Where the Legend Begins

The review below is by : teeveebee @ spcnet

"In war times, peach blossoms are pushed along by the waves of the river…"

This metaphor-filled phrase aptly described the life of the main character of "Where the Legend Begins" ("Legend"). Yen Fok was the perfect woman. Radiantly beautiful, intelligent, learned, sensitive and kind-hearted, she was the embodiment of both internal and external beauty. It was this legendary beauty that cast her into a life she had little control of.


The story took place in the last days of the once glorious Han dynasty and the beginning of a period in Chinese history known as the era of the Three Kingdoms. The story began with the sacking of the city of Nip by Cao Cao’s army. Yen Fok and her family were "captured" in the battle and were brought back to Cao’s household as special guests. She instantly became the focus of the Cao males. Her admirers included Cao Cao himself, his elder son, Cao Pei and his youngest son, Cao Ji. A love quadrangle ensued. She deftly sidestepped the senior Cao’s romantic advances by declaring that her feelings for him were admiration and not love. The rest of the story was about the power struggle between Cao Pei and Cao Ji, with both vying not only for the position of the crown prince but also for the hand of the beautiful Yen Fok. Deep down, Yen Fok had long fallen for the care-free, kindhearted and poetically talented Cao Ji and they were in fact deeply in love. The rout of Cao Cao’s million strong forces in the Battle of the Red Wall sealed the fate of Cao Ji and set the love tragedy into motion. With the failure at Red Wall, Cao Cao saw his final opportunity of personally overthrowing the Han dynasty evaporate. He reckoned correctly that even though his youngest son would make an excellent emperor, he would have been too loyal to the Han dynasty to overthrow it. Wanting desperately for the Cao family to establish a new dynasty, he pinned his final hopes on the ruthless but much more practical Cao Pei by naming him the heir. He also declared that the future emperor would win the hand of the immensely popular Yen Fok because she could help him build rapport with the ordinary people. With that one decree, Cao Ji lost everything: the empire, his true love and his comradeship with his brother. Soon after Cao Cao’s death, Cao Pei, with the help of Sima Yi, forced the abdication of the Han Emperor and declared himself the new Emperor of the Wei Dynasty. His dead father’s dream was finally realized. Still regarding his brother Cao Ji as a threat, Cao Pei placed him in virtual exile far from the capital. Even though Yen Fok was now his wife and she even bore him a son, the flame of jealousy continued to burn strongly in the heart of Cao Pei. When he heard the malicious but false rumour that his son was in fact that of his brother’s, he was momentarily blinded by a jealous rage and ordered the death of Yen Fok. With the death of Yen Fok, Cao Ji became a broken man. The story finally came to its tragic conclusion.

The discussion of the story line of "Legend" would not be complete without at least a brief mention of the legend aspect of the show. The legend was in fact a supernatural one. According to the story, Yen Fok was the mortal embodiment of the Goddess of the River Luo ("Lok Sun" in Cantonese) who was punished to descend to Earth for causing a clash between her husband and another God in the Heavens. The idea was for her to live through the same experience in the mortal world and "learn" from her suffering. This is the Zen concept of achieving higher karma by reliving and learning from past errors. At the end of the show, it was suggested that Yen Fok would reunite with Cao Ji after their deaths and finally able to realize their unfulfilled love in immortal eternity.