The last episode ended with our male lead, Li Ge, being summoned to the palace to discuss his engagement with his father. At first, the king pretends to be oblivious about what went down that afternoon, but they eventually talk about it. 

Our male lead then tells his father that since he has already obeyed the command to marry one of the Chancellor’s daughters, he should at least have a say in which daughter he will marry.

What struck me in this scene was the balance of power between our male lead and the king. If you’ve watched enough historical Chinese dramas, you know that while parents love their children and vice versa, there’s always this little tug-of-war, especially when it comes to choosing alliances. It was refreshing to see that our male lead had equal footing with his father.

This is further proven when the king, frustrated with the whole engagement situation, scatters the game they were playing and tries to command our male lead to marry the female lead’s stepsister—or at least take her in as a concubine if he doesn’t like her. However, our male lead resolves this by saying that he will marry the woman he has already chosen because he has feelings for her.

The king retaliates by ordering that our male lead be locked up and starved for a few days until he changes his mind. But in true fashion, our male lead decides to walk on his own two feet to prison rather than be dragged there embarrassingly.

A conversation between our male lead’s guard and his eunuch confirms that the female lead had indeed been poisoned that long night ago because of our male lead, and the only reason he is pushing forward with the marriage is to investigate how she survived the poisoning and how she knows martial arts.

Later on, the king is still ranting about our male lead’s stubbornness, but this time his audience is the second prince’s mother, who takes the opportunity to promote her son. She encourages the king to favor her son more and even tries to plant negative thoughts in the king’s ear by comparing their military achievements.

The king tells her to calm down, and they finally make an agreement that she will be the one in charge of tearing apart our female lead and our male lead. In her own words, she is comfortable being the villain as long as it makes the king happy.

I’m very curious about how this will play out. In most dramas I’ve watched, the king usually refrains from using his concubines or wives as tools to achieve his goals—unless they’re self-serving goals. But in this case, he’s basically giving a weapon to his concubine or wife and telling her to do whatever she wants. 

Needless to say, this seems like something that will backfire hard. When it does, I want to see what happens because, if you remember, this is the lady who poisoned the fourth prince, and the king isn’t aware of that. I want to know what happens when he finds out.

Back at the prince’s palace, our female lead, Zi Qing, receives a summons from the queen, which I believe is to start putting the king and queen’s plan in motion. That disrespectful maid from earlier is happy about this because, even though she knows that the queen and the fourth prince have never gotten along, she can tell that this is a move that will definitely chase away the female lead.

As expected, when the female lead arrives at the palace, the queen is hosting a banquet with other noble ladies, and it’s clear that the plan is to embarrass her. They don’t even place a seat for her, and they try to bully her into kneeling to greet the queen.

On the surface, it seems that everyone’s main worry is her infamous reputation, but it’s clear that the queen is using this shallow reason to cover up the fact that she is desperately trying to prevent the fourth prince from forming strong alliances in the court.

Desperate is putting it lightly because the queen actually attempts to poison her in front of everyone. This poison activates after seven days, and our female lead drinks it because she wants to stick it to the queen. And seven days from now is actually the day of the formal engagement.

The moment she’s safely back in her carriage, she expels the poison, which means she’s safe. But back at the palace, the queen is celebrating with the king, thinking they have successfully poisoned the female lead and that she should be dead in seven days.

Their plan is to keep the fourth prince in prison until the sixth day because if he is released the next day, he could find out that the female lead was poisoned. But if he’s released on the sixth day, he will have no choice but to accept his fate.

After expelling the poison, that rude maid who escorted her to the palace is shocked by everything, and she basically swears allegiance to our female lead after apologizing for her earlier rudeness. She even supplies her with some information about the dagger.

The next day, our female lead receives two visitors: the wife of the second prince (the one who poisoned the fourth prince) and a young girl favored by the queen who loves the fourth prince. The poisoning is obviously a collective effort because our female lead pretends to be ill, and when she is carried in by her maids, the two girls start whispering to themselves about how happy they are that the poison is working.

The whole drama is effective because these two ladies, who I’m sure have come to act as the queen’s spies, leave certain that our female lead is about to die of tuberculosis. Meanwhile, our female lead is overjoyed because her plan worked perfectly.

For the first time in this episode, the bounty hunters appear, and we learn that they have been sent by the king of a neighboring country to find a missing islander. Apparently, the islanders being sought are immune to poison, which would explain why she was able to survive the deadly poison she took instead of the fourth prince.

Just as I mentioned in the previous episode recap, our once docile, humble, and quiet female lead must have been up to something all along and may have had her own secret plan in the background, so there’s still a lot to unravel.

Days later, the fourth prince makes an appearance before the king to once again plead for his marriage to be decreed. The king finally relents and tells him that he will order the marriage decree to be sent the next day and that the fourth prince can finally go home.

This is all a ploy because, if you remember, the king is the one who sanctioned the poisoning of the female lead. It’s a simple case of wanting to have his cake and eat it too—on one hand, he wants to preserve his relationship with his son by not refusing something he is earnestly begging for, and on the other, he’s going ahead with his own plans by mandating the murder of the female lead.

When our male lead leaves the prison, he’s greeted by his eunuch and his personal guard, who inform him that the female lead had been invited to the palace to have drinks with the queen and that shortly after, she contracted tuberculosis. He immediately starts making his way to her.

If you ask me, curiosity is one hell of a reason to start a marriage that will absolutely determine your political career and even cause fractures in your marriage. But this is a drama, so I can’t really judge whatever is happening.

That said, our male lead is still determined to take the female lead as his wife, and our female lead, on her part, has resolved not to be bullied by anybody, especially since she can see through all their tricks and isn’t patient enough to keep quiet.

The story is progressing steadily, and everything is good so far. But then again, this is just the third episode, and there’s still a lot of ground to cover because these two will eventually have to fall in love, and there’s the whole drama with his father and brother. I’m positive that at some point, he’s going to go to war.

Let me know in the comment section if you’re currently watching this drama or if there’s something else you’re enjoying right now that you’d like me to recap.

If you’d like to see a list of all the dramas I’m recapping, you can check it out here. There are also some tidbits about new releases and more.