E-925
A Heavy Crown Leaves You Lonely
*The Rise of Phoenixes* would have been decent if it wasn’t 70 episodes long! The show was adapted from a novel called 凰权, literally Phoenix Power or Royal Authority. And since the phoenix is feminine while the dragon is male, despite not having read the novel, I’d wager that the author’s intent was to make the female lead, Feng Zhi Wei, the story’s protagonist. I feel that a story told solely from her perspective would have been superior to what we got.
As things stand, the show tells multiple stories within the compressed medium of 70 roughly 40-minute episodes:
1. The Founding Emperor of the Tiansheng Dynasty’s coup and his machinations to maintain his autocracy against attempts by his co-conspirators to keep him in check, their heads attached and their families in power.
1. The love story between the emperor and a foreign tribeswoman.
2. The Sixth Prince, Ning Yi, and his bid for power to avenge the death of his mother — the aforementioned foreigner.
1. The love story between Ning Yi and Feng Zhiwei.
2. A palace power struggle between the princes.
3. The complicated relationship between father and son juxtaposed against their rivalry as aging autocrat and possible replacement.'
3. Feng Zhiwei’s attempt to make her way as a competent woman in a feudal society where the odds are stacked against her.
1. Her relationships with her harem of concubros.
4. The secret conspiracy among elements of the previous dynasty to destroy the Tiangsheng regime.
5. Ancillary plotlines like Tiansheng’s dealings with neighbours, the restoration of order in the aftermath of a bloody coup, the everyday difficulties of staffing a bureaucracy in the mediaeval age etc.
The plotlines outlined above mostly work as stand-alone arcs. However, attempts to combine them into a coherent storyline floundered. In the same way, this show’s biggest weakness was its inability to realise that it could only work with one lead. The result is that while its somewhat controversial ending makes some sense, the path it took to get there was frustrating and illogical.
In sum, this was an otherwise excellent production let down by terrible writing, direction and production. The fish rots from the head.
As things stand, the show tells multiple stories within the compressed medium of 70 roughly 40-minute episodes:
1. The Founding Emperor of the Tiansheng Dynasty’s coup and his machinations to maintain his autocracy against attempts by his co-conspirators to keep him in check, their heads attached and their families in power.
1. The love story between the emperor and a foreign tribeswoman.
2. The Sixth Prince, Ning Yi, and his bid for power to avenge the death of his mother — the aforementioned foreigner.
1. The love story between Ning Yi and Feng Zhiwei.
2. A palace power struggle between the princes.
3. The complicated relationship between father and son juxtaposed against their rivalry as aging autocrat and possible replacement.'
3. Feng Zhiwei’s attempt to make her way as a competent woman in a feudal society where the odds are stacked against her.
1. Her relationships with her harem of concubros.
4. The secret conspiracy among elements of the previous dynasty to destroy the Tiangsheng regime.
5. Ancillary plotlines like Tiansheng’s dealings with neighbours, the restoration of order in the aftermath of a bloody coup, the everyday difficulties of staffing a bureaucracy in the mediaeval age etc.
The plotlines outlined above mostly work as stand-alone arcs. However, attempts to combine them into a coherent storyline floundered. In the same way, this show’s biggest weakness was its inability to realise that it could only work with one lead. The result is that while its somewhat controversial ending makes some sense, the path it took to get there was frustrating and illogical.
In sum, this was an otherwise excellent production let down by terrible writing, direction and production. The fish rots from the head.
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