember the plot for my summary.
Total episodes: 53, about 45 min each (watched it on Viki)
Listen to the OST on Spotify (my fav song is Ying 影=shadow)
Title in Chinese is Jin Xiu Nan Ge 锦绣南歌:
Jin Xiu together is meant to mean beautiful/splendid, but separately, Jin = brocade and Xiu = embroider. Nan = south and Ge = song. So beautiful song of the the south?
Warning: possible spoilers ahead!
I rated this one an 8/10. I liked the cast and costumes, but not the palace sets, which felt dark and unwelcoming.
I really liked Lige as the assassin, she got such cool costumes and moves! Later on when she mellowed out, her character became less compelling.
It was interesting to see how they dealt with a character to who was already married and fell in love. Still, they kept it pretty simple with him never actually loving the other woman. What a drama it would be if he had to contend with feelings for both!
It was refreshing to see the Princess Consort NOT be the jealous other woman. In fact, the relationship between her and Lige was very affectionate.
They had a parental couple actually close and showing affection for each other, which was really nice to see. The Shen family overall had such a strong bond and they were a really functional family, except for that pesky cousin.
This is on 5 of my lists:
Tropes/themes in this show:
- jealous female love rival who thinks she deserves the male lead
- male love rival who fights to win the female lead
- side character who also falls in love with main lead, but can never be with them and ends up finding their own happiness with someone else
- main lead who needs to do something completely against their character to accomplish a larger goal; in the mean time they alienate their loved ones and have a falling out
- main lead who sacrifices him/herself to save the other
- swap daughters for marriage
- arranged marriage that turns out to be with the person they fell in love with in a different context
- main female dresses as a man and another woman falls in love with her
Show Summary:
Assassins are after Prince Peng Cheng (Liu Yikang), 4th brother to the emperor. He has a reputation for being a bad ruler. Shen Lige is part of the group training to kill him at a dance performance. When she’s practicing dancing (at a brothel?), there’s a mysterious man upstairs who is actually the prince, but she doesn’t know.
Later, at the performance, the assassins are unsuccessful and an arrow is blocked by the prince’s younger brother, Prince Jing Ling (Liu Yixuan). The prime minister Lu Yuan leads the effort to capture the assassins. Pretty much all the assassins are killed and they capture Lige’s disciple sister, A’Nu, who commits suicide to avoid capture. Lige has to watch in horror and keep silent where she’s hiding with her senior disciple brother Chen Shaoxun. She only has a bracelet that A’Nu had as a keepsake of her best friend and dear “sister.”
Lige and her senior disciple brother escape. Wearing the bracelet while hiding out, she is found and the bracelet is recognized. It was the only thing A’Nu had as a child to identify her and now someone from her family’s household sees it. Through some assumptions and misunderstandings, she gets recognized as the Shen family’s long lost daughter and she takes on this identity to seek revenge for her assassin sister and brotherhood. She vows to get Lu Yuan.
In the Shen household, there is a younger cousin, Shen Leqing, who has enjoyed years of being the young mistress in the manor. She’s not happy about being displaced now that the “real” daughter is back. She starts to wreak havoc for Lige. There’s also an older brother Shen Zhi and younger brother Shen Feng.
In her hunt, she follows Lu Yuan to the waterfront one night and hides on a boat, where she runs into a man also observing Lu Yuan. She’s so focused on watching her prey that she barely notices the man next to her. Their interaction amuses and intrigues him. He’s also investigating corruption by Lu Yuan. Her attempt to capture/kill Lu Yuan fails and she is saved by Prince Jing Ling.
Prince Peng Cheng becomes engaged to the daughter of Shen family. Marriages were all pretty much arranged blindly, so they never meet or have a clue who the other is. Shen Leqing wanted to be the one to marry him (she’s been obsessed with him since childhood), but with the real daughter back, Lige is the one who will marry the prince. Lige’s assassin instinct leads her to think of it as an opportunity to get close and kill him, which was her original mission.
She runs into the mysterious man on the boat again and they keep getting in and out of trouble together. They start to develop a bond and make appointments to meet on the boat. She cutely calls him “old man” since he’s a bit older than her. Eventually she starts calling him “4th older brother” because he’s the 4th brother in his family. This is an affectionate nickname and sort of establishes an oppa relationship. Since they’re both after Lu Yuan, they start working together. Neither knows the identity of the other yet.
We eventually find out about the alliance between the Grand Consort (I believe she’s Prince Jing Ling’s mother and Prince Peng Cheng’s step-mother) and Lu Yuan. They’re the corrupt forces in the government.
Prince Peng Cheng already has a Princess Consort (Xie Yunzhi), who is a gentle soul but there is no love between them. She is a good artist and often paints in her palace.
Shen Leqing starts working with Lu Yuan and poisons the bracelet that Lige wears. Prince Jing Ling gets the antidote from Lu Yuan only after promising to go to the dark side.
The Shen dad and older brother get framed for Lu Yuan’s crimes and Lige is heartbroken that her new family might be beheaded. They finally get enough proof of Lu Yuan’s corruption to bring him down, but he implicates Prince Jing Ling to drag him down with him, so ultimately they both escape death (their punishments are tied together?).
Drunk one night, Prince Peng Cheng wants to come clean and tell Lige who he is but she stops him. She doesn’t want to know (because she knows she will be married off soon and won’t get to see him again). He has patiently listened to her say all sorts of bad things about him without knowing it was him. He’s not actually corrupt, but has had to lay low to accomplish his goals and some of his actions can be misconstrued.
Lige goes into the palace prior to the wedding and spends some time there, befriending the Princess Consort, her future sister wife. Eventually Lige helps the Princess Consort find fulfillment in teaching children. That’s supposed to be her happy ending since she and Prince Peng Cheng don’t have more than a cordial relationship.
There are a few close calls prior to the wedding where Prince Peng Cheng nearly visits and sees Lige (and consequently she nearly axes him). He has no interest in this random woman he’s marrying (because he doesn’t know who she really is!). However, something always interrupts or takes him away, so they make it to the wedding night never meeting.
Meanwhile, Shen Leqing has weaseled her way into the palace as a maid to wreak more havoc. She just won’t go away!
The night of the wedding, Lige pierces her new husband with a poisoned knife only to look up and realize it was the man she fell in love with. She’s conflicted and shocked. Thus ensues some madness while they try to cover up the assassination attempt and get him much-needed medical attention. Lige gets Prince Peng Cheng to her senior disciple brother, who runs an apothecary in town with a younger disciple brother. The young disciple brother is super cute and great at inventing weaponry.
There have been some mysterious clues about who their master is and why he wants to murder Prince Peng Cheng. He has taken in all sorts of orphan children to train them exclusively for this assassination for years. But Lige trusts that the man she loves isn’t evil even if he’s Prince Peng Cheng. Lige and her senior disciple brother start suspecting their master. They manage to save Prince Peng Cheng but still need the antidote from their master.
Shen Leqing finds the dagger in the bridal chamber and gets Lige in trouble for an assassination attempt. The Shen family gets implicated again, this time the mother is imprisoned too. Lige tries to save them by explaining her real identity, that she’s not actually their daughter, but they have embraced her and recognize her regardless.
Well it turns out through other clues, they find out that Lige is actually the real Shen daughter. A’Nu only had the bracelet for other reasons, but Lige was kidnapped by her father’s subordinate who felt betrayed. That man, Xu Lin, was the evil master behind the assassins. The Shen dad had to keep the city gates closed to Xu Lin’s soldiers to save the city and they all thought Xu Lin died. He barely escaped, kidnapped Lige, then spent years planning revenge.
At the Shen family beheading, Lige suddenly dies of poison and she blames Lu Yuan. The execution is postponed to figure out what happened. The Shen mom has started to go insane. Turns out Lige didn’t actually die, but she’s stuck in a coma/vegetative/weird frozen state. She is taken to her senior disciple brother’s apothecary and hidden there. Prince Peng Cheng does all sorts of cute/sentimental/romantic things to try to stir a reaction from her.
Shen Leqing finds out her cousin didn’t actually die and goes to kill her. Lige snaps out of it in time to fight. They run off and end up (of course) on a cliff. Shen Leqing eventually falls off, supposedly to her death.
Prince Peng Cheng had to go off to war so now the Grand Consort is creating problems at the palace to try to get rid of him. She and Lu Yuan are plotting to get him killed in the war. The Shen dad gets captured as part of the war.
Shen Zhi (Lige’s older brother) and Wang Zijin, his love interest, are both part of the war effort and while stuck protecting a city, Prince Peng Cheng holds a wedding for them.
Prince Peng Cheng and Lige find themselves in a confusing cave system at some point. It’s inhabited by some local tribe and they are hassling a girl. They save Mei Qi, the girl, who develops a crush on Lige dressed as a man. Lige tells Mei Qi her name is Shen Feng (her younger brother’s name). Mei Qi helps them exit the cave system and then they have to evade Lu Yuan’s men.
Lige carefully plots a rescue plan for her dad and is able to bring him out of the camp. Meanwhile, Prince Peng Cheng has faked his death and Lu Yuan happily takes the corpse back to the palace to deliver the news. Prince Jing Ling is devastated, he has always been on his brother’s side even as he had to pretend to betray him.
Prince Peng Cheng eventually returns from war to catch Lu Yuan and the Grand Consort. They sentence Lu Yuan to death and banishes the Grand Consort from the palace to go be a Buddhist (I think).
Throughout the show, Prince Jing Ling would go to a remote place in the forest and randomly encounter a girl who developed a crush on him. She became his confidante and neither knew who the other was. It turns out she is Lu Wan, the younger sister of Lu Yuan, and eventually ends up staying with the Grand Consort in her banishment.
Lige and Prince Peng Cheng finally get a romantic night to consummate their marriage. The boat they met on (which is owned by the Prince, of course), is their happy place where they had many dates and beautiful memories.
Shen Leqing (not surprisingly) hadn’t died and comes back to trick the Shen mom into unknowingly luring the Shen dad and older brother into a trap where they get killed! 🙁 This girl is evil, how could she do that to the people who raised her? Poor Wang Zijin is super faithful and is determined to be a good daughter-in-law to the Shen family. She embraces her widowship in such an honorable way.
Mei Qi makes her way to the capital seeking the person she thought was Shen Feng. She’s disappointed to find it’s actually Lige, but meets the real Shen Feng and they butt heads but you know they’re going to get together.
All sorts of crazy drama is happening with Xue Qiu, Lu Yuan’s loyal servant. He pretends to cooperate, then testifies that Prince Peng Cheng was behind all the problems. He only tells the truth later when threatened with Lu Wan’s life. He is at least super loyal to Lu Yuan and want to protect his master’s sister.
Prince Peng Cheng falls ill — it was the Grand Consort, who only ever pretended remorse. She used Lu Wan to get at the prince. Prince Peng Cheng is drugged when visiting her and she makes it look like he killed her. He was too weak to get away from her. Prince Jing Ling comes in just in time to see his brother hovering over his mother with a knife. The Grand Consort wanted her son to turn against his dear brother. What a cruel woman.
We then learn that there’s a true mastermind behind the assassination attempts of Prince Peng Cheng and it’s Wang Zijin’s dad! He was devastated that his two sons died and blames Prince Peng Cheng. He was the one who plotted the terrible death of the Shen father and son. Zijin is so heartbroken to learn this that she kills herself to pay for her father’s sins. (What happened to him?)
At the end, the emperor gives an edict to Prince Peng Cheng that Lige needs to die after all the problems. He hides the truth from her and kneels for hours trying to get the emperor to see him, all in vain. He’s planning on taking her away to that cottage they escaped to at one point. They have some romantic time together, then Lige finds out about the edict and quietly commits suicide. He finds her on a swing where they had sweet memories.
Years later, Shen Feng and Mei Qi are married and have a kid. Prince Peng Cheng continues to strive for the betterment of the country. Lige’s wish for him was to prioritize the good of the country. There’s a retreat home they had spent time in that he fills with memories of her. He seems to have some delusion of her being around and it’s so bittersweet.
