Television adaptation of Empresses in the Palace: Rewriting antiheroines, female violence, and heterosexual romance

The beginning of the 21st century saw the proliferation of the antiheroine on television, just on the heels of the antihero. Both are morally ambiguous, but the antihero frequently resorts to violence and breaks the law, while the antiheroine typically defies patriarchal gender norms. This is less severe but sufficient to unsettle mainstream society. To ease this unsettlement, television series often create buffers such as endowing protagonists with superpowers or mental health issues or situating the narratives within comedy, fantasy, or historical genres. There are two gaps in existing research: an excessive focus on the differences between antiheroines and antiheroes, which leads to inadequate study of antiheroines characterized primarily by violence; and a lack of attention on adaptations, even though many television series featuring antiheroines are adaptations. Empresses in the Palace is adapted from the novel The Legend of Zhen Huan and is one of the most influential television dramas in China. This article examines how the television adaptation rewrites the violence and gender politics of the novel's antiheroines. It is found that the adaptation downplays the violent aspects of the central character Zhen Huan, thus suppressing antiheroinism. However, while the novel uses heterosexual romance as a buffer for female violence, the television drama largely removes this, offering a broader space for antiheroines to challenge patriarchal order - a buffer not previously identified. This article demonstrates that female violence and adaptations can enhance our understanding of antiheroinism, thereby calling for future research to pay greater attention to these two research topics. Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press.