Gongdou means 'palace fighting'. It is the genre of dramas about consorts and maids scheming for the emperor's favour and for survival inside the Forbidden City or another court. The heroine usually starts with little power and wins through patience, alliances and well-timed counterstrikes. Its household cousin is zhaidou, which moves the same struggle into a family compound. Empresses in the Palace and The Story of Yanxi Palace are the standard examples, and Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace belongs to it too.
Dramas
Where it comes up
Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: the anti-Zhen Huan
Same novelist and marketed as the successor to Empresses in the Palace — but an 87-episode story about a marriage's slow failure, made at a reportedly ¥300 million and pulled from Chinese TV and streaming platforms amid 2019 and 2020 crackdowns on palace dramas.
