Summary
Dac Ky is the daughter of a small province mandarin and she has a pre-arranged marriage to Ba Ap Khao. Unfortunately, the imperial flatterer, Du Hon, spots her beauty and wants to please the Emperor. Therefore, he enlists Dac Ky as an imperial concubine. To save her father life, she bids farewell to Ba Ap Khao. Listens to her maid, Dac Ky swears to use bring down the Yin dynasty. Not suprisingly, the minute the Emperor sees her, she immediately becomes his favorite concubine. Slowly, he slacks off on his leadership duty in order to dine and wine with Dac Ky day and night.

The Queen tries talk some senses into Tru Vuong and fails. Dac Ky's maid send an assassin to harm the Emperor and frames the Queen. He then orders her to be executed. As his two young sons try to rescue their mother, he breaks their skulls and pokes out his wife's eyes.

To rebel against the dictator Tru Vuong, Ba Ap Khao helps the Zhou overthrow the Yin dynasty. Dac Ky laughs in satisfaction and cries with happiness when the palace is burned to the ground. At that moment, Tru Vuong realizes that she never loved him and learns of her pre-arranged marriage to Ba Ap Khao. Yet, he still shows no regret in loving her and requests her dress to cover over his face after he died since the Yin dynasty is ruined during his ruling and he has no courage to face his ancestors. As for Dac Ky, she is killed by the Yin's general the minute she reunited with her Ba Ap Khao.

Review
Although this is a good film, I was disappointed with the fact that Dac Ky is not presented as a ruthless and cruel woman. Contradict to history, Dac Ky in this movie is a lovely lady who sacrified herself to free the people from a tyrant. The wicked role is replaced by Dac Ky's maid. In my opinion, Tai Linh is extremely good in ancient-beauty-wicked role. I believe the movie would have been much more interesting if the character of Dac Ky were to be reflective of history.

Dac Ky was not the first nor the only beauty to cause a dynasty's downfall. Preceding her and following her footstep, many others women in China had done the same thing but for different purposes. Some did it out of courage to help the country, while others were doing it for power and wealth. As a result, some were highly praised while others were being spit on by the later generations for their greed. Therefore, Confucious had said, "A lips of a beautiful girl could cause the man his position, and the tongue of a beautiful woman could cause a man his head." Unfortunated for these emperors, they weren't smart enough to listen to the wise man and they were not strong enough to resist such beauty. Quite ironic, the Chinese culture always supported one belief....women can't accomplish greater things than men and they are always a symbol of weakness; but yet it was also women whom had brought many men weak to their knees and crushed a nation in a blink of an eye. That leaves people to wonder who is actually weaker than whom.