Tigers Sniff the Rose episode 20 recap: Lanterns, and a face from the past

In short

The princess and Yan Shang spend their first night together. Liu Wenji says Yu Cheng'an is grooming him, and at the festival lanterns Meng Zaishi appears in the capital, bringing back the princess's years as Meng Baiyu's bride.

What happens in episode 20

The princess snaps that she doesn't like children and storms off. Yan Shang says he has an errand. Walking alone in the snow, she is sure she has put him off. Then he catches up with two lanterns and lets her pick one: what she loved as a child she can still love, he says, and he'll buy them for her. Her shoes are soaked, so he carries her inside, and that night they become lovers.

At work the next day Yan Shang can't stop blushing. He shares Lingnan rice cakes with Liu Wenji, who tells him Yu Cheng'an has been questioning him closely. Yu Cheng'an wants to build a faction among the palace servants, but few of them can read, and Liu Wenji fits. Yan Shang calls it a dangerous road. Liu Wenji says he won't be anyone's victim again, and the palace could be his road to the top.

The princess dresses as her own maid and waits for Yan Shang outside the institute. His colleagues beg him to give them the pretty maid, and she scolds them for daring to ask for a princess. They drop to their knees. The couple head off to the festival streets, eat their way through the stalls and win prize after prize at an arrow-throwing game.

Then someone else shoots down the biggest prize, a hairpin flower, and offers it to her. It is Meng Zaishi, a frontier military governor. She pretends not to know him. Yan Shang steps between them, says he has the wrong person and takes her home.

That night she can't sleep. When seven frontier governors rose in revolt, she was nine, and the royal family fled the capital. Yu Cheng'an's Shence Army crushed most of the rebels. For the last one, Meng Baiyu, he arranged a marriage alliance and sent the princess. By local custom brides were seized, so Meng Baiyu's nephew Meng Zaishi carried her off. Meng Baiyu, a brutal soldier, beat her the day she arrived.

Why it matters

Episode 20 shows what the princess survived at the frontier, and puts Meng Zaishi, the general Yang Si is fated to die fighting, in the capital.

Based on the episode synopsis, summarized in our own words: TVmao (电视猫) episode synopses