Thank you! <3

My main reaction to their whole backstory (from the romance to poor Bai Suxia's death and the events leading up to it) was that it felt straight out of a Korean drama, one of the super-sentimental Yong-sama kind from ten or fifteen years ago? Subtlety is not its strong point.

I didn't know the term Yon-sama, so I just googled (ha! here's an academic paper on the phenomenon), and then I saw a reference to Winter Sonata and got it. Yes! So melodramatic! :-) (I haven't watched Winter Sonata, but I've heard of it and the impact it had. The only dramas I've watched from that era are goofy, tropey ones by the Hong sisters. :-)

I feel as if Minister Gao's whole existence is testimony to corruption (since, unlike either ZXC or Guo Ying, he doesn't seem to be especially competent by any measure), but I may be a little prejudiced against him.

LOL! Yeah. (I've kind of forgotten a lot of how his arc goes. I hope someone does a discussion post on him at some point...)

This is making me sad because of Zhao Yunlan at the very end of the drama, when he's lost Shen Wei for good, and makes it his motive not for taking revenge but for saving the world.

Awww! I don't think it's the same, though, is it? Zhao Yunlan didn't fail to protect Shen Wei or let him down -- he and Shen Wei both gave their all, in tandem, to protect everyone else. That's how I see it, anyway.

It would be neat to have a canon divergence where Wang Xiangyang goes to Guo Changcheng for help instead of being coopted by Ya Qing and company...

Ooh, yes. There's something a bit like that in trobadora's Etched Into Bone, Into Heart, iirc, although not with Changcheng. :-)