After watching this, I realized that Bai Lu is actually a good actress. I have watched her in two dramas before this and didn't really think much of her acting skills. Its not that she didn't stand out, she is terrific and charming, but the scripts just weren't right for her. Kunning palace was such a terrific script, with a lot of plot holes and missed potential, regardless it was riveting until the very end.

And after watching Zhang Ling He play the role of Xie Wei / Xie Ju'an, I have come to realize that he was made to portray historical characters. He is so unrecognizable from his modern day roles, where he reminds me of a teenager. In his historical roles, he bring us a different aura, just like he did with his role in Love Between Fairy and Devil. I'm going to check out few of his other dramas as well to see more of him. In some scenes in Kunning Palace, he kinda overdid it and we have to ask the directors what were they thinking. For example, the first scene where they introduced him, they gave us a close up of his neck. It just looked so damn funny. But apart from some of these weird instances, he did a phenomenal job with this character.

You'll Keep Guessing Who The FL ends up with until the last few episodes (Spoilers below)
Let's begin with the adorable Yan Lin, he brought light to Ning's life. While she never showed any romantic affection for him, she cherished him a lot.
With Zhang Zhe, the story was so complex that it wasn't fully explored. Even though it seemed slow paced, it felt like there were a lot of missed opportunities to make their story flow. After claiming to like him so much, Ning seem to have given up way too quickly on what could have been between them and so did he. Despite her being a stranger to him, he was attracted to her and we can see in his expression that it was not just because of her looks.
Xie Wei / Xie Ju'an, the reason I was glad that it didn't work out with Zhang Zhe. While Ning would have had a sort of peaceful life with Zhang Zhe, he would never truly have understood Ning as a person. He was a bit too rigid for her, sometimes that makes a good choice but the chemistry between Xie Wei & Ning was just too strong to notice anything else.

What really pissed me off was the story between Jiang Xuehui & Shen Jie. Shen Jie seemed like such a powerless character that it was hard not to feel sad for Jiang Xuehui and kind of curse Shen Jie for not having spine.