My first thought about this show was that wow, this is long, after mostly watching Korean dramas with 16 episodes I was a bit afraid I will get bored of this. However nothing was further from the truth, this show is very much worth watching, it never gets boring and there is always something new it shows us.

Story: Basically it is about Tan Yun's journey from early adulthood till her mid-ages when he gets married to the then-current emperor and we can see her struggles to become a female doctress in a time period when only men were allowed to practise medicine. She nevertheless never gave up, we see a lot of fails and successses of hers, she always collects herself and stands up stronger than ever. She become proficient in medicine, her life long passion and gets recognition and respect from fellow male doctors. Her character is based on a real Ming dynasty female physician Tan Yunxian and the Empress Hang who lived a generation before Tan. Now the story also kind of mixes the story of these two time periods, so we see Oirat invasion, the capture of the emperor etc etc, but all in all it does contain quite a lot of historic accuracy, not to mention the show creators also did research on ancient medicinal methods, so this part was very well done. The show can be divided into 3 main parts story-wise, first Tan Yun's time with her family and learning medicine, second the Oirat invasion and her and the emperor being captured by the khan. Here we see a lot of scenes of daily lives of the steppe people who has their own costumes, and during this time she really grows up and becomes a survivor. Third part is the return to the capital and her becoming noble consort than empress, this is mostly about the new emperor who was in the beginning a naiv gentle man but we see how power and some influential political people ruined him and made him greedy.

This is what the best part of the show is, character growth and development is huge, not just for the main actress but for everyone! We never get bored of them because we see how their struggles and circumstances made them change (sometimes for the worse), develop etc. The love story is not really the most crucial part, yes she did marry the younger brother, however it is obvious her real soul mate was the original emperor, with whom she only gets a chance after both his wife and her husband dies several years later. There is a minor love-line with the Oirat khan Esen, I really shipped them, would have loved to see them together, but oh well.

Music, visuals: For the other part of the show, the music is not really special, it's nice but not something I would remember to mention, however it is obvious the show is low budget. I have never seen such bad costumes in a show before, you can clearly see the gluey attachment of the wigs!!! The fight scenes, especially the one with the wolves, oh dear lord, like watching WOW in its earlier stages, just worse. So visually it's really bad, especially for a show that aired in 2016 and not like in the 1980's. One warning though, don't watch while eating, some of the medical scenes are downright disgusting, so if you are sensitive, watch it after eating. A lot of people complained about the last 10 episodes, as it is indeed more slow-paced, but still it has value as it shows how humans change due to power. The last episode was a bit dissatisfying, and a bit weird, I didn't really got why she had a miscarriage, she was slightly pushed by her motherinlaw, but I never got why in chinese dramas they are so overprotecting pregnant women, just because a bit of a push you don't die and don't loose a baby, and you can certainly do more than just lie in the bed! It was weird for me and didn't make sense, and the same goes for why she really married Zhu Qi Yu, when at the time it was clear he was not the sweet loving man anymore. Anyway apart from this it is a great show and I think it really teaches us about life and how to overcome difficulties and never stop pursuing our dreams.