Beyond the Realms of Conscience 《宫心计》

2009 TVB 台庆剧 Production but only showing on Channel U in late 2013. A drama set in the Tang Dynasty that involved with SO MANY CAST!!!

I have to give it up to the production team to be able to include so many little details and such an interesting storyline that incorporate so many actors/actresses. So many attention has been given into their styling, hair, clothes, accessories to make it as realistic as possible.

I always have a liking towards periodic drama that is set in the palace and see 皇宫里面的女人们有多溅，多恐怖. The story hooked me!

There are a lot of sub-plots but as the drama poster suggest, the main plot mainly revolves with the 6 characters. As depicted in the below diagram (The head shots of the 6 characters are slightly bigger than the rest)

Storyline (in my own words):

The story started when little Jinling & little Sanhao were kids. Little Jinling is a young maid in Little Sanhao's household. They are both close as sisters. Sanhao's mom became a palace maid of the Embroidery Department and the 2 girls became little palace maids under the wings of Cui Yun (Head of Embroidery Dept) & Xuexia (Head of Accessories/Jewellery Dept).

The 2 depts together with the Furniture Dept & the Food Dept serve everyone in the 后宫 which is under the control of Empress Dowager. Apparently, the Head of Dept are kind of jealous of one another as they compete to win favours of the Empress Dowager etc

Still in the early stage, Empress Dowager Guo is known to be ruthless & unforgiving & always regards Empress Zheng & her son Li Yi as a threat to her son, Emperor Xuan Zong. Empress Dowager Guo was also the cause of Little Sanhao's mom death. Little Li Yi first met little Sanhao when she was grieving after her mom's death.

One day, little Li Yi fell off a tree and Empress Zheng decide to take the opportunity to take her son & leave the palace by claiming that little Li Yi's brain was damaged and his IQ was left as a 6 year-old. Empress Zheng & Li Yi was then sent away to a monastery. Before he was sent away, little Sanhao has given him sweet lotus candy to comfort him during his journey and he thus develop affection for her.

After 10 years, Yao Jinling (Tavia Yeung) & Liu Sanhao (Charmaine Sheh) grew up to be talented clothes maker & accessories/jewellery maker. Sanhao is the kind & forgiving one and Jinling is the type who cannot take unfairness or injustice happening around in the palace & therefore became a little calculative & vengeful.

By chance, Sanhao met Gao Xianyang (Kevin Cheng) (a retired General's son) and they both developed mutual feelings for each other after a few incidents. Meanwhile, Prince Li Yi (Moses Chan) had also returned back to the palace with Empress Zheng. Sanhao then realised Li Yi isn't a dimwit at all, he just pretended to be in order to survive from the clutches of Empress Dowager Guo.
Li Yi still bears crush on Sanhao

Empress Dowager Guo & her son, the incompetent Emperor Xuan Zong attracted a lot of enemies - one of them is General Ma who is planning on a revolt to become king. While Empress Dowager Guo had sent assassins to finish off Li Yi & Empress Zheng, Sanhao & Xianyang to rescue the mother & son. As General Ma couldn't officially becoming king, he poisoned Emperor Xuan Zong and decided to manipulate Li Yi as the new emperor. He finally revealed his intelligence in governing the country and promoted Xianyang as Imperial Bodyguard.

(the rest are from Wikipedia)
Sanhao later became the Head of Accessories/Jewellery Dept. Even though the Emperor has deep feelings for Sanhao and wants to have her as his concubine, he decides to bury his feeling for her when he discovers that Xianyang & Sanhao are deeply in love and that they were planning to leave the palace but stayed to help the Emperor.

Head of Dept, Sanhao & Concubine Li still as good friends despite disparity in status.
Sanhao & Jinling continue to enjoy a very close friendship, treating each other as sisters and this provokes jealousy among other palace girl servants. Time and time again some of them will try to get both of them into trouble. However, Sanhao's honesty and kind attitude endears many powerful people in the palace and they always come to her aid. Whereas, Jinling uses her cunning mind to get rid of her enemies. 

As time passed, Jinling realised in order to protect herself from the bullying and to be able to survive in the palace she has to be someone who is powerful and respected. Therefore, she slowly works on a scheme to gain favour of the Empress Dowager Zheng, Li Yi's mother. She was eventually chosen as one of his concubines. From there she works on a bigger scheme to get rid of all her competitors, which eventually includes Sanhao.

Verdict: TVB 台庆剧 Yay!
I really paid attention to each episode as the storyline leaves a lot of mysteries to be uncovered and I am glad that every detail has been explained which leave audience satisfied. What started out as something innocent could end up being a life & death situation.

The most outstanding performance throughout the entire show would have to be Yao Jinling to watch her slowly turned from good to downright ruthless to almost hysterical and it's no wonder at the last episode, she totally became mentally unstable. But we all know she did all that because she merely wanted to defend for herself and plot revenge to get back at those who bullied her or tried to bring her down.

The loveline wasn't that interesting as compared to all the scheming happening in the palace. It was quite cheesy but not detestable. Sanhao's character seemed too-good-to-be-true but her presence is able to show the contrast to Jinling's character. Some of the subplots happening to the two main Departments, who are long-time rivals, are quite touching. Those scenes were, in my opinion, better than the lovelines :P

I like the pace & the climax & other unexpected plots. It kept me on the edge of my seat. Usually huge TVB production don't disappoint so if you'd enjoyed other TVB 台庆剧, you will enjoy this as well :)