The Story of Yanxi Palace
The Story of Yanxi Palace is that rare beast, a historical c-drama that puts women, their lives and their relationships with other women front and centre and expects you to be interested.
Apart from the Emperor, the love interest (who does double duty as the Empress’s little brother, thereby sparing us a third man) and a handful of palace eunuchs, the major characters are all female and they display intelligence, virtue, murderousness, charm, spite, medical knowledge, strategising skills, cowardice, recklessness, ambition, rectitude, hate and friendship in a wide array of differing combinations.
But Yanxi Palace offers a refreshing perspective not only on female characters but also on those other oppressed and overlooked figures of Fantasy Ancient China, the servants. Its main protagonist, Wei Yingluo, is an illiterate young woman from an entirely ordinary, non-noble clan, who enters the palace as a serving maid in order to find out who killed her sister and exact revenge on them. Since she is a servant, she mostly interacts with other servants, at least until she has worked her away up through the ranks, and even then, she still continues to have important relationships with them. This naturally results in a rather less rosy view of the virtue and wisdom of her ostensible superiors than Confucius would have approved, and this perspective is reinforced by the fact that Wei Yingluo is fundamentally a rebel.
Wei Yingluo's idea of submitting to authority
Like Mei Changsu, Yingluo has come to enforce justice where the authorities are obstructing it, but unlike Mei Changsu, she has a thoroughly jaundiced view not just of this one particular Emperor but of Emperors in general. Even kowtowing to her superiors goes against the grain; this is a young lady who understands that it’s the system that needs changing. This Emperor is a hell of a lot better than Xiao Xuan, in that he’s diligent and hard-working and hasn’t seized the opportunity to have his friends offed on trumped-up charges, but he still has people caned and executed for minor misdemeanours, he still regards servants as less than human, and he is still, in certain respects, a gigantic man-baby who throws tantrums (and objects) whenever things don’t go his way. More importantly, we see that the entire system is stacked against those lower down in the social hierarchy, who are considered less than human. The word of a servant girl counts for nothing against the word of a Prince of the first rank, even when everyone can plainly see who is telling the truth, and even once the Emperor has been forced to acknowledge that it was the Prince who was at fault, the punishment is ludicrously light. And Yingluo not only sees the unfairness of this, she voices it. Her criticism encompasses not only the distribution of power amongst the living but also the prioritising of the rulings of dead ancestors over the well-being of those currently alive. Her stroppiness and outspokenness only increase as she rises through the ranks, and just as I was starting to think there was no way a servant girl could have made herself so visible to the Emperor without being either killed or shagged by him (every woman who enters the palace belongs to the Emperor, right?) the show veered suddenly into obvious comedy, thus allowing her to get away with even more uppitiness (I shouldn’t have been surprised by this as the show is billed on Viki as a “romantic comedy”, but the first 20 episodes were so uncomic that I was, in fact, very surprised indeed).
Wei Yingluo being unimpressed by the Emperor's tantrum.
The female protagonist of The Story of Minglan, also grasps that there is such a thing as systematic oppression, but Minglan has learned from traumatic experience that you have to keep your head down and pretend to be harmless if you want to survive. Wei Yingluo, by contrast, is uninterested in survival. She has entered the palace on what she knows is a suicide mission and refuses to be turned aside from her goal. To even get to enter the palace, she first has to commit an act of massive sacrilege and then, with a shocking lack of filial piety, stomp all over the objections of her male relatives, who have no intention of attracting the wrath of the powerful by objecting to the death of a mere female relative. Yingluo’s chief loyalty is neither to the Emperor nor to the gods but to her sister (she will subsequently acquire other loyalties, but so far they have all been to women). And since she is so focused on her goal, she’s unconcerned with making friends or impressing men, and as a result is refreshingly free of the infantile girlish behaviour that Chinese society so prizes in women, especially young ones. While the maids and consorts simper and titter around her, Yingluo is stroppy, focused and unafraid to show dominance. She can turn on the girlishness to suit her own ends, but mostly she’s a steel knife in full flight towards itstarget, even if she doesn’t yet know what that target is. Unlike Minglan, the narrative doesn’t require her to be constantly masking her own abilities, nor does it require her to be constantly rescued by the love interest. I doubt if the show will go so far as to let her ever rescue him (c-drama masculinity is a truly fragile thing), but so far the one time she has been physically attacked, she has fought off her attacker herself. Indeed, one of the imperial guards marvels aloud how any woman could have been so unfeminine as to inflict such appalling injuries.
Wei Yingluo’s love and loyalty to her sister is echoed in the friendships and solidarity between the women of the harem, who are clearly a great deal closer to each other than they are to the Emperor. It may be a harem drama, but it is far from being nothing but bitchy women fighting to put one over each other. On the contrary, there are deep friendships and loyalties between the women. Take, for instance, the amazing Consort Chun, skilled medical practitioner and schemer extraordinaire, who differs from Consort Jing in being extremely morally ambiguous, and also in being so devoted to the Empress that the palace is rife with rumours that the two of them are having a lesbian affair - this in spite of the fact that Consort Chun is officially Too Frail For Sex and instead occupies what must be the most desirable position in the harem, namely being considered by the Emperor “almost his real sister”. He listens to her advice, relies on her to protect the Empress, and never once thinks about shagging her. I would love to know how she pulled that one off. *
Consort Chun realising a matter needs her urgent attention.
There are also, of course, evil consorts and concubines, chief among them the spectacularly villainous Noble Consort Gao, who was clearly born to play a Disney Evil Fairy (She would have made a magnificent Maleficent, but since she lives in Fantasy Ancient China, she has to content herself with wistfully performing Peking Opera in her spare time. Other hobbies include poisoning people and burying babies alive).
Noble Consort Gao rocking her fake nails.
Noble Consort Gao is overtly malevolent but not very bright, all the brains reside in the head of various lesser harem members who have made the choice to hitch their wagons to her star (not always a wise decision, as Noble Consort Gao has all the sense of loyalty of Boris Johnson). For those who have seen Winter Begonia, there are many familiar faces among the cast (I was particularly pleased that Xiao Lai gets a chance to show her range, but several other members of Shang Xirui’s opera ensemble are also employed about the palace).
In summary: very enjoyable so far. I think this may be the last of the truly classic historical c-dramas, so I’m not sure what I shall do with myself when it’s over, but as it’s 70 episodes long, I have plenty of time before I have to get too worried.
*It has to be said that Too Frail For Sex probably wouldn’t work on every Emperor, but this one, despite being young, has something of an aversion to sex. In spite of a harem of thousands, he has only 5 children, one of whom is dead, and an aversion to coquetry that verges on misogyny - after all, in a system in which a woman’s status and that of her family depends on bearing the Emperor a male heir, but in which women are not allowed to state openly that they fancy a bit of rumpy-pumpy, how else but by coquetry are they supposed to indicate interest? But this emperor dishes out punishment and criticism for any attempts to capture his interest or show him affection, seeing feminine wiles even where there are none, as is the case with wet blanket Consort Xian, who personally sews his socks, even though, as the Emperor scornfully observes, there is a whole hall full of seamstresses devoted to making him clothes (Consort Xian thankfully grows out of her wetness and extremely narrow-minded rectitude, although whether we will all live to regret this transformation currently remains to be seen).
Noble Consort Xian, not as wet as you might think.
Apart from the Emperor, the love interest (who does double duty as the Empress’s little brother, thereby sparing us a third man) and a handful of palace eunuchs, the major characters are all female and they display intelligence, virtue, murderousness, charm, spite, medical knowledge, strategising skills, cowardice, recklessness, ambition, rectitude, hate and friendship in a wide array of differing combinations.
But Yanxi Palace offers a refreshing perspective not only on female characters but also on those other oppressed and overlooked figures of Fantasy Ancient China, the servants. Its main protagonist, Wei Yingluo, is an illiterate young woman from an entirely ordinary, non-noble clan, who enters the palace as a serving maid in order to find out who killed her sister and exact revenge on them. Since she is a servant, she mostly interacts with other servants, at least until she has worked her away up through the ranks, and even then, she still continues to have important relationships with them. This naturally results in a rather less rosy view of the virtue and wisdom of her ostensible superiors than Confucius would have approved, and this perspective is reinforced by the fact that Wei Yingluo is fundamentally a rebel.
Wei Yingluo's idea of submitting to authority
Like Mei Changsu, Yingluo has come to enforce justice where the authorities are obstructing it, but unlike Mei Changsu, she has a thoroughly jaundiced view not just of this one particular Emperor but of Emperors in general. Even kowtowing to her superiors goes against the grain; this is a young lady who understands that it’s the system that needs changing. This Emperor is a hell of a lot better than Xiao Xuan, in that he’s diligent and hard-working and hasn’t seized the opportunity to have his friends offed on trumped-up charges, but he still has people caned and executed for minor misdemeanours, he still regards servants as less than human, and he is still, in certain respects, a gigantic man-baby who throws tantrums (and objects) whenever things don’t go his way. More importantly, we see that the entire system is stacked against those lower down in the social hierarchy, who are considered less than human. The word of a servant girl counts for nothing against the word of a Prince of the first rank, even when everyone can plainly see who is telling the truth, and even once the Emperor has been forced to acknowledge that it was the Prince who was at fault, the punishment is ludicrously light. And Yingluo not only sees the unfairness of this, she voices it. Her criticism encompasses not only the distribution of power amongst the living but also the prioritising of the rulings of dead ancestors over the well-being of those currently alive. Her stroppiness and outspokenness only increase as she rises through the ranks, and just as I was starting to think there was no way a servant girl could have made herself so visible to the Emperor without being either killed or shagged by him (every woman who enters the palace belongs to the Emperor, right?) the show veered suddenly into obvious comedy, thus allowing her to get away with even more uppitiness (I shouldn’t have been surprised by this as the show is billed on Viki as a “romantic comedy”, but the first 20 episodes were so uncomic that I was, in fact, very surprised indeed).
Wei Yingluo being unimpressed by the Emperor's tantrum.
The female protagonist of The Story of Minglan, also grasps that there is such a thing as systematic oppression, but Minglan has learned from traumatic experience that you have to keep your head down and pretend to be harmless if you want to survive. Wei Yingluo, by contrast, is uninterested in survival. She has entered the palace on what she knows is a suicide mission and refuses to be turned aside from her goal. To even get to enter the palace, she first has to commit an act of massive sacrilege and then, with a shocking lack of filial piety, stomp all over the objections of her male relatives, who have no intention of attracting the wrath of the powerful by objecting to the death of a mere female relative. Yingluo’s chief loyalty is neither to the Emperor nor to the gods but to her sister (she will subsequently acquire other loyalties, but so far they have all been to women). And since she is so focused on her goal, she’s unconcerned with making friends or impressing men, and as a result is refreshingly free of the infantile girlish behaviour that Chinese society so prizes in women, especially young ones. While the maids and consorts simper and titter around her, Yingluo is stroppy, focused and unafraid to show dominance. She can turn on the girlishness to suit her own ends, but mostly she’s a steel knife in full flight towards itstarget, even if she doesn’t yet know what that target is. Unlike Minglan, the narrative doesn’t require her to be constantly masking her own abilities, nor does it require her to be constantly rescued by the love interest. I doubt if the show will go so far as to let her ever rescue him (c-drama masculinity is a truly fragile thing), but so far the one time she has been physically attacked, she has fought off her attacker herself. Indeed, one of the imperial guards marvels aloud how any woman could have been so unfeminine as to inflict such appalling injuries.
Wei Yingluo’s love and loyalty to her sister is echoed in the friendships and solidarity between the women of the harem, who are clearly a great deal closer to each other than they are to the Emperor. It may be a harem drama, but it is far from being nothing but bitchy women fighting to put one over each other. On the contrary, there are deep friendships and loyalties between the women. Take, for instance, the amazing Consort Chun, skilled medical practitioner and schemer extraordinaire, who differs from Consort Jing in being extremely morally ambiguous, and also in being so devoted to the Empress that the palace is rife with rumours that the two of them are having a lesbian affair - this in spite of the fact that Consort Chun is officially Too Frail For Sex and instead occupies what must be the most desirable position in the harem, namely being considered by the Emperor “almost his real sister”. He listens to her advice, relies on her to protect the Empress, and never once thinks about shagging her. I would love to know how she pulled that one off. *
Consort Chun realising a matter needs her urgent attention.
There are also, of course, evil consorts and concubines, chief among them the spectacularly villainous Noble Consort Gao, who was clearly born to play a Disney Evil Fairy (She would have made a magnificent Maleficent, but since she lives in Fantasy Ancient China, she has to content herself with wistfully performing Peking Opera in her spare time. Other hobbies include poisoning people and burying babies alive).
Noble Consort Gao rocking her fake nails.
Noble Consort Gao is overtly malevolent but not very bright, all the brains reside in the head of various lesser harem members who have made the choice to hitch their wagons to her star (not always a wise decision, as Noble Consort Gao has all the sense of loyalty of Boris Johnson). For those who have seen Winter Begonia, there are many familiar faces among the cast (I was particularly pleased that Xiao Lai gets a chance to show her range, but several other members of Shang Xirui’s opera ensemble are also employed about the palace).
In summary: very enjoyable so far. I think this may be the last of the truly classic historical c-dramas, so I’m not sure what I shall do with myself when it’s over, but as it’s 70 episodes long, I have plenty of time before I have to get too worried.
*It has to be said that Too Frail For Sex probably wouldn’t work on every Emperor, but this one, despite being young, has something of an aversion to sex. In spite of a harem of thousands, he has only 5 children, one of whom is dead, and an aversion to coquetry that verges on misogyny - after all, in a system in which a woman’s status and that of her family depends on bearing the Emperor a male heir, but in which women are not allowed to state openly that they fancy a bit of rumpy-pumpy, how else but by coquetry are they supposed to indicate interest? But this emperor dishes out punishment and criticism for any attempts to capture his interest or show him affection, seeing feminine wiles even where there are none, as is the case with wet blanket Consort Xian, who personally sews his socks, even though, as the Emperor scornfully observes, there is a whole hall full of seamstresses devoted to making him clothes (Consort Xian thankfully grows out of her wetness and extremely narrow-minded rectitude, although whether we will all live to regret this transformation currently remains to be seen).
Noble Consort Xian, not as wet as you might think.