Spoilers!
The show was only given 6 episodes, each episode barely 40 minutes long (minus the opening and ending credits). They had a lot of plot-heavy drama that had no time to be hinted at, shown in flashbacks, drawn out creatively/purposefully/skillfully, or simply written into the show well. I really would have liked the show better if the ponytail bodyguard's revenge plot was drawn out over a span of 15+ episodes, instead of 3-4. In this show, you know right off the bat that he's not a good guy, so I literally check out in every scene that he's pretending to love the main character. And then I'm supposed to buy that it's actually genuine towards the end? Yeah, no.
I also wish we got to know Lindir more. I forget the guy's name (so I call him Lindir, who was an elf in Rivendell in the LOTR films who really reminds me of this consort guy), but he's the Mongol dude that is betrothed to the annoying princess character. He's a perfect guy, but a bit too perfect. They literally don't give him much of a backtory, a reason as to why he loves the princess, and he has no flaws whatsoever. He's too perfect of a human being, and he doesn't get the screentime he deserves in order to be a fleshed out and interesting character. Oh, and also he didn't grab a horse and chase after ponytail guy after kidnapping the princess? There goes the knight in shining armor moment we could have gotten....
The adopted princess VS the main character's feud could have been a more interesting and tragic dynamic if a portion of the show was dedicated to flashbacks of the two girls growing up together. I want to see and feel the adopted princess' feeling of rejection and loneliness when the seventh princess got all the love and attention from mommy.
And the mother character (I haven't seen the original show that this spin-off came from, so I'm guessing she's in the other show) is made to seem like a really deep character, having come from nothing but has such a position of influence and power. But the show isn't about her, so why can't this spin-off give depth to other characters instead of focusing on a character who already has a ton of depth? And why can't we get to see flashbacks of characters who have passed on that keep getting referred to by the main characters every five seconds? Like the Empress Dowager and all the siblings of the Seventh princess...to me, the names mean nothing because I'm not given a face to go with the names.
This show really suffered from the lack of episodes. Six 40-minute episodes? Really? Many Korean and Chinese shows have 30-60 episodes, and this show could barely make it to 10. If you can't get Netflix to give you more than 10 episodes, you might as well not try to make a show. There's no way you can do justice to a story like this if you have no runtime to develop any of the ideas and characters in the show. I feel bad, because this show had a ton of potential. I literally skipped like 12 minutes of the final episode because I was so bored and I just wanted to see Lindir again.
Do not watch this show, unless you want to see Lindir being a perfect and handsome dude. But even then, he does not get the screentime he deserves. This show does not deserve Lindir, but perhaps he can make his way to other Chinese dramas that will actually utilize him more.
