REVIEW: The Rise of Phoenixes [C-drama]
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 3 out of 5 stars
Synopsis
Ning Yi is the calculating, ambitious sixth prince of the ruling kingdom but has learned to hide his true personality behind a carefree façade after corrupt officials charge his mother with high treason. Over the course of the next decade, Ning Yi establishes a secret information network and waits for the perfect opportunity to strike down his enemies and overturn the charges against his mother. He befriends Feng Zhi Wei, who remains loyal to the reigning emperor until she is manipulated into thinking that the current kingdom was built upon the corpses of her loved ones. That leads her to take revenge against her enemies—including her lover, Ning Yi.
Rambling
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
While everyone is up in arms about Game of Thrones, I’ve been sitting here calmly watching the real “Game of Thrones,” if ya know what I mean. ::sigh:: What can I say about this show? It’s a long watch at 70 episodes, and for the first 25 episodes, I was sure that I wasn’t going to finish. I had my doubts if the plot would pick up enough for me to stick with it, but after falling asleep (literally) on so many of the beginning episodes, the plot finally accelerated and I tore through the rest easily.
The costumes were immaculate, and the set designs were stunning. Everything was gilded and beautiful. The cinematography was breathtaking. The wigs! How could I forget about the highest quality wigs I’ve seen to date in a historical fiction C-drama. I couldn’t tell if anyone was wearing wigs, and that’s a good problem to have!
Many of these dramas have a fantasy element, and this one was very minor. Ninyi’s mother was a sorceress from a certain tribe, and she “cursed” her son and his father to be bonded. If one gets sick, gets poisoned, or suffers physically, the other will have the same symptoms and be ill as well. Very genius way of ensuring your child’s safety if you’re not around to protect him.
To be honest, I perked up when Ning Yi goes to save Wei Zhi, who is being held against her will by the stupid-as-fuck Princess Shaoning. He cuts her restraints, and she knocks him to the ground fearing the explosives on the roof. They stay quiet in the darkness while Shaoning tries to see around the room. Them in this strange embrace, him on top of her, him getting awfully close to her face, him caressing her face… Yeah, I was waiting for some shit like that!
Although there is plenty of flirting between the two, my favorite episodes started up when Ning Yi tries to save Zhi Wei after her cover was blown. Him and her going to Minhai to weed out the Chang family and their influence. Them surviving the assassins on the way to Minhai and sleeping together in the cave. It was super sweet when she saves the bunny he caught for dinner, and he chides her, “How will you stay warm tonight if you let the rabbit go?” And she goes, “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” The Minhai episodes were great because we finally see them working together as a team (instead of him puppeteering from behind the scenes and her bailing him out), letting themselves fall deeper for each other instead of fighting it the whole way. Their falling out, which didn’t happen overnight, tugged at the heartstrings so bad—because despite how much they might have come to despise each other, they can’t get over or ignore their love.
Now, I had the most difficult time understanding why Ning Yi was punished as an 8-year-old child and sent to prison. And what’s this I hear about the “remnant of Dacheng” and Bloody Pagoda? So here’s what I’ve come to understand: Ning Yi’s father staged a coup to overthrow the previous regime called Dacheng. During the uprising, all his sons pitched in, even 8-year-old Ning Yi, who cornered Gu Yan (a member of Bloody Pagoda) and forced him to betray his own brother, who was apparently guarding the newest infant prince of Dacheng. Bloody Pagoda = secret society (complete with a contingent of ninjas) dedicated to protecting and restoring the former dynasty, Dacheng. And the “remnant of Dacheng” just means any person or child who has a claim to the throne, the royals who lost their kingdom to Ning Yi’s dad.
Ning Yi’s brother—the eventual Crown Prince of Tiansheng, a.k.a. the new empire—became impatient and set off some explosives, which caused Gu Yan’s brother and the baby to go tumbling over a cliff to their deaths and Ning Yi to get injured and face the wrath of his father, the new king, for failing to do the job of killing off the remnant of the old regime.
Does it seem twisty? There’s more where that came from:
Plot Twists (in order)
(1) The king falls gravely ill… or is he?
Papa Sheng passes out at his eventful birthday celebration after Ning Yi corners Lady Wang, uses Zhi Wei to ghostly play the zither (his mother’s signature instrument), and she confesses to planting evidence in Consort Yan’s room to frame her for adultery and/or colluding with a former lover. Prince of Yan (Ning Sheng) takes this opportunity to switch royal edicts out of the golden box. (The entire plotline about whose name was listed in the box had me thinking, “WHAT’S IN THE BOX??” the whole time. Se7en reference, anyone?) But the king isn’t dying, in fact he isn’t even sick, and Ning Sheng gets caught red-handed.
(2) Ning Qi corners Zhi Wei / Ning Qi is actually evil.
The smile that spreads across his face as he asks the prostitute to tell him more about the woman that looks identical to Wei Zhi… Sinister. Following that, he picks at the scab that is her male identity. In helping Princess Shaoning try to marry Wei Zhi, he unobtrusively forces Zhi Wei to give up the gun. She confesses that she is a woman to the king, and the jig is up.
(3) A son kills the father.
Lord of Minhai’s second-born son kills him before Ning Yi ever has a chance to square up with the dude. I thought they’d have a bigger showdown instead of the scheming, backstabbing son knocking him upside the head. I should have guessed that something would happen because the Lord of Minhai lost his evil intentions once his sister died.
(4) Ning Qi discovers Zhi Wei’s connection to Dacheng.
Ning Qi has the secret of Zhi Wei’s royal ancestry seemingly fall in his lap. It’s actually an intricate coincidence. If the king hadn’t semi-pardoned the Chang family henchman and demoted him to prison warden, he would have never found out that the Zhi Wei’s brother was busted out of jail, and no one would have gone down the rabbit hole. Suspicions were raised when the idiot brother wagered and lost what he thought was simply his mother’s expensive trinket but turned out to be a command token from the previous regime. He dug his own grave.
(5) The death of Zhi Wei’s mother and brother.
Feng Zhi Wei skips town after getting an alarming letter from her mother. She reaches the capital before Ning Yi, and begs the king to spare her mother and brother. The king cuts her a cruel deal: drink poison wine and he’ll spare her family. The tense scene is intercut by her brother grabbing the wine and downing it. Zhi Wei and her mother agonize over his quick death—I love how he says to them “Don’t keep things from me anymore”—but then her mother keels over, too, having already taken poison a few days earlier, prior to their arrest. I thought the scene of Feng Zhi Wei screaming “Get the imperial doctor!” and wailing while everyone else looks on sort of stunned was heartbreaking. The king just puts his head in his hands and calmly says to summon the imperial doctor. He can’t even deny her that. It’s right around here when Zhi Wei finds out her mother was really her foster mother.
(6) Feng Zhi Wei marries Helian Zheng.
After Zhi Wei is officially revealed to be a princess of Dacheng and her family dies, she very emotionally says goodbye to Ning Yi, the love of her life, siting a promise she made to her mother in which she swore never to marry Ning Yi or else her mother’s soul would never reincarnate. Ouch. It’s impossible to disobey the wishes of the deceased, which is why bad things always happen to those who do. (Also, it’s a rule in TV and movies.) All that talk about them getting married after they finish up their dangerous business in Minhai was for naught. In a weirdo twist, Helian seeks backup from the king of Tiansheng to quell political strife in his own country Jinshi. Helian’s father the king died under suspicious conditions. Feng Zhi Wei is behind a divider, sending secret notes to the king throughout the conversation with Helian. Why or how she got there is not explained, but she offers herself as a bride to Helian, ensuring that marital ties would grant both parties what they wanted.
(7) Ning Yi’s mom is still alive.
Yeah, I didn’t see this one coming at all. Ning Yi is obsessed with his mother, a character flaw I hated. He missed her so much he craved any little connection to her he could find, even his old, blind wet nurse/nanny. He insisted on reinvestigating the circumstances around her death. His father absolutely won’t allow it, and we eventually see a flashback of the king strangling his consort to death with the wooden part of a bow (as in bow and arrow). He apparently didn’t kill her but kept her alive and imprisoned in a room with no windows (and no doors… Haunted Mansion, anyone?). Personally, I think it was a pride thing. He doted on her while she didn’t love him at all, and that killed him inside. When she was (falsely) accused, he was angry at her indignant attitude and couldn’t bear to kill her out of spite. If he couldn’t have her, then no one else will.
(8) Helian Zheng becomes a major player.
Huh? I thought this character would only last a few episodes. This arrogant, shabby prince surely wouldn’t get to marry our main girl Zhi Wei, right? I mean, after all, she put him in his place, outsmarted him, and he freaking ate a bag of salt for crying out loud! Nope, not even the fact that he supposedly has 10 wives and expects Zhi Wei to massage his feet could stop this character from growing into a more mature companion for Zhi Wei. He desperately wanted her to reciprocate his feelings and reluctantly takes her to Jinshi to be his queen knowing full well that she loves Ning Yi. They never have sex—that is, consummate the marriage. He voluntarily gives her a divorce when she wants to return to Tiansheng to investigate Master Zhong’s death (at the hands of Ning Yi, she’s told), but then shows up in Tiansheng later begging her to come back and return the divorce papers. He gets utterly betrayed when he takes manipulative bad advice, believing he can have Zhi Wei if he makes her hate Ning Yi.
(9) Ning Yi’s mom is killed / Ning Qi’s mom is killed.
This part was a bit convoluted as to who kidnapped who and who actually killed who, but I just know that I didn’t expect the mommas to die. I think the fact that Ning Yi lost his mom again just after reuniting with her, the culmination of all the years of separation and yearning, was devastating. I was devastated for him.
(10) Bloody Pagoda is still up and running, headed up by Zhi Wei’s biological brother.
This one came out of nowhere, I’ll tell ya. With a massive facial scar and a busted leg, this crippled dude isn’t just working in an underground slave market; he’s running Bloody Pagoda and housing dozens of Dacheng subjects within the compound. The twist that he’s even introduced at all as the 4th prince of Dacheng, and therefore another “remnant of Dacheng,” is baffling, especially so late in the show. Now, at first I thought he was the baby that went over the cliff, but he was too old and he mentioned the moment he found out he was going to have a little sister. So which baby died in the fall? Anyway, along with his lover-turned-spy-royal-consort, he aligns himself with Ning Qi and causes numerous misunderstandings within the royal court and between Ning Yi and Zhi Wei. He ultimately inceptions the idea in Zhi Wei’s head that Ning Yi wants to wipe out all of Dacheng’s citizens, innocent or not.
(11) King isn’t dead.
Ning Qi stages a coup that sees Ning Yi get locked in a room with his plastered dad fighting off at least a dozen assassins. One single sword blow to the chest looks like the king will breathe his last. And that’s what the show has you believe. With his father’s final words, Ning Yi is crowned king. It isn’t until the very last episode that it’s revealed he’s alive, having survived the epic stabbing.
(12) They don’t end up together.
I’m not sure this is a twist so much as what I desperately wanted to happen didn’t happen. They started out on awkward footing, were frenemies for so long, harbored feelings for each other, were forcefully kept apart by nefarious circumstances, and when Ning Yi finally was the king, she let it go, couldn’t give in and just be his wife. Too much shit went down, too many lives were lost. I don’t think they could ever bounce back after Ning Yi’s brutal father caused her foster mother and brother’s deaths. I sort of loved how she committed suicide, though? I know that sounds terrible, but she played their song on the flute at the top of the mountain, which echoed through the valley and he heard the sad tune and just knew—knew she’d lied and wasn’t going to fulfill her promise to marry him. With a smile on her face and tears in her eyes, she falls backward off the cliff where (I believe) the infant “remnant of Dacheng” was supposed to have originally fallen to his death.
*Unanswered Questions: Was Papa Sheng blood-related to the Dacheng royals? They say at some point that he was originally Lord of Minhai when he revolted and became the king. Did he have to kill family to do that? What does the title of the show mean?
Challenging Gender Norms
Feng Zhi Wei cross-dresses as man, attends basically Harvard, becomes the emperor’s Ultimate Scholar through her own intellect and talent, influences court politics, helps Ning Yi root out evil in the court, inadvertently seduces Princess Shaoning, and then becomes the first female Royal Inspector (what I can only assume is a high-level detective) before marrying Helian and ruling for a time as Jinshi’s queen. Furthermore, whenever she’s in trouble, which is often, she never asks for help or protection from the men around her, let alone Ning Yi. I’m no expert on traditional Chinese values and Confucianism, but that’s not part of the program for women. Women were (and, to a certain extent, are) expected to be subservient to men, modest, humble, quiet, and not participate in politics. Zhi Wei’s independence and intellect fly in the face of every other depiction of historical Chinese culture and society that I’ve seen, and it’s a beautiful thing.
Nanyi, Zhi Wei's close bodyguard, also exhibited some gender fluidity. He was beautiful like a woman, with soft features and a quiet persona. Very unlike the other masculine characters. At one point, he even dresses as a woman, claiming he didn't care how he dressed as long as it was comfortable.
Ning Yi, on the other hand, starts the show as a tailor, a silk weaver, a job considered decidedly feminine, and other male characters comment on how dishonorable and low-class he is because of it. In falling in love and working alongside Zhi Wei, he eventually treats her as an equal, respecting her decisions and never forcing her into anything.
I found the ending upsetting—obviously because I wanted our two lovers to live happily ever after—but if Feng Zhi Wei married Ning Yi, the relationship would be lopsided again. She would lose all her freedom. I would love to know exactly what she meant when she raised her voice on the bridge and said, “Have you ever asked me what I wanted?” Ning Yi already looked defeated. As an emperor, he already wanted her to acquiesce and marry him. Multiple times she mentioned how the world is wide, how she wanted to see it all, experience the world freely. She would be forever trapped in the palace if she did marry him. And what about what the old bag told her? That if she became queen she and Ning Yi would follow the same trajectory as him and Ning Yi’s mother. They’d end up hating each other. I don’t think the circumstances are exactly the same—the former king did steal Ning Yi’s mother and force her to be his consort—while Ning Yi is patiently waiting for Zhi Wei to make a choice and hopefully say yes. But it is true that Zhi Wei’s lineage would become a stumbling block for Ning Yi and his reign.
What did Zhi Wei want in the end? I think she wanted freedom. She wanted their love to be pure, not stained by the blood of countless people. I don’t think she could have lived with herself if she moved forward with the marriage; she was too emotionally battered. And although her death negated the sacrifice of so many, she chose the path of least resistance.
In the end, I think of their one kiss under the floodwaters in Dayue. It was so poetic it reminded me of the Romeo + Juliet pool kiss underwater. These starcrossed lovers…
“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head
…
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
