Ginnyvere

He does something subtle/upper class court drama and it flies right over her head. Example: he's unhappy with her so he stops wearing the hair tie she bought him. He seems to think she should know she's fallen out of favour, I'm sure a woman from the capital would know this, but our girl is like, "Do you want a different hair tie? If you don't wear it, you must not like it" because she doesn't do subtle

He projects his Extreme Romantic Feelings onto her and is disappointed when she doesn't act the way he expects. (I think he got bored and read some very dramatic romance novels at some point) Example: When he's going to leave Lin'an town, it's a huge deal for him and he's all in love, but she is way too calm and offers him the agreed upon divorce letters, as she does in her practical way. I think he fully expected her to like, sob and beg him to stay and then he would have been all happy, but that is not Fan Changyu and it never will be

In an excellent mood, he stabbed the old eunuch again, watching as the blood stained his imperial yellow dragon robe red. He laughed with satisfaction. “What a beautiful color. No wonder Xie Zheng’s eight hundred personal guards are called the Blood Robe Cavalry.”

The old eunuch was already convulsing in pain, trying to crawl away on all fours. However, Qi Sheng, as if discovering a new toy, began wielding the dragon sword like a cleaver. Gripping the hilt with both hands, he hacked at the old eunuch as if chopping vegetables, venting all his rage.

The old eunuch’s pleas for mercy soon turned into incoherent screams, and eventually, he could no longer even cry out.

The floor tiles of the great hall were splattered with blood and bits of flesh.

Qi Sheng only stopped when his arms grew too tired to swing the sword. He looked at the corpse he had hacked into a pile of mangled flesh, threw aside the sword, and called for young eunuchs to come in and clean up. Then he returned to his dragon throne to catch his breath.

Ea Nasir... is that you? Have you come back to save us all?

The issue, in my opinion, is twofold.

For whatever reason (the streets are saying that the production company was much to blame here), the writers got weirdly attached to certain settings (Lin'an town) and certain characters, that ended up either overstaying their welcome in the show (the pig butcher gang and Sui Yuanqing - and yes, you can quote me on this) or having such repetitive and/or nonsensical scenes that the overall plot suffered thanks to them (Qi Min and Li Huaian, the latter being a composite of two characters that were in opposite political camps in the book, just in case you were wondering how much thought the show writers put into the political part of the show; not much).

Now, if you're a good writer, this should not pose a problem. If the character motivations, or the characters themselves change in your adaptation, you can still end up with a good, solid story, assuming that you factor in the aforementioned changes in your plot. And here the second issue pops up. The writers wanted to both expand on and change things according to whatever subplots and characters they favoured, but they also wanted to keep as many scenes from the novel as possible, and so they ended up with a complete mess, because you can't introduce random changes to the show plot and then expect the book scenes to still fit in smoothly.

If Fan Changyu is solely driven by her desire to return to Lin'an and rebuild it, then she doesn't need to stay in the army at all; she doesn't even need to enroll in the army in the first place. Her army career in the show comes across as just a temporary thing she does before she returns to Lin'an, and (presumably) resumes pig butchering, up until the very end, when the viewer is surprised to see that she is in fact still in the army, alongside Xie Zheng. Similarly, there is no need for Xie Zheng to ever mention revenge in the show, since it's not what it drives him forward; we don't spend much time on how his father's death affected him, and Fan Changyu's identity reveal barely has an impact on him.

Xie Zheng is powerful and influential, some of the most important officials in the kingdom and even the emperor are scared of him. If he truly wanted to marry someone, no one would actually dare to tell him no. Sure, people would talk about it behind their backs, but no one is brave enough to try to offend Changyu despite the difference in status between them. Being his marchioness would mean that people would try to placate her to try to gain Xie Zheng's favor through her (or maybe she would end up as a target if they knew how much Xie Zheng loves her).

This is also the reason why Xie Zheng told the royal princess not to reveal his relationship with Changyu in the capital before he went back to the capital, because he isn't there yet to protect Changyu if someone decided to mess with her, but reveal it by himself in front of the entire citizen once he goes back.

Wei Yan was in love with a childhood friend and was supposed to marry her. She suddenly married into the palace as a consort (Novel: this was because her cousin, the empress, was losing power to another consort so they sent her a cousin to help). He never had an affair with her, but this is the only woman he ever loved.

Wei Yan and his brother-in-law, Xie Zheng's father, were friends with the crown prince. The crown prince already had a son, Qi Min, and because of this the line of succession goes Crown Prince - Qi Min - go back up the tree for other sons of the emperor. However, the emperor has been favouring another prince recently and he can always switch crown princes. So Wei Yan, when drunk, says, "Why not just replace the emperor?" This is treason, so bad idea.

TIAN XIWEI (田曦薇) as Fan Changyu / Fan Shanjun