War and Beauty is an excellent show! No wonder it has so many Hong Kong viewers glued to the tv. Heard about this show months back but couldn't lay my hands on the vcds because i am not willing to fork out 90 bucks just to buy the set of vcds. Luckily, my sis managed to borrow from her friend the set of vcds she bought from China. The quality wasn't too good but it was still watchable overall.

Probably, I shall just summarise the content. We have a couple of pretty girls trying to compete with each other for the emperor's attention. In the process, they hatched plans to eliminate their competitors. The plots are really convuluted: eg Female A switched the medicine of B so as to prolong her illness to prevent her from getting near the emperor (that was when they were trying to get near the emperor while they were still new "recruits") B, knowing that A doesn't have good intentions, continued to play along by taking some other food which she is allergic to but not life threatening. She was waiting for someone to catch A in action...

Subplots within plots. ANd the Chinese used is so beautiful... Makes me want to learn Chinese all over again... The ending was sad? realistic? bad? - I can't really judge... The very bad guy did not die (ok to be fair, there is not really a single good person in the show but towards the end, u pity those characters because some were forced to commit these acts due to the circumstances at that point in time) and most of the good guys died... I 'm Upset after watching the finale but Maybe that's life... The good doesn't always prevail bad.