Die for Our Ship: Ding Xiang gets A LOT of this from Chen Xiang x Xiao Yu shippers due to her behavior in the series and her extreme jealously. Not helping things is that Chen Xiang legitimately does not love Ding and tries to push her with the Eighth Prince at every opportunity even after they tie the knot. This actually ended happening in the final episodes with her being Killed Off for Real by Yang Jian, her soul being absorbed by Pangu's Axe.
Yang Jian gets this a lot because of his true motivations combined with his backstory in the Prequel makes it very easy to emphasize with him and overlook many of his more unscrupulous actions.
Some viewers give the Queen Mother of the West this treatment as well, arguing that she has a point about the necessity of harsh Heavenly laws preventing love between humans and gods because it would plunge all of existence into chaos. While it is not entirely fair to call her "evil" and moreso "misguided", the narrative tends to emphasize the Disproportionate Retribution she enforces on "rule-breakers" was excessively harsh and much of her behaviour comes from a lack of understanding about love, desire, and human empathy.
Even Better Sequel: Or prequel. The prequel is even more highly regarded than the series itself. This is due to it significantly expanding on the origins of the already popular Yang Jian and Xiao Tian Quan and what drove them to the plan they sought to implement in the series proper to reform the Heavenly laws, as well as its' even more dramatic and serious tone befitting a backstory about the two characters.
The Scrappy: According to Chinese netizens, Ding Xiang is the most disliked character in the 2005 series. This is because of her selfish personality, horrible treatment towards Xiao Yu even when the latter is nicer to her in return, manipulating the marriage contract between her and Chen Xiang's family to make Chen Xiang obey her, trying to break up Chen Xiang and Xiao Yu at every opportunity and outright wanting to kill her multiple times(even willing to be posessed by Yang Jian or be manipulated by him to have that opportunity), and being indecisive about her feelings towards either Chen Xiang or the Eighth Prince. Most fans cheered upon her death.
