I must start by saying that I am not a fan of historical dramas so I might be overly critical, but this was not good at all, in my opinion. There was some impressive acting by the male lead and some beautiful attire, along with some noticeably good acting by some of the side characters, which made the drama remotely tolerable (and I do mean remotely); but the overall plot was lost and not cohesive because the show dragged on too long. Some scenes were unbearably long, with minutes of the lead actors just staring at each other and saying nothing. This could have been wrapped up in 8 episodes; even 12 would have been much better, but no way should this have been 17 episodes. The episodes were extremely long and filled with flashbacks of things that had just happened. It felt like they were just trying to prolong the show. Also, some things were just baffling such as the age of the prospective concubines. These were literally babies... like, were they even childbearing age??? I get that historically, girls were subject to be married off extremely young, but the way these young girls were embedded in this story seemed distasteful. Nothing sexual was shown, but just the idea of this grown man and these little girls was off putting. There was a lot that was just not explained or seemed to be just dropped into the story, such as the female lead having a tattoo that tied her to the crown prince, or that her father at one point worked for his father and several other things that just seemed thrown in. I like the female lead in general, but this role did not do her any favors. I know she was trying to hide her feelings for the prince by not showing emotion, but she clearly loved him, so her lack of emotion felt more like bad acting. The male lead pressed her constantly on whether she loved him. I guess that is because he was so insecure given the way he had been treated, but it was tiring to keep listening to this; it didn't have any impact. And the ending was just confusing. If it had wrapped up showing that the male lead, who had become the king, made changes to the laws of the land because of his love for the female lead, who eventually became his concubine, that would have been better. I assume that was implied, but there was plenty of time to show us what happened without us having to infer anything; yet, the show ended without closure... a final twist of the knife after almost 20 torturous hours of slow-paced nothingness. I can't tell you what the climax to this story was. There was nothing but a flat line during this whole drama. Each episode was well over an hour long and the last one was almost two hours... I just cannot believe how bad this was. It was highly recommended by a fellow drama lover, and I can't wait to see her again to tell her how bad this was. She literally begged me to watch it and said it was her favorite historical drama. I don't know what people like about this show. I can tell the production value was high, but I still don't know what they were trying to produce.