Tear Jerker / Scarlet Heart

• Ruo Lan's whole life is one tragedy after another. She falls in love with Qing Shan, but he's deliberately set up to be killed so she can be forced to marry Yin Si. After marrying Yin Si she hears of Qing Shan's death and becomes so ill she miscarries. Then she has to put up with being married to a man she dislikes for years. She only manages to make Yin Si divorce her right before her death so she can be Together in Death with Qing Shan.
• Zhang Xiao's reaction to Yin Xiang's arrest.
  Zhang Xiao: Thirteenth Prince, from now on who's going to drink with you, listen to your flute, and talk to you about all kinds of theories?
• Before she dies Zhang Xiao writes to Yin Zhen, hoping to see him one last time. He assumes her letter is from Yin Ti and doesn't bother to read it. Zhang Xiao is left to think he doesn't want to see her.
• Zhang Xiao's death. Especially when Yin Ti asks if she'll remember him in her next life and she says she wants to forget all about them all instead.
• After returning to the present Zhang Xiao can't find any proof Ruo Xi ever existed until she goes to a museum and finds a drawing of herself with all the princes. Then she sees a man who looks exactly like Yin Zhen, but he doesn't recognise her.
• In the novel version that the TV series is adapted from, Zhang Xiao never gets a chance to return to the modern era immediately after she dies in the Qing dynasty. This implies her modern body never woke up from being in comatose for so long and died alongside with the body she’s been using for Mental Time Travel. Word of God says Tong Hua only considers the novel’s ending to be canon and cherishes it. The epilogue shown in the TV series is completely non-canon.
• Ming Hui and Yin Si’s divorce. This only happened because Yin Zhen pins the whole blame on Ming Hui for causing Ruo Xi to suffer a miscarriage that immediately renders her infertile afterwards, if neither obeys the decree that is going to have both divorce, he has no issues making their families suffer just because of that. She only goes along with it to protect their child. At this point, Yin Si is given a very harsh wake up call that he’s been taking a lot of Ming Hui’s unconditional love towards him for granted and is seen tearing up while writing the divorce letter and stamping it before giving it to her. Even worse, because she Hates Being Alone, she is immediately Driven to Suicide since she finds no point to remain alive without him. Ouch.
• Qiao Hui ends up outliving both people she is the servant of, them being Ruo Lan and Ruo Xi.
• Lu Wu’s characterization gets increasingly tragic as it goes on. She commits suicide by drowning in a river, what led her to do this is to protect her daughter due to her status being a princess and it’s so she wouldn’t have to know that her mom is of lowly status due to being a courtesan prior to entering a romance with Yin Xiang. It isn’t helped that Lady Fu Ca is the one that goaded her into it in the first place. To make matters worse, how she really died is kept hidden away from Yin Xiang since only Ruo Xi and Yin Zhen knew the exact cause mostly because they think he isn’t going to take it well.
• Cheng Huan won’t ever be able to know the cause of why her mom suddenly disappeared without a trace (when it really was through suicide).
• Ruo Xi kept everything that Yin Zhen gave to her when they were courting each other up until her death, including the arrow that almost shot her but instead, Yin Zhen got her out of the way and the arrow ended up getting shot onto him. This is because he doesn’t like to see her in pain. Once Yin Zhen saw the items she left behind in the last episode, he is in tears upon viewing every one of them.
• Once Ruo Xi is on the carriage to leave the Forbidden City for good, Yin Zhen is seen watching it from a far distance. He starts to tug onto his queue back towards himself while shedding tears. Even though he’s angry at Ruo Xi for lying to him by omission minutes ago, it goes to he show that still loved her and finds it so difficult to accept the fact that she’s marrying a man who is nonetheless his younger brother even though she never loved him.

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