The story takes place during the chaotic times of Northern Wei, where innocent citizens are often kidnapped and turned into slaves. Slave girl, Chu Qiao is thrown into a forest along with other slaves and becomes the next hunting target for the rich lords. She is saved by the Prince of Northern Yan, Yan Xun and Yuwen Yue. Afterwards, she is brought into the Yuwen Manor and witnesses their bloody power struggle. Seeing this, she swears to take her younger sisters and flee from the situation. However, she catches the attention of Yuwen Yue and undergoes strict training while building a sense of companionship with Yan Xun. Along the way, Chu Qiao also encounters the cheerful Prince Yuan Song, the unruly Prince of Liang, Xiao Ce, and a spy princess named Xiao Yu. Unfortunately, the schemes of the nobles in Western Wei cause Yan Xun’s family to be slaughtered and branded as traitors. After that incident, Yan Xun becomes ambitious and cruel as he promises to take revenge for the things and the people he lost. He leaves Princess Yuan Chun on their wedding day, leading to her downfall and her brother Yuan Song's disability. He later starts to doubt Chu Qiao and takes advantage of her loyalty many times, disregarding their close-knitted friendship as well as the sacrifices he will have to make for power. Disappointed with the man she once trusted, Chu Qiao eventually breaks off her ties with Yan Xun and chooses to fight with Yuwen Yue to destroy Yan Xun’s plans of vengeance.
Cast
Main
Supporting
Yuwen Manor
Western Wei
Northern Yan
Southern Liang
Han Shan alliance
Xian Yang
Chu Qiao's family
Xiu Li Army
Bahatu
Production
The series is directed by Wu Jinyuan. The script is written by Yang Tao and Chen Lan, and reportedly took two years to be completed. Huang Wen acts as the style director, while Li Cai serves as the stunt coordinator. The original soundtrack is composed by Roc Chen who worked on the soundtracks of Kungfu Panda 3. Principal photography began on May 30, 2016 at Hengdian Studios, and wrapped up on November 21, 2016. Zhao reportedly lost 8 kg for her role. The filming set was opened to fans and the media for viewing in August.
Soundtrack
Reception
On June 26, the drama reached a rating of 2.01% with an audience share of 14.88% according to National Average ratings. This broke the record for a drama airing on a non-primetime timeslot on a non-holiday weekday. The series is also the first Chinese drama to break 40 billion views while still airing. It is also popular in overseas countries, Princess Agents received praise for its unique storyline and stellar performance of the actors, as well as the complex twist and picturesque landscapes. Despite its success and initial positive reviews, the series was later criticized for various issues in regards to its production quality - such as its inappropriate use of photoshop/green screen, excessively bright palette and the inconsistent dubbing of actors. The writing was lambasted for several reasons - such as making the female character another "mary-sue" underneath a strong and independent facade; and including unnecessary story-lines and screen-time for unimportant supporting characters; which makes the plot inconsistent and draggy. Additionally, there was controversy about the extortionate amount of focus on the second male lead's storyline, with some viewers sarcastically calling the drama "Yan Xun's revenge story". The drama was also criticized for ending in a cliffhanger.
Ratings
A week before the drama finished airing, Hunan changed its airing schedule to Sunday-Tuesday at 23:00 CST to promote their upcoming drama during Princess Agents' timeslot. This greatly impacted ratings due to audience not knowing of the new time slot and the drama airing an hour later than usual.
Awards and nominations
Plagiarism allegations
The source novel 11 Chu Te Gong Huang Fei was alleged to be plagiarized from several novels including ' by Xiao Ruqin, ' by Jiang Nan and Kun Lun by Feng Ge etc. In August 2015, the author Xia Xiang Dong'er admitted the allegations of plagiarism. In her announcement, she promised to provide a "clean" version in which all the plagiarized parts would be deleted so that the adapted TV series would not infringe the copyrights of the original authors. When the TV series was first released in June 2017, the original authors still alleged that the TV series contained plots and lines plagiarized from their works. Xiao Ruqin, the author of Novoland:Pearl Eclipse, posted on Weibo that she would be taking legal actions to protect their copyrighted works.
