I have finished Jianghua's 君临天下. There are several things I like in the series, the actors who played Nian Gengrao 年羹尧, Longkeduo 隆科多 and Dai Duo 戴铎 are amazing. I like all the princes and Kangxi. The drama is building up consistently throughout the series, and I love it up to the point that Yongzheng sent 14th prince into house arrest and his death. It drops a little bit when Yongzheng is going crazy because his wife, Miaoxin, ran away. But that is fine, there are only 4 episodes left.
The centre point is of course Yongzheng, the first part of the series when he is fighting for the throne really breaks my heart. The second part of the series concentrates on how he ruled and defensed his right to rule. The first episode of the second part is the highlight of the whole series, how he got the throne from Kangxi by murdering his father. Jianghua is impeccable in it. With such determination and ruthlessness, he overcame all the obstacles that his father had always looked down and biased on him. In order to obtain the throne, he also broke through all the ethical high grounds he had set up for himself. He is descending into evil, but at the same time he is alleviating all the burdens he brought on himself. He told his staff that there is no right or wrong when fighting for the right to rule. At the last scene with Kangxi, he intent to kill his father but he also gave his father a choice to step down. Jianghua makes me feel that Yongzheng at this moment treated the throne as his business, very calm with it. He would not be too scared to do whatever it takes to get the throne, no matter how terrible it might be. But he would also be willing to let his father step down peacefully, as long as Kangxi would oblige. Historically, Yongzheng is a very suspicious person and infamously harsh with his ministers, but he still didn't kill his brothers. In the series, he didn't kill them until they formally revolted against him.
I wished that there are HD version of the whole series. Yongzheng Dynasty embroidered the image of Yongzheng by portraying him almost like a saint; while the other precedents demonized him. 君临天下 although locating right in the scope of romanticization, it gave the character of Yongzheng a more full-body taste.
When Jianghua played Yongzheng again after almost 10 years in TVB, his characterization is already under the influence of Yongzheng Dynasty.
完结
