I decided to watch this because there is the actress Wu JinYan that I especially love and I really haven't been disappointed.
I loved the characters a lot and their developements whether they are kind or nasty.
The characters I loved the most are :
- Haolan, an heroine with a strong personnality who don't let people walk all over her
- Yiren/Zichu, he is a very complex and interesting character
- the princess Ya, a very complex chatacter too that I couldn't destest because she touched me so much
- Yin Xiaochun who despite all the ordeals stay med loyal to Haolan and stand up with her until the end

I informed myself a bit and discovered that some characters had really existed (Yiren/Zichu, Haolan, Lu Buwei, the lord Anguo, Lao Ai, Zheng'er ...) and that some moments of the drama are from true events that really happened.

The story is really interesting, full of unforeseen developements and well tied. However you have to have a good memory to watch this drama because there are a lot of characters (when I say a lot it's really a lot !!!).

About the characters, some of them had big ego or mental problems ... people of sound mind would never do things like that. I've just been a little bit disappointed by the end (the star less) which wasn't really understandable and which, in my opinion, has been a bit botched but it's still a correct ending.

In conclusion this is a good drama where the characters are never pure as the driven snow and with an interesting scenario. I would say it's a drama to see for those who are fond of historical c-dramas and who have already seen some of them, I wouldn't recommend it for someone who has never watched any historical c-dramas. However this a classic to watch a day ;)

(Spoiler : If you want to watch the "sequel" of this drama go watch King's Woman which relate the story of Zheng'er, Haolan and Yiren/Zichu's son, and 1st emperor of unified China)