—in a fit of jealousy due to a dumb-but-typical misunderstanding, he brutally r*pes Su Mi, who was a virg*n and completely ignorant about s*x. Look, I ain't no stranger to dubcon and noncon, I can enjoy a piece of fiction as a piece of just that—fiction. But that scene in particular left me going WTF because it's mostly from his POV and he's extremely pissed at her and deliberately setting out to teach her a lesson, and she's clearly very frightened and unwilling and in pain, and the descriptions of the bruises and injuries he leaves somehow seemed worse than the typical love-bites and she's-such-a-delicate-flower-look-how-easily-her-wrists-bruise-from-being-held tropes.

Like, it was neither romantic nor erotic. And I was boggled when in the next part from her POV, she's all shy and coquettish and only a little bit sore because actually she did enjoy it and want it! Such whiplash after I thought I read about a man brutally r*ping his wife to the oh-but-I-actually-liked-it-and-want-more trope.

So you know the whole plot point of him being a fake eunuch with a powerful court position and vicious reputation? Yeah, well, apparently he can move to a different city with all his extreme wealth intact and keep his same name and nobody seems to recognize him or wonder about the fact that this eunuch's beloved wife gave birth to two children, or wonder about how he was able to conceal his non-eunuch status for years while serving as the emperor's right hand. The chapter is short and the time skip is 5 years so I guess it's possible Su Mi hid two pregnancies and they simply concocted a story about adoption or were cool with the public thinking someone else knocked her up, but nothing like that is ever mentioned and it's heavily implied that Qin Yan has been "freed" of his former position and having to pretend to be a eunuch.

Other loose ends/weirdly resolved things:

- What was up with her adopted brother Su Qi? There were frequent hints dropped throughout the story that he seemed strangely compassionate/considerate of her, he didn't seem like a bad guy at all, and there was the whole side plot of him literally being tied up and forced into marriage by the dad, but... nothing really came of any of that and it was barely addressed. So I guess despite all the setup, he really did turn out to be just an average good guy, with nothing deeper and no twists in his backstory besides the Shocking! Reveal! That his biological father is a different guy than everyone thought! That was also revealed very late in the story and very little came of it because its sole purpose was to face-slap the scum Su-family father!

- After like 90 chapters Su Mi finally meets up with her long-lost considered-dead twin brother, and much is made out of his refusal to abandon his grandma who adopted him, and the story seemed to be ramping up to him meeting his shocked-to-tears-of-joy biological mother only for the story to abruptly end. He shows up in the last chapter and it seems like he's still relatively cool/distant toward his biological family after 5 years, which maybe is actually more on the realistic side. But talk about a letdown. He also never developed beyond the cool, saintly, scholarly type, which was disappointing since I expected him to have more hidden emotions revealed and become less of a robot.

- Maybe it's because I was skimming more toward the end but I ended up unclear about Qin Yan and the emperor's backstory; I had to read user Leier's review in order to fully figure things out. All of that was tantalizingly hinted at throughout the story only for a sudden infodump to take place in the last several chapters where finding out made no difference to other characters—or me for that matter.

- Honestly, I was more invested in the emperor's awkward budding romance with his concubine than the "romance" of the CP, and because of all the rapid-fire plot points in the end, it suddenly rushed along and then got chopped off, basically concluding off screen by implication only.

- There are a bunch of other loose ends and unsatisfyingly resolved storylines but I'm getting annoyed recalling them so I'm going to stop here. Rest assured, there were quite a few.

ev3ntually, the plot revealed Qin Yan the ML was not an eunuch and he was the emperor's brother. For these matters, not so much background stories why his younger brother not QY act as emperor, and why QY disguised himself as an eunuch. And why their mother - concubine Lie [if were not mistaken] got so mad and disgusted by his youngest son/ the emperor

Qin Yan's mother Concubine Lian was forcibly taken by the previous emperor while she was pregnant with the current emperor. Her husband Ye Qing followed her into the palace by becoming a eunuch and eventually managed to climb to the top as Chief of Eunuch. Young Qin Yan was disguised as his father's student / adopted son (as prominent eunuchs like to have adopted sons), and rose to a Chief himself later. Unfortunately this father son duo was too late, Concubine Lian never recovered from her trauma and she became quite crazy. Her newborn baby can't have another identity other than a prince, otherwise it will be killed. And that was how the father son duo Ye Qing and Qin Yan stayed in the Palace to protect the prince who later became the emperor. It was not easy to survive especially as they don't seem to have any political background. One reason this young emperor could survive is because the old emperor has only one other son Prince Qi who was younger than the fake prince, the other reason is this emperor looks to be weak and seem to will die young (it is implied that he takes medicine to make him looks ill) so the prime minister 'allows' him to live while waiting for his nephew Prince Qi to grow up.

The previous emperor turns out to be the younger brother of the eunuch. In the end both brothers take their wives to lead a quite life in one corner of the kingdom, so why were they fighting? Wasn't Prince Qi also one of their enemy? So the fight wasn't for the throne?

Her brother-in-law had set his sights on marrying her as well as her sister from an early point in that relationship. To the point that he was spreading rumours about her to prevent her second engagement. He then convinces his wife (the MC's sister) to drug the MC and let him stay with her for some time so that they can claim her innocence was taken to force her to marry him. In reality, he gave his wife a different drug combination with the intention of raping the MC. The MC manages to escape into a nearby room which brings her to the ML's attention for the first time.

After all that, the scum-in-law still comes to the MC's family to propose marriage. Refusing it, the MC convinces her mother to let her try to become a Court Lady so that she doesn't have to marry this human piece of tr*sh. This is the second time she meets the ML and from there, she ends up married to the ML instead of a Court Lady.

He initially believes someone is trying to curry favour with him by sending the MC to him repeatedly but he has his men investigate her. That's when he chooses to marry her and becomes incredibly possessive of her. And it's when the misunderstandings really begin.

His attempts to put people next to the ML or the Emperor fail spectacularly but even that is dwarfed by the Prince's final decision to deal with this uncle. The Prince uses "another's knife" to deal with him as it goes.

The intimate moments between the ML and MC are a bit awkward as the MC really has no clue about that kind of thing. Plus there is the whole fact that the ML is a eunuch which leads to a lot of other issues. Outside that, there is the family drama of the MC's family which only has one good person (her mother) as her father only views her as a stepping stone to further wealth and the second concubine/side-wife is just... she's the real antagonist in this story in my opinion.

The father even went so far as to try and get her to adopt her half-sister's unborn child because the ML is a eunuch. Nevermind the fact that her father also married her "brother" off to someone without the brother's agreement.

The Concubine, on the other hand, orchestrated the mu*der of the MC's twin brother and then pretended that her own sister's brother was her child so that he could get adopted by the main wife to be the heir of the family.

Turns out the Twin survived and shows up later. He never fully reunites with the family though as his bio-father showed up and ruined it (by low key threatening the old woman who had raised the twin).