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Granted, palace dramas like this one typically have plenty of grim tropes, but I was unprepared for how much violence and bloodshed accompanied a clear focus on women’s storylines.
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Rest assured, Yanxi Palace also has all the betrayal, backstabbing, murder, epic love sagas, and tragedy any fan of other grittier genres and shows, like Game of Thrones or hit Chinese xianxia drama The Untamed, could want.
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While watching, I kept being reminded of The Queen’s Gambit, a show where the story’s chief appeal is the satisfaction of getting to watch a capable woman being capable, while all the men in her life either support her, get out of the way, or live to rue their mistake in trying to possess her. Over the course of 70 episodes, our lowly palace maid faces an endless onslaught of power plays and manipulations, all amid a steady, unprecedented social climb through the ranks of the court. This, we realize, is what happens when someone crosses Wei Yingluo: a devious, subtle form of sabotage that depends upon the perpetrator’s own mistakes to damn them in the end. He instantly disgraces her and her entire clan. The moment the emperor ( Yuan Nie) sees the roses the girl has trailed behind her, he realizes she has disobeyed the imperial Manchu decree against footbinding - a huge offense.
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So far, so good: Our hero is a modest, discerning girl who knows how to flatter to keep the peace. Yingluo assuages the noble lady’s anger by showing her a unique trick that makes her footsteps trail roses - thus sending her on her way to meet the emperor with a special advantage over the other would-be consorts. After one of the noblewomen bullies them, Wei Yingluo, a new maid, steps in and smooths things over. The story opens with a group of lowly embroidery maids, all new to the palace, encountering a group of eligible noblewomen on their way to meet the emperor. Unlike the audience, however, Wei Yingluo has come prepared. Governed by the real-life Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong, and built around the stratagems and maneuvers of his many concubines, the 18th-century city oozes opulence and ornate luxury - but also teems with duplicity and danger. It takes only a few minutes into Story of Yanxi Palace, the smash hit 2018 Chinese historical palace drama, for the training wheels to fly off.Īlongside our heroine, Wei Yingluo ( Wu Jinyan), the audience is dropped into the middle of a complicated society with clandestine rules and labyrinthine social codes: the Forbidden City.