So the MC was initially defamed and then killed by a County Princess (half-sister to the current Emperor) because the Princess fell in love with the MC's husband. The husband let this happen because he wanted to climb up by marrying the Princess (and she did provide good things for him and his family). However, it's very clear that the husband does not like the Princess. He just doesn't regret his action until things begin to fall apart.

For the original Jiang Li, it's the fairly standard "tricked by the stepmother" plot but then we learn that this stepmother had also mu*dered Jiang Li's mother before entering the household. The stepmother wanted to marry someone of significantly higher rank than her childhood sweetheart which was the Jiang family so Jiang Li's mother had to die. This woman also had an affair with her sweetheart after getting married and had a six/seven-year-old Jiang Li push her so that she would miscarry the child. And she also accidentally mu*dered Jiang Li's half-sister from a concubine by maliciously kicking her (you know, for good measure so that we know she's evil evil).

So the ML had parents that loved each other. His mother was the daughter of a fallen noble family who had been sold into prostitution. The ML's father married her as his primary wife and refused to give in to the Clan Elders who looked down on the woman. They were incredibly happy together and the ML's mother was apparently a happy-go-lucky kind of woman.

Which is what made her become hated by the Empress because she had everything the Empress could not have (the sole love of her husband, a high position without restraints, etc) and because she had come up from "nothing". Basically, a "how dare this lowly thing be able to be happier than me". So the Empress orchestrated the ML's mother catching the Empress's affair with the Emperor's brother. She then convinced the Emperor's brother to kill the ML's mother (despite him being sworn brothers with the ML's father) because she was pregnant with his child.

The Emperor's brother decided to ramp things up to eleven and had his men r*pe the ML's mother first and then toss her corpse at the door of the Duke's mansion. When the ML's father discovers the death of his wife, he begins a single man quest to find the ones responsible. Including confiding in his sworn brother about how far along he is.

Which leads to his sworn brother, the Emperor's Brother, to choose to mu*der him. The ML's father manages to be brought out of the kill zone by his only surviving soldier but he remains in a coma until three years prior to the start of the story and that's when he dies.

The ML is the one who made the choice that eventually killed his father as he was trying to cure the poison that kept him in a coma.

After the revelation and completion of the ML's story, we're treated to the news that he died on the battlefield. The MC refuses to give up and states that they promised each other that he would return.

So she states she will protect his manor, his things, and his title. That she would never remarry and just become Duchess Su and stay in his manor. Never mind that they weren't actually married before he left for war.

All of this turns out to be a test by the Emperor. If the MC could hold out for a year with being a "widow", then the Emperor would never question her attachment to the ML. If she failed, he would execute her and the ML was not allowed to question his decision. One of those Imperial bets that the subject doesn't have a choice in.

After we go through a slighly painful arc of her just missing the ML and refusing to go with the Jiang Family, she reunites with him at a festival. It's then heavily implied that nearly everyone else knew that he was still alive. Just not her.

And she's okay with that.

I get not being able to go against the Emperor, but the author just glosses over her feelings like they are not important. Yes, she was practical and preferred reason over emotion but that is a full year of being told that her lover was dead (repeatedly, I might add) and that she should move on with her life. I'd be pissed.

Jiang Li's father, the MC's "second" father, is very opportunistic. He will do things that will benefit himself or the Jiang family. Including siding with other powerful families that he thinks will help him raise up the Jiangs. This is ultimately what leads to his downfall as he tries to marry the MC off to the cousin of the Emperor.

His wife (the MC's stepmother) is a terrible human being who tricked him by becoming everything he loved so that he would fall for her at first sight. She then mu*dered his first wife, his first daughter from a concubine and plotted to remove his second daughter from the picture so that her daughter could get the marriage that had been arranged by Jiang Li's mother. The stepmother's daughter ends up running away from home, briefly becoming a concubine in another house before overhearing the County Princess discussing a secret. She ends up in the County Princess's private prison, where she is tortured into madness and has an eye removed.

Then there are the side branches of the Jiang family. One daughter decided to take advantage of a plot against the MC, but ended up falling into a bigger trap and marrying out as a concubine. Something the girl's father disagreed with, as he knew what it was like to be the child of a concubine and wanted her to marry into a normal family as a main wife. The other branch schemed against the family by revealing information about the MC to her enemy, which resulted in the family splitting.

It also turned out that the brother wasn't actually dead either. The County Princess had locked him into her private prison. He was tortured, had his leg bones crushed repeatedly, and had his ability to perform martial arts destroyed.

His rescue from the prison was actually an accident on the part of the ML. He encountered a mangled survivor, who wasn't insane, who asked for help. So, in a random moment of charity, the ML takes him out and pays one of his friends to heal him. It's only much later that there is a chance meeting between the MC and the brother which results in the family being reunited.

Also turns out that the MC is the reason the ML did not kill himself after his father's death. He heard her reveal her thought process when she was practically abandoned by her ex-husband's family during a holiday. It gave him the will to continue and seek revenge on the ones responsible for his parents' deaths.

200+ chapters in, out of 240, we get the first kiss, confession, marriage proposal all together in the same scene at once. This scene was sweetly written but just terribly sudden and rushed, and I wish the author did more to let the romance and tension build from the very beginning. Until this point the MC didn't know the male lead liked her and to be honest, I could barely tell either. Sure, the ML helped her out a lot but it always seemed awfully platonic.

of some sort of "forced separation" between the main leads for the last few chapters. In malicious empress it was the coma, here it's one of the leads "going missing" - both times I thought it was too contrived and just lazy writing especially in comparison to the exquisite and well thought out plots for the rest of the novel.

ML knows how to cook and his dishes and desserts are superb XD. He is also the most gentleman, can sing opera and less shameless. His temperament is between Xie Jing Xing and Xiao Shao. Xie Jing Xing has Mo Yun Army, Xiou Shao hold powerful assassin group, then this ML is a spy master.

She was sent away to nunnery because of step mom, father is a high ranking official, spoilt step sister, mother died early and mother's family is kind to FL. But the difference is FL father has conscience and he has regrets towards FL. He tried to redeem his mistakes but still couldn't perform his part as a good father to Jiang Li. But FL is not cruel enough to scheme against this father to death or let the family miserable, but his ending is quite enough karma for the real Jiang Li according to FL

But he died later and that saddened me the most T.T

because ML heard MC (when she was still Xue Fangfei) sing in her courtyard on a swing when ML's father died because of ML's decision. ML gained courage to move forward because MC was s*upidly brave and positive. He even thought at that time that it was so regretful that MC was such a great flower planted in the Shen's backyard where she was always suppressed and thought that it would be great if she could've been his instead. Though this still wasn't the reason ML fell for MC but ML did remember and MC later dreamed about it.

Xue Fangfei's dad and brother are still alive yaaaay! A lot of really good family support for MC and also the Emperor in this novel was really smart and still pretty good. The only thing that I wasn't satisfied about is that I wasn't able to read about MC and ML's children :<<<

The only character that I really felt sorry for was Yin Zhilin, I don't know why but I feel like his parents just broke the guy into becoming a mad character. The guy was a really kind person and then one day his dad crashes everything in his life, basically we can say that he was forced into breaking down to become the final villain of this story. He had to pay for the crimes of his parents when all faults lie in their selfishness, especially his mother, that empress dowager is just disgusting.

the last villain said how he even got the ml's mom r*ped. Like ok. Wtf bro. Ok so she saw your escapade with the queen. You could have just mu*dered her and be done. But you tell me you made her gangbang r*ped and them killed her and put her on the doorstep of your "bff's" home? The gangbang was so unnecessary.

omfg. If I wasn't biased I think I would give this a 2 or 3, because I mean I understand where the emperor is coming from, but actually no I don't you little b*tch. The MC by no means would become like the queen dowager. They arent in the same position, love story, and f*cking personality so bs little b*tch. Second ok she knows too much information. SO f*ckING WHAT. OK THATS REASONABLE BUT EVERYONE INVOLVED IS ALREADY DEAD. That information is inconsequential. The emperor basically c*ckblocked for angst purposes bc honestly wtf is his character? And if we're gonna continue this rant. This book suffers from internalized misogyny that exist bc half the characters have misogyny in this time period and half bc the author probably had it at the time. Because although the princess was terrible and her ex also ended up dead in the end, THERE WAS SO MUCH FOCUS PN THE PRINCESS. Like ok she does deserve to die, but why wasn't the focus of revenge mostly on the ex? I know it was a 2 in 1er bc by punishing the princess she would ruin her ex's ambitions. This is fine as an entertaining novel. But probably her worse one in terms of how it's become dated over the years (considering it doesn't have the excuse of being the OG) because there lacks nuances that will be prevalent in novels following this genre in the following years after. I guess feminism really did increase over the years so that's good.