Latest / Daebak K-Rambles Podcast: K-drama Reviews / The Red Sleeve | Full K-drama Review / Ep. 92

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The Red Sleeve | Full K-drama Review / Ep. 92 · Daebak K-Rambles Podcast: K-drama Reviews

• 0:19
  I'm Jessica and this is Tiba K Rambles, where a couple of
• 0:22
  friends review Korean dramas. Welcome back to a really, really
• 0:25
  cool episode. We're going to be covering the
• 0:28
  Red Sleeve. And for this episode, I am
• 0:31
  joined by Mina from the K Pop Bookshelf podcast.
• 0:34
  How are you, Mina? I'm well, how are you?
• 0:37
  I am. Well, it's been a minute since
• 0:39
  we've chatted. The last time I had you on was
• 0:42
  for Sky Castle, I think was the last review and what a great
• 0:47
  deep dive. And we're going to deep dive on
• 0:50
  another big one. I had you on also for Mr.
• 0:54
  Sunshine and I feel like every time there's like a really rich
• 0:57
  text, I have you come and pinch it for me.
• 1:04
  So I hope you don't mind. This is a longer show that we're
• 1:07
  reviewing because it's 17 episodes and the episodes are
• 1:10
  often longer than an hour. So I braved the elements
• 1:14
  basically for y'all to re watch this show.
• 1:18
  I don't know about you, how have you been #1?
• 1:21
  Oh I've been doing well. I'm on hiatus currently still
• 1:23
  from my podcast and I am reintegrating myself into having
• 1:27
  the focus and attention span to watch dramas that was missing
• 1:30
  for me for a little while. So this is actually a good one
• 1:32
  too because of the longer episodes to get me back.
• 1:35
  Into it, yeah, I binge this, I binge this in like 2 days and
• 1:45
  and I again, don't like long episodes and I forgot that these
• 1:50
  episodes get progressively longer until the last episode is
• 1:54
  an hour and 40 minutes long. Brutal, brutal, brutal.
• 2:00
  But there's a lot of story here, a lot of meat on the bone and
• 2:03
  we're going to get into it. If this is your first time
• 2:05
  listening though, please go ahead and subscribe on your
• 2:07
  favorite podcast app or on Apple Podcast, Spotify and many more.
• 2:11
  And if you like us, please give us a five star review on Apple
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  Podcast and Spotify. And of course, come check us out
• 2:16
  on social media to stay up to date on our latest episodes and
• 2:19
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• 2:21
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• 2:27
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• 2:30
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• 2:31
  involved and show your support. You can check out the page on
• 2:34
  patreon.com/tabakpod and shout out to our patrons Janet,
• 2:39
  Curtis, Bale, Cindy, City, Alana, Grace, Lorna, Sammy,
• 2:43
  Caitlin, Julia #1, Michelle, Tamayi, Martha, Delphia, Maria,
• 2:46
  Sarah, Julia #2, Pam, and Angie. Thank you so much for being
• 2:50
  patrons. OK, so we're going to get into
• 2:53
  the Red Sleeve non spoiler section.
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  Are you ready, Mina? I'm ready, OK.
• 3:00
  OK, the Vicky synopsis today is Prince Yisan vows to become a
• 3:06
  benevolent monarch despite his cruel grandfather's reign.
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  He falls for some Dakim, an intelligent and spirited palace
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  maid. Yisan aims to make her his
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  concubine, but Thakim knows becoming a royal consort would
• 3:19
  restrict her freedom and rob her of joy.
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  Undeterred by Thakim's misgivings, Yisan's pure love
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  slowly wins her over. Will their hard earned love be
• 3:28
  able to withstand the turmoils of palace life?
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  Based on the novel of the same name by Kang Me Kang, published
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  in 2017. All right, so The Red Sleeve
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  aired in November 2021 and went until January 1st, 2022.
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  It is 17 episodes long. As I said at the top, it is
• 3:50
  directed by Jung Jin. I'm not sure if you've seen this
• 3:55
  director's work. They've directed things like
• 3:59
  Shining Romance, Hold Me Tight, Radiant Office, the most recent
• 4:05
  one you might have heard of, Cheong Neon.
• 4:07
  The star is born from 2024, which starred Kim Terry, and she
• 4:12
  won the Peck Song Award for that role.
• 4:19
  I think rather contentiously because I don't think a lot of
• 4:23
  people expected her to win that one, but here we are.
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  It is written by Kong NI Kong, the novelist and Cheong Hedy as
• 4:30
  well was the screenwriter. Dung Hedy has written The
• 4:35
  Emperor Owner of the Mask from 2017, which I really loved that
• 4:40
  show. Not sure if you've seen it.
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  And Quebec from 2011. Have you seen the director's
• 4:46
  work or the writers? No, I don't think I have, no.
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  OK, this show stars Eugeno Azizan.
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  He's the Crown Prince. Yes, Eugeno the Idol actor.
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  Yes, Eugeno. From 2:00 PM.
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  I can't you feel my heart speeding for you.
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  Well for me, I always go back to what, like that stupid chair
• 5:19
  dance and they're like feeling themselves up and I eat it up.
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  The choreo. Oh my God I could not stop
• 5:26
  thinking of that while watching re watching the show.
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  Oh God. Anyway so Asian though has been
• 5:33
  in about 5 movies including Twenty and Memories of the
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  Sword. I really like both of those
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  movies. They're about 10 years old at
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  this point which really threw me.
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  When I saw 2015 pop up I was like how is that double digits?
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  10 years old. Anyway, he's been in 11 TV shows
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  including Rain or Shine, also known as Just Between Lovers
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  from 20/17/2018 Walk of Love. Of course, he followed up the
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  Red Sleeve with King the Land from 2023, which I think was
• 6:07
  upsetting to say the least. What do you what do you think
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  about Egino? OK, I similar.
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  I can never not think of him as 2:00 PM Ijunho.
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  So it's really tough. I was just like kind of
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  struggling. But I start yeah, I either
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  started or just blocked from memory watching King the Land
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  because I that's probably the only thing I think out of the
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  list of the TV's and movie work that he's done that I've either
• 6:30
  tried to see or actually saw. So.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like the female lead in
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  Rain or Shine and I vividly remember watching Rain or Shine
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  and thinking that he was acting circles around her like he was
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  just so much better than her and it was frustrating.
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  And then also I'm not a huge fan of shared trauma stories like
• 6:54
  something awful shit terrible thing happened.
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  I saw rain or shine, I saw it. OK, OK.
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  I don't, I'm just trying not to spoil it too much, but basically
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  this awful thing happens to both of them when they're teenagers
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  and then they, that's right, kind of get together later and
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  they realize they were both part of the same tragedy.
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  And I'm like, I don't know about this kind of stuff.
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  It's just so shaky to me. Other people really gravitate
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  towards shared trauma stories, but I have a hard time
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  swallowing that, so yeah. So you did watch Rain or Shine.
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  I did OK, I did. And I just, I guess maybe that's
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  the one time I couldn't remember him as E Junho the whole entire
• 7:32
  time, but. But he's like kind of Moody and
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  like, yeah, yeah. His Co star in the Red Sleeve is
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  E Sei Young. She plays song dakim.
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  She's been in about 11 movies and about 30 TV shows.
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  When I saw thirty, I was like, Oh my God.
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  She is basically a child actress who's grown up in the industry.
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  She's been acting since the early aughts.
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  She's been in great things like Jewel in the Palace from 2003.
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  I was like, Oh my God, one of the high kicks.
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  I miss you, which talking about really sad, traumatic trauma
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  bonding kind of shows like I Miss You as one of those from
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  2012 hit the top Korean Odyssey. We have covered her in another
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  show, The Crowned Clown from 20/19.
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  She played the Queen in that show and I adored the Crowned
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  Clown. You can scroll back in your
• 8:26
  podcast feed and listen to that full deep dive review.
• 8:29
  Doctor John Memoris the Law Cafe story of Parks marriage contract
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  What comes after Love Motel California, most recently in
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  2025. What do you think of Issa Young
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  and where have you seen her before?
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  I don't think I've seen her anywhere, but I really want to
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  watch a Jewel in the Palace because it's like an iconic
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  drama anyway. So yes, I want to watch that.
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  And she's probably a kid, or at least a young, young person.
• 8:54
  Young person, Yeah. She was born in 92.
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  OK, So 2003 makes her eleven years old.
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  Yeah. Yeah, she would be 11 years old
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  and a jewel in the palace. But yeah, I love her.
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  I think this show is a wonderful showcase for her.
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  I loved her and what comes after love.
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  And I think she's, like, amazing.
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  I think she's an amazing actress.
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  Those are our basically top 2 billing of the show.
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  We do have a huge cast, but we'll be here all day if we try
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  and go through everybody and their filmography.
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  So we'll just settle for Ethanol and Issa Young.
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  What did you think of the Red Sleeve?
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  I I didn't hate it. No, no, because The thing is, it
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  was, it's so rich and in both in storytelling, cinematography,
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  the costumes, the sets, the acting is lovely and everything
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  is so great. But it's like a lot is happening
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  and at some point I'm like couldn't even remember the first
• 9:58
  few parts, like the first half almost of the season because it
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  just not even like takes a turn. It's just now we're doing
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  something else entire really. So from that aspect I was a
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  little like overwhelmed in a way, and also like in a
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  different headspace almost by the end.
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  Yeah, I would agree. I felt this more on this rewatch
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  was that I shouldn't have binged this at all.
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  This was a horrible idea to binge this.
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  You know, I get busy, I work full time.
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  And so I was like, oh, I'm just going to have to binge this on
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  these two days. And usually, as most folks may
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  or, and I know I am a really good binger, I kind of thrive
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  under a stupid deadline. And as soon as I was like on
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  episode 2 or three, I was like, this was a horrible idea.
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  I should not have binged this. This is one of those shows where
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  you want to watch it week to week, where you want to have
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  that separation and time to digest each episode and what
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  happens. It's difficult to wrap your head
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  around all the changes and all of the characters because they
• 11:04
  are so well defined and their motivations are worked on and
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  changed throughout the show. And then the love story, how
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  that progresses and how deeply they fall in love, but also how
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  deeply upsetting like them getting together actually is.
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  If for the female lead and the weight of history on top of it
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  because this is based on true events in Korean history, which
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  we can go over. But for the most part I thought
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  I did. I did this wrong.
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  Like I've rewatched this completely wrong.
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  And yes, I it took me even longer than probably it should
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  have because I was sitting there taking notes.
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  If I didn't have to stop the episode to take notes, maybe I
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  could have binged my way through the rewatch a lot easier and
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  shut my brain off. But I don't think this is a show
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  that you can watch absentmindedly.
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  I don't think that this is a show that you can watch
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  casually. I think this is a very rich
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  text. This is as close as you can get
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  to prestige television without calling it prestige television,
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  and it was beyond the scope of what I think a lot of people
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  were expecting from the show, especially at the time of
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  release. And I remember sitting there and
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  watching the episodes kind of as they were airing towards the end
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  of its run because I don't like waiting for episodes.
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  So I like waited till the last like 3 or 4 episodes were
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  preparing to start the journey of the Red Sleeve.
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  But everyone was really, really into it.
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  It was an extremely popular show and I think it helped to have
• 12:47
  the week to week format to unpack.
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  Agreed. Definitely.
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  So you thought it was kind of overwhelming, the experience?
• 12:55
  Yeah, I didn't have your experience of binge watching it
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  and I was considering doing a rewatch and honestly ran out of
• 13:00
  time because like you said, the episodes were pretty long, got
• 13:03
  longer and a lot was happening and it was a lot to digest.
• 13:08
  So definitely I liked it and I would rewatch it, but I think
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  just like there was like aspects of it I liked more than others
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  and I thought was like more worthy in a way.
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  But, and I kind of was wondering what were the like writers and
• 13:21
  directors even thinking and making this.
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  I'm not sure if it follows a novel very closely, so I don't
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  know if it plays out like this in the novel, but like why was
• 13:28
  it written like this if that makes sense.
• 13:30
  Well, I'd love to know like why you were questioning the the
• 13:34
  writing style on it or what why they pursued it the way they
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  did. Yeah, I think the yeah, the plot
• 13:43
  really not notes so much like the lines or anything like that,
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  or even the pacing. But the plot we're like, I don't
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  want to spoil it, but there's like so much happening in one
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  sense in the beginning and then like all this other stuff
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  happening. That's not every drama, right?
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  But no, it's like in other they're exploring so many
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  characters, so many aspects of palace life, for example, that
• 14:03
  it almost loses its way. But they do keep a thread in
• 14:06
  there to tie it sort of together or at least hang it together.
• 14:10
  But I was kind of almost getting lost in the plot very, you know,
• 14:14
  various pot lines and stuff. So.
• 14:16
  Yeah, yeah. I would say it is very sweeping
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  and grand, and again, I think it took a lot of people by surprise
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  because it was so detailed. Yes, there was a lot of
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  competing through lines for your attention, and I would argue
• 14:35
  that the biggest through line that people stuck around for was
• 14:39
  just the romance part of it. Yeah.
• 14:43
  What did you think of the romance?
• 14:46
  I actually had a lot of thoughts and when we get into the
• 14:47
  character part so we can get into more of this, I had a lot
• 14:51
  of thoughts of it because I actually liked, you know, I
• 14:53
  always I go on some K drama podcast and talk about how I
• 14:57
  don't love romance dramas. I like them, I like them, I
• 15:00
  don't dislike them, but it's like sometimes they're so
• 15:02
  predictable and they kind of follow a formula.
• 15:04
  They're very formulaic. And so I'm like, I don't really
• 15:06
  want to like watch that all the time.
• 15:08
  This one was so unique because she you kind of almost don't
• 15:13
  know what she's thinking a lot of the times.
• 15:14
  Like you think you know and then you're like, maybe she don't, I
• 15:16
  don't know, like it's really kind of keeps you on your toes
• 15:20
  in one aspect. And then she is, I think they
• 15:23
  like the acting was great and the writing for her was great
• 15:25
  because she is grappling with so many things herself and her own
• 15:29
  self interests and trying to preserve some of her own self
• 15:32
  interests. And not she's already the
• 15:33
  subject of a king. She's already a court made.
• 15:36
  And so there's already so much what am I looking for?
• 15:39
  Like reverend subjugation, subjugation.
• 15:41
  But I don't think that's right word.
• 15:43
  Not subjugation, but more just like she's already like beholden
• 15:46
  to all these like rules and customs and he's her, you know,
• 15:50
  His Majesty and all that stuff. So there's already that element.
• 15:53
  And then the love aspect, she's either she's confused or it's
• 15:57
  like confusing or like, and she's a very reserved person,
• 16:00
  yet very outspoken person. Like she's very interesting to
• 16:03
  me, so. Yes, she's very contradictory.
• 16:07
  And I'm not sure, I'm not sure if a lot of people had grace for
• 16:14
  that when they were watching the show.
• 16:17
  And there's a few questions that I got from Instagram that kind
• 16:20
  of toy with this idea that we're heading toward.
• 16:23
  Someone asked do you think Eden no thirst negatively warped how
• 16:28
  people perceive the show slash female lead as in people and
• 16:33
  this might be a little bit of a spoiler, but as in people upset
• 16:36
  that she rejects him the fact that she's not in most of
• 16:40
  episode 17's 100 minute extension.
• 16:45
  So I throw it over to you. What?
• 16:48
  What do you think is the answer? Or how do you how do you think
• 16:52
  about it? At first when I read this
• 16:54
  question I thought it was like where people's thirst over E
• 16:56
  June ho like their own thirst warping it, but now I see it's
• 17:00
  more so his thirst for her. Really.
• 17:03
  Yeah, I don't know cuz that's it's a valid question.
• 17:06
  I I interpreted. It the first way really.
• 17:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 17:11
  We'll talk about the ways that I was interpreting it.
• 17:12
  OK, so, so I think yes, he's like a, he's the king.
• 17:18
  And there's a lot of people in general in life and as well as
• 17:20
  in dramas who want to be close to the person in power.
• 17:24
  So to reject a king does like, I think a lot of backflips in
• 17:27
  people's minds for them because it's like, how could you reject?
• 17:30
  Like the king wants you, So what are you doing?
• 17:33
  You know, kind of thing. And like, why would you ever do
• 17:36
  that? And the other aspect of it, she
• 17:38
  likes him, generally speaking, as a friend, as a person.
• 17:41
  She respects him. It's not like she's like, oh,
• 17:43
  gross. Exactly so it's sort of weird
• 17:47
  that like she it's like hello and then but yeah, to go to the
• 17:50
  thirst thing. He Juno is is Percival and like
• 17:54
  charming both in real life and can act that way too in his
• 17:57
  acting. So it I think it was hard for I
• 18:00
  could see it being difficult for people really understanding this
• 18:03
  aspect of her. I think they were kind of trying
• 18:05
  to write her as like an independent thinks for herself
• 18:07
  woman female lead, but it's I could see it backfiring because
• 18:11
  of like why would you reject him on multiple levels?
• 18:14
  Why? You know, right, like he wants
• 18:19
  you so bad. He wants.
• 18:20
  You like so bad. Like he's like damn bad for you
• 18:24
  girl. What is the problem is I think
• 18:28
  how people approached it. And I had a lot more.
• 18:33
  I was a lot softer toward the female lead and her.
• 18:37
  I don't want to say confusion because I'm not sure if the
• 18:39
  whole time she was confused. I just think she was really
• 18:43
  resolute in ways that were unexpected for the audience and
• 18:46
  obviously for the male lead who was genuinely confused and
• 18:50
  upset, jealous halfway, like baked over her, like reaction to
• 18:58
  the rejection. And it's multiple.
• 18:59
  It's not just one time that she rejects him.
• 19:01
  It's like over and over again throughout the show.
• 19:04
  And again, she's just not. And we can get into like a lot
• 19:10
  more about her characterization. But suffice it to say, I think I
• 19:17
  respected her decision and understood her a lot.
• 19:22
  Same. Maybe it's because we are wise.
• 19:24
  Because. I wrote like a really in depth
• 19:29
  review that I didn't get the chance to look back on on the
• 19:34
  blog, on the Tabock blog. And it's a really freaking long.
• 19:37
  I don't know. I don't think I have it in me to
• 19:39
  do that again, write another long review like that, but I can
• 19:46
  vaguely remember doing like a whole section on her and why she
• 19:52
  would behave the way she behaved.
• 19:54
  I agree. I mean, I didn't write 1 yet,
• 19:56
  but I could. Yeah, I mean, the whole show
• 19:59
  could probably warrant a little thesis or something, but you
• 20:03
  know, it's not. I don't think it's as simple as
• 20:08
  boy looks girl, girl looks guy. Obviously, they're going to get
• 20:11
  together. Which I wonder is why people
• 20:13
  maybe didn't, all of them didn't receive it well because because
• 20:16
  of the K drama kind of formula and expectations and you think
• 20:20
  you know what's going to happen usually or a lot of times, this
• 20:23
  one is really off in many ways with how their love story kind
• 20:28
  of goes. And I don't mean off in like a
• 20:30
  bad way, but just unexpected. And there's so much nuance that
• 20:33
  we normally don't consider or have to consider when you're
• 20:35
  watching K drama. I agree there are some fun facts
• 20:38
  that we can get into and then another person said would love
• 20:43
  to talk about the real history of it all so we can do a little
• 20:47
  history corner after this handful of fun facts.
• 20:50
  So Pakisu, the actress Pakisu from Dear M most recently was
• 20:56
  first offered the lead female role but declined.
• 21:01
  Is Dear M that drama that was like not aired or something or
• 21:04
  is that a different? 10 I am not sure OK, but casting
• 21:10
  what ifs. The lead role for Igeno also was
• 21:14
  initially offered to Kim Kyong Nam and I was like, oh man,
• 21:19
  that's a swerve too. He was most recently shown up on
• 21:24
  the Tabak feed in the K drama connection.
• 21:27
  So I was like shocked that they offered it to both of these
• 21:31
  people and they turn it down. Well, I know that OK, so dear M,
• 21:35
  which I only know for because of my K pop fandomness.
• 21:38
  There was going to star. It did.
• 21:40
  It does also star NCT 127's Jay Hun and it was supposed to air,
• 21:44
  but then the lead actress was accused of bullying back when
• 21:49
  that was taking over everything in Korea, allegations of school
• 21:52
  bullying or or school violence. And then they like hiatus the
• 21:55
  show and it it filmed like a long time ago and it came out
• 21:58
  now literally this year. So I I wonder we might not have
• 22:03
  ever seen this if if she had been cast because because of
• 22:07
  that, those allegations, it was her, it was her, it was her yes.
• 22:12
  So our actress Park Hestu was accused of school violence and
• 22:16
  that was in 2021. So again, if if she was in this
• 22:19
  and it's had been like an editing or something because
• 22:22
  when did this kind of later 2020?
• 22:23
  Came out in Swell. Started airing in November of
• 22:26
  2020. One this would have been not
• 22:28
  even this would not have seen the light of day because her
• 22:30
  other drama DRM was like about to start airing when this all
• 22:33
  came up and and they put that away till 2025 S for four years
• 22:38
  they put DRM away yeah yeah, crazy sorry, but.
• 22:43
  I thought DRM aired? It started airing.
• 22:47
  It started airing and they had to stop because of all of this
• 22:51
  because I was waiting for J Hun. They aired like two or three
• 22:55
  episodes is is what I recall. And then they put the full thing
• 22:58
  out this year and yeah, now it says K drama 2025.
• 23:04
  Like you can't read that. But anyway it says.
• 23:07
  Wow, it's all making, it's all coming together.
• 23:10
  OK, so Pakay SU Kim Kyung Nam and then the drama is the first
• 23:17
  acting role for Ijuno since he was discharged from the South
• 23:20
  Korean military on March 20th, 2021.
• 23:23
  It's a comeback drama for Ijuno and I.
• 23:26
  Like I said, this is 17 episodes which is highly unusual.
• 23:29
  On December 9th, 2021, it was announced that the series would
• 23:32
  be extended by 1 episode due to its popularity and would end
• 23:37
  with 17 episodes. I'm curious, what did you think
• 23:40
  of the 17th episode? Was it necessary?
• 23:45
  I think that of every drama, every drama's last episode, I
• 23:48
  just want to die. It's like, it's like we've
• 23:52
  already resolved all the main plot points before this, and now
• 23:55
  we're just, I don't know what we're doing, getting more
• 23:58
  viewership. Just freestyling.
• 24:00
  Yeah, the. Show obviously was nominated for
• 24:03
  a bunch of awards, including Picks on awards.
• 24:07
  It was nominated for 123-4567 Picks on awards in 2022, and the
• 24:15
  only person who won was Egino for Best Actor.
• 24:19
  Wow. Yeah.
• 24:20
  Everybody else was just nominated best actress for Issa
• 24:23
  Young, best director for Chung Ji N, best drama, obviously best
• 24:28
  supporting actor, best supporting actress and a
• 24:30
  technical award for cinematography.
• 24:33
  So yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's absolutely stunning.
• 24:37
  Like, the whole thing is beautiful.
• 24:38
  I was taking screenshots just because I wanted to because it
• 24:41
  was so beautiful. The show is different in that
• 24:46
  way as well, that the cinematography is so elevated,
• 24:49
  so, so much more elevated. What did you think of the OST
• 24:53
  like before we get into the history?
• 24:54
  Segment, I liked it. I didn't have like super strong
• 24:57
  feelings about it, but yeah, it was really nice.
• 25:00
  Went with it. The fact that you kind of don't
• 25:02
  remember it is why how you know it's like fitting.
• 25:04
  Yeah, yeah, I same, same. All right.
• 25:08
  So the history, I don't know if you want to take the reins on
• 25:10
  this because you've actually read the book from the Princess.
• 25:17
  What's what's her name? In the show, it's Heg Young.
• 25:20
  Well, that's her name later, but yes, her name is Hong Hei Bin.
• 25:25
  Something that is big in the show that you may notice if you
• 25:28
  didn't know the history, is that there's a big deal over his.
• 25:32
  The king, who is the king at first is his grandfather because
• 25:36
  his father is not alive and his father is not alive.
• 25:40
  And this is all based on in real life, his father was Prince Sado
• 25:44
  and Sado. Prince Sado was going to be the
• 25:48
  king. He ends up marrying whoever's
• 25:52
  name I just said Hung. Yeah, he well, Lady Heck young
• 25:58
  or something. OK well anyway so he marries his
• 26:01
  wife. They're like children cuz this
• 26:03
  is Joe scenera time. So they get married at like age
• 26:06
  9. They don't consummate it till
• 26:07
  like age 15. You said 9.
• 26:09
  Yeah, I said 9. I said 9, Correct.
• 26:11
  This is, this is, you know, this is what we're dealing with.
• 26:14
  They're nine years old when they become married, but they don't
• 26:16
  consummate till they're like about 1415 years old.
• 26:20
  They don't consummate their marriage.
• 26:20
  And all this is of course like documented, celebrated,
• 26:22
  etcetera. Now when he's about 11, this is
• 26:25
  Prince Sado I'm talking about. Prince Sado does not feature in
• 26:27
  the drama. I just want to make that clear.
• 26:28
  So if you're like. He's like in a couple of like
• 26:31
  tiny scenes and. That's right, Prince Sado starts
• 26:36
  exhibiting signs of mental unwellness or I don't know,
• 26:40
  there's like a lot happening. He just starts having like both
• 26:42
  fainting spells, a lot of fainting spells.
• 26:44
  As he gets older, he's married and he also takes some
• 26:47
  concubines and things, you know, that is normal for him to do.
• 26:50
  And although he's like the Prince, they don't let him be
• 26:53
  the king and his father, which is the grandfather of Juno's
• 26:56
  character. He doesn't let him take any kind
• 26:58
  of responsibility, mate. Probably because I'm guessing he
• 27:01
  like sees that he sort of like, yeah, he's a little unwell.
• 27:04
  So as he gets older, he starts like bossing around the King's,
• 27:08
  the court maids. He starts killing them very
• 27:10
  gruesomely. Sorry, not spoiler, but trigger
• 27:14
  alert. I guess he is beheading them and
• 27:16
  like brandishing their heads around palace.
• 27:20
  So the thing about the rules of the chosen dynasty is that if
• 27:23
  you're guilty or, and I don't know if this is only for
• 27:25
  nobility or royalty or everybody, this is the case.
• 27:27
  But if you're guilty, your family's also guilty by
• 27:30
  association. So he's getting so out of hand.
• 27:33
  They're sort of just like, I mean, we just have to like, we
• 27:35
  have to kill him. Like we can't.
• 27:36
  He can't rule, he can't do anything.
• 27:39
  He already has at this point his his son, which is this who gets
• 27:42
  played in this drama by June Hall.
• 27:44
  And so they're like, what do we do with what do we do with him?
• 27:47
  That if they kill him, the whole family needs to be killed.
• 27:49
  His wife, who is like becomes later later known as Lady
• 27:51
  Hegyong and Isan, who is later called Zhangzhou when he becomes
• 27:55
  king. Eventually they would have had
• 27:56
  to have been executed with him. So, so to deal with this,
• 28:00
  basically what they do is they. OK, trig all the trigger
• 28:02
  warnings because I know what's coming, but like maybe you
• 28:05
  don't. So if you're a little squeamish
• 28:08
  or you don't like violence or suicides, that's.
• 28:15
  Yeah, and he, by the way, he knows Sado.
• 28:18
  Prince Sado knows that he he's not well looked upon, not well
• 28:21
  favored by his father, and his father is pretty aloof towards
• 28:24
  him. But Lady Heck Young says like he
• 28:26
  treats them very well, like the, the grandchild and herself who's
• 28:29
  the wife of King Prince Sado. They he doesn't sort of hold it
• 28:31
  against them that they're part of this family.
• 28:33
  So he needs to execute his son basically, which is crazy in and
• 28:37
  of itself. And pause.
• 28:39
  Pause, because a little bit of his antics are talked about in
• 28:43
  the show, and specifically the story of him walking into his
• 28:47
  chambers, holding the severed head of a eunuch whom he had
• 28:50
  killed and forcing the ladies in waiting and his wife to view it.
• 28:54
  So that is explicitly stated in the show.
• 28:57
  And of course, he's killing palace staff, as you said,
• 29:01
  assaulting and raping many of the court ladies and ladies in
• 29:05
  waiting and they're not doing anything.
• 29:09
  The King. Because he's, he is going, he's
• 29:11
  supposed to be the king eventually.
• 29:13
  So they're like, well, what the hell do we do?
• 29:14
  So all of these antics become kind of unbearable for
• 29:17
  everybody. Like he's also suffering health
• 29:18
  issues. He himself tries to he falls
• 29:20
  into he like throws himself into a.
• 29:21
  Tries to commit suicide. Yes, multiple times his wife's
• 29:25
  like listen, he was never crazy towards me like he doesn't try
• 29:28
  to Yes, she was like violence with her the son toward.
• 29:30
  Me. Never hit me.
• 29:33
  Right, but he's kind of just unraveling it how and I don't
• 29:37
  even know what the diagnosis could even possibly be because
• 29:39
  like I said, the physical symptoms of like lots of
• 29:41
  fainting and other weird habits. He's highly superstitious and
• 29:44
  just kind of had paranoia. Maybe I'm again, I'm not a
• 29:47
  mental. Person but he just I think he
• 29:49
  went clinically insane. And it started, like I said it
• 29:52
  at childhood. That's the thing that sticks out
• 29:55
  to me is I started in childhood. So then they're like, but if he
• 29:58
  kills himself successfully, we kind of we kind of win.
• 30:02
  It's a win win obviously. And I would say, I will say that
• 30:06
  they took this not lightly. So we're kind of joking here on
• 30:09
  some level, but it's all true and it's not a joke.
• 30:11
  So they basically tell him to get into this rice container.
• 30:15
  Yes, they tell him to climb into a wooden rice chest roughly 4
• 30:19
  feet square on a hot July day in 17. 6 which they wrap with like
• 30:24
  straw and ropes. Many, many ropes, so he cannot
• 30:26
  get out. Get out.
• 30:27
  Yeah. They don't give him food and he
• 30:29
  knows kind of like what's happening, you know, he's like
• 30:31
  conscious of what's happening. So he gets in there conscious
• 30:34
  and they just leave. They just leave palace staff.
• 30:36
  They leave him somewhere. It's like not like near
• 30:39
  everybody because they don't want to hear him in there.
• 30:40
  They can hear. They someone checks on him a few
• 30:42
  days later and they can hear him.
• 30:44
  He's like, yo, he can still talk.
• 30:45
  Yeah, this is I. Mean we don't we have to laugh
• 30:49
  to keep from like, yeah, being really gruesome yeah, it's
• 30:54
  gruesome I mean it's gruesome in the way that history usually is
• 30:57
  so. Right.
• 30:58
  So after about 8 days, they go to check on him again, they
• 31:01
  don't hear anything. They bring him back to the
• 31:02
  palace or wherever he was put to like the court area, and they
• 31:06
  open it up in front of his dad and he's gone.
• 31:09
  So that was like crazy. And what's remarkable about Lady
• 31:14
  Hig Young and again, I kind of wish this drama did have more
• 31:16
  elements of that in it because it's fascinating.
• 31:18
  But then this would have been like a 30 episode drama.
• 31:21
  I think it's had the bones of it.
• 31:23
  Like it probably should have just been a 30 episode entire
• 31:27
  saga. Could have been, yeah.
• 31:28
  Could have easily been so for her part in history.
• 31:31
  This is the person who is Isan's mother.
• 31:34
  She writes a book called the memoirs of lady Hagyoung and
• 31:38
  this book is fascinating because it's basically an autobiography
• 31:42
  or like it says memoirs. She releases it in four or she
• 31:45
  writes it in four sections over the course of many years.
• 31:47
  She's like dies at age 80, so she's like towards the end of
• 31:50
  her life. By this point, her son Isan is
• 31:52
  has passed away and his son is the king.
• 31:53
  And after they put in the rice chest and all that stuff, Sado
• 31:57
  in the rice chest, no one is allowed to talk about him
• 31:59
  anymore. Like there's a big censorship.
• 32:02
  It's super taboo. Do not talk about him, don't
• 32:04
  mention anything. The other issue with all of this
• 32:06
  is the grandfather king is himself the issuance, I believe,
• 32:10
  of a concubine. And so there's like some slow
• 32:13
  birth. He's not whatever anyway, or
• 32:16
  maybe Sado is, but anyway, so that's another reason.
• 32:18
  And they need to legitimize now his son because his son, which
• 32:21
  is Isan is going to become the new like heir basically.
• 32:25
  So what they do to legitimize him because he's a traitor and
• 32:29
  they talk about this in the show, he's a traitor, you're the
• 32:30
  son of a traitor, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 32:32
  So they need to legitimize his like existence.
• 32:34
  So after Prince Sado dies, what they do, and I want to remind
• 32:37
  the listeners that Prince Sado had an older brother who died
• 32:40
  when he was a child himself, which was why, you know, he has
• 32:42
  second son. It was going to be Prince and
• 32:45
  the future king. So what they do is King
• 32:47
  Yongzhou, the grandfather basically is like, you know
• 32:49
  what, we're going to change the paperwork of the family
• 32:52
  registrars and stuff and royal registrars and say he's adopted
• 32:56
  by his uncle, the late Prince. This like, helps this leak from
• 33:00
  a legal standpoint, makes it so that he's not affiliated with
• 33:03
  Prince Dado because, again, no one's allowed to talk about this
• 33:05
  despite this everyone in court and kind of the hot Goss in
• 33:08
  town. Yeah.
• 33:10
  It's like, is, is any of this legit?
• 33:12
  Right. Is it like, and they're kind of
• 33:14
  watching like, is in the show they show like, you know, we're
• 33:17
  trying to see if, like, Isan is gonna be like his dad or not.
• 33:19
  Like, is he gonna go mad? Is he gonna start beheading
• 33:22
  people about left and right? Like, what's gonna go on with
• 33:24
  with that? But for his part, he's always
• 33:27
  very reverential towards his father.
• 33:29
  He doesn't view it as like, my dad was crazy and therefore had
• 33:32
  like, you know, I'm just going to dissociate myself from him.
• 33:34
  He actually honors his father a lot.
• 33:36
  Yeah. And I think that's the issue
• 33:39
  that I think I have with the character Yisan, which is
• 33:45
  Igino's character, is that he really, really loves his father
• 33:53
  but doesn't have any grace or he really holds it against his
• 34:01
  grandfather, the king, for taking such measures against him
• 34:08
  and basically forcing him to commit.
• 34:10
  Suicide. I think part of this is because
• 34:14
  in the memoirs, the Princess or the Queen or whatever she was, I
• 34:17
  know she was in. Queen, but this this was not are
• 34:20
  you talking about you sons mother or his grandmother There
• 34:23
  wrote the memoir that you're that you read.
• 34:26
  It's his mom that wrote, not his.
• 34:27
  OK, OK, so it's his mom who write it.
• 34:29
  It is Hekion. Princess Hekion.
• 34:30
  Yes. OK, yes, but her name is
• 34:32
  something else in the show because.
• 34:33
  Because it's not. Because she changes.
• 34:35
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:36
  Because once he, once Esan becomes a king, his name becomes
• 34:40
  Zhangjo. Yeah.
• 34:41
  And his mother takes on a title because Esan's busy, like,
• 34:45
  honoring Prince Ado. There's a whole fortress
• 34:47
  basically dedicated to him. There's like, all this stuff he,
• 34:49
  like, honors his father like crazy.
• 34:51
  And in the memoirs, Lady Hegyoung says Prince Sada was
• 34:55
  mad, a mad Prince, as it were. And he blames like, his his
• 34:59
  dad's like, so frustrated with him.
• 35:00
  He's like, why are you like this, basically.
• 35:02
  And he's like, because you don't love me.
• 35:04
  And it's not. I don't.
• 35:05
  I mean, this is just the like the ramblings of someone who is
• 35:07
  not what hasn't been. Well, whatever.
• 35:09
  And but she does point out like, you know, when his kids, his
• 35:12
  children are born, his grandfather isn't that young Joe
• 35:16
  King? Young Joe is not that
• 35:17
  interesting. Yeah.
• 35:18
  Sorry. There's so much going on.
• 35:19
  He's not. He's sort of like distance,
• 35:22
  emotionally distant for sure to son and isn't that in love with
• 35:25
  him? We don't know why, right?
• 35:26
  We could be because he lost his first born, maybe at a young
• 35:28
  age, Maybe he saw kind of the kind of nod and conformist to be
• 35:32
  a put a politely nature of Prince Sado and was like, oh,
• 35:35
  hell, no, like I don't want him. You know me to be like the
• 35:39
  person ruling the country, right, And so he has this like
• 35:42
  emotional distance and whatever. And again, the Prince Sado feels
• 35:45
  that he blames him for it. Potentially.
• 35:47
  My guess is that Yisan, later King Jong Jo, holds out again
• 35:51
  against him because of that reason.
• 35:52
  Maybe he kind of buys into this theory that like Sado went even
• 35:55
  madder because he had this lack of affection or lack of love or
• 35:59
  felt at least from his father AKA son's grandfather.
• 36:03
  Yeah, I couldn't get behind his reverential tones toward his
• 36:10
  father, Prince Sado, who went mad like he bar none, went mad
• 36:16
  and killed a lot of innocent people, raped a lot of innocent
• 36:21
  women. And I mean, I'm not even sure if
• 36:25
  history maybe does him just like says the whole story because it
• 36:30
  sounds pretty horrific. But I understand wanting to
• 36:36
  acknowledge that this is your father, especially after all the
• 36:38
  lies and like the deception in this grand like political legal
• 36:44
  scheme to make him legitimate when he comes into power.
• 36:47
  He's like fuck all that. I am the son of Prince Auto Fine
• 36:50
  fine fine. But also, that's wild.
• 36:55
  Like your dad was wild. I'm.
• 36:58
  I think building the fortress and like moving his burial spot
• 37:02
  to somewhere where it's even like better than it was and all
• 37:04
  this kind of stuff that he did do and like he kind of like
• 37:07
  fashions himself and his titles at about like an after Prince
• 37:11
  Otto. Like he's like, I'm not letting
• 37:12
  history forget this guy because during his childhood he was,
• 37:15
  they weren't allowed to even talk about him or acknowledge
• 37:17
  him or mention that he ever existed.
• 37:19
  So I think part of it is that now I'm not excusing a single
• 37:21
  thing Prince Otto did at all. I'm just sort of trying to
• 37:24
  explain where some of this reverence came from.
• 37:26
  But I also agree that it's a little bit just a little
• 37:28
  misguided to build them a. Fortress super misguided and
• 37:30
  super like I, I have crazy eyes. I'm just like what?
• 37:35
  What are you doing? So King Jong Zhou Akaison's
• 37:41
  mother's writing of this memoir when she's and releasing it when
• 37:43
  she's like 80, whatever years older, too close to that age.
• 37:46
  It's so fascinating because she is really torn about writing
• 37:49
  this. And of the four, like I said,
• 37:50
  she had kind of four stages of life in which she wrote these,
• 37:53
  these memoirs. And the last one was about Sado
• 37:56
  himself, everything else about whatever else going on in the
• 37:57
  court and whatever the last one is the only one that talks about
• 38:00
  exactly what happened with him through her memory and her
• 38:02
  recollections and what the his death and all that and how she
• 38:05
  was feeling. And it's she says, I'm writing
• 38:08
  this for for my grandson. So son's son becomes the king,
• 38:10
  who's the current king at the time of this, like basically
• 38:12
  being published. And so she's like, I want him to
• 38:15
  know like the truth about we've had this hidden this too long.
• 38:18
  This has been taboo's topic topic for too long.
• 38:20
  And it's just such a big part of history.
• 38:22
  She's not even I don't think she even necessarily trying to
• 38:24
  justify. I mean, definitely not.
• 38:26
  She was like totally freaked out too.
• 38:27
  And you can read in her writing that she's like, Oh my God, he
• 38:30
  went crazy. We don't know why he's acting
• 38:31
  like this. We don't know what to like do to
• 38:32
  make it better. He's fainting, he's crying, he's
• 38:35
  throwing himself in the well. And so she it's really like
• 38:38
  turmoil like you feel it. And she wrote this like in the
• 38:40
  said what 17108 hundred. So it's like really crazy.
• 38:44
  And I do recommend if anyone is interested in this to definitely
• 38:46
  check it out because a lot of my podcasts about women in Korea,
• 38:49
  Korean women. She's a woman in this chosen era
• 38:52
  writing this and it's going against her king, which was
• 38:56
  young Joe who said don't talk about him ever again.
• 38:58
  Don't talk about Prince, although ever again, she's
• 39:00
  writing it maybe in honor of her son who did have this reverence
• 39:02
  for better or for worse. She's writing for her grandson
• 39:04
  who has no clue about any of this and for and for history
• 39:08
  really. So this is like a really just
• 39:09
  from that aspect. Interesting.
• 39:11
  And there's some, you know, other stuff about her Josen era
• 39:14
  life. And this is a book that at the
• 39:16
  time a lot of people were writing books in Chinese.
• 39:17
  Mostly men were writing books and they're writing in in a
• 39:20
  certain specific type of written Chinese, literary Chinese, I
• 39:22
  believe, whereas she was writing this in Hongo.
• 39:25
  She wanted this to be an accessible story.
• 39:27
  Again, I don't think anyone's defending him in the book at
• 39:29
  least, or she isn't and I'm not, but it's it's something that
• 39:32
  happened and they kept it, trying to keep it shut for so
• 39:35
  long, right? And he he was trying, he was
• 39:37
  trying to like elevate him, but she's just trying to be like,
• 39:39
  here's what happened. Right, OK, so flash forward.
• 39:42
  So we're on Esan, which is Ejinos character and he becomes
• 39:47
  Dong Jo the Great. It's the 22nd monarch of the
• 39:49
  chosen dynasty in Korea, so there's a lot of characters that
• 39:53
  actually did exist and one of them is Princess Wawan, who's
• 39:58
  totally real. After a 1762 to 1777, some
• 40:03
  members of the Neuron, which is a faction, attempted to depose
• 40:06
  him for his relationship. And Neuron is also like a, like
• 40:09
  a political party as well. Yes, both like a yeah.
• 40:12
  So he was again getting thwarted because of his relation to his
• 40:16
  father Prince Otto and his half brothers Prince Unjung and
• 40:21
  Prince Unung and Prince Unshan were all in on it.
• 40:25
  And his grand uncle Hung Inhan and Jung Hu Kyung, who was the
• 40:31
  adopted son of Princess Hua Wan. So Hua Wan real and her adopted
• 40:35
  son, all real. And they were all against him
• 40:38
  and his ascension. And even after, when he already
• 40:41
  ascended, they were like, fuck that guy, we don't want him as a
• 40:44
  kid. Yeah.
• 40:45
  They didn't recognize his like put on legitimacy or even his
• 40:48
  basically being appointed as the air.
• 40:50
  Yeah, in 1755, one year before King Yong Jo's death, the old
• 40:56
  man, King Chong Jo, so that's Ijeno's character, was appointed
• 40:59
  Regent. So that's true.
• 41:00
  He was appointed Regent. However, the king, his grandpa,
• 41:04
  did not give him any military power.
• 41:06
  So that is absolutely true that it is depicted in the show.
• 41:09
  Jung Jo was always threatened by some of his officials who were
• 41:12
  against his reign. He was able to overcome these
• 41:14
  challenges with the help of Hong Kong Young and others.
• 41:17
  Hong Kong Kyung is the royal preceptor.
• 41:20
  He is depicted in the show. He is kind of turns into an
• 41:24
  antagonist, which is all true to history.
• 41:27
  E General's character led the Renaissance of Chosen, but was
• 41:30
  initially busy continuing the policy of Yongzhou's magnificent
• 41:35
  harmony policy of political reconciliation between the
• 41:37
  parties. So that is also said in the show
• 41:41
  that he is trying to be kind of bipartisan, kind of in the
• 41:45
  middle, keep the peace between the fact, just like his
• 41:49
  grandfather did. He cultivated knowledge of
• 41:52
  humanities and philosophy, Neo Confucianism.
• 41:55
  He was known to be studious and well read.
• 41:56
  That's also very true and depicted in the show.
• 42:00
  He was very studious, loved the library, always in library.
• 42:04
  Yeah. And in 1800, Ijano's character
• 42:08
  Zhongzhou died suddenly under uncertain circumstances at the
• 42:12
  age of 47, without seeing much of his life's work come to
• 42:14
  fruition under his son, Son Zhou.
• 42:17
  There are many books regarding the mystery behind his death,
• 42:18
  and speculation as to the cause of his death continues even
• 42:22
  today. So we don't know why he died at
• 42:25
  such an early age in 47, when his mother lived on to be 80.
• 42:28
  Something that's crazy. Now let's talk about the female
• 42:32
  lead. Took him.
• 42:34
  In 1762, at the age of 10, She entered the royal palace.
• 42:39
  And because of her father's relationship with Pongsang Hong
• 42:43
  Clan, Lady Song, which is her formal name, Lady Song became a
• 42:48
  personal maid of King Chong Zhou's mother, Crown Princess
• 42:50
  Hey. So it's true.
• 42:51
  She was serving his mother, Crown Princess Hey, which is
• 42:55
  kind of how she's known. In the show, we were referring
• 42:59
  to her as Lady Heck Young. That's her official name.
• 43:02
  After he came to power in 1773, she, alongside Princess Tong
• 43:08
  Neon and Princess Tong Sung, transcribed the classic novel,
• 43:12
  And I'm not even going to try and pronounce this, comprising
• 43:15
  10 volumes, 10 books to Korean, and that is depicted in the
• 43:19
  show. They do absolutely sit there and
• 43:21
  transcribe a bunch of books, but here you can see it's 10
• 43:25
  volumes, 10 books. Sometime before 1782 she
• 43:30
  received Chong. Joel's grace means they had sex
• 43:35
  and was promoted to a court lady of the 5th senior rank.
• 43:38
  It's recorded that she was pregnant 2 times between 1780
• 43:42
  and 1782, but both pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
• 43:46
  So in the show, you don't you don't see these miscarriages.
• 43:50
  On October 13th, 1782, Ladies Hung gave birth to her first
• 43:54
  child, Yi Son. That same day, she became a
• 43:57
  royal consort after being elevated to the third rank of
• 43:59
  Soyung. Almost three months later, in
• 44:02
  late December 1782, her son was given the title of Prince Royal.
• 44:06
  Following year, she's promoted to the first rank of Bin, and
• 44:10
  Chengdu personally chose the prefix Hui, meaning appropriate
• 44:15
  slash fitting. And you do see that process in
• 44:17
  the show of him writing out the characters and choosing her
• 44:20
  name, which is Hui I think is how you pronounce it.
• 44:24
  On March 20th, 1784, Lady Song gave birth to an unnamed
• 44:28
  daughter who died a year after birth on July.
• 44:31
  A lot of trauma here, a lot of sadness happening with children
• 44:35
  dying in miscarriages. On July 2nd, 1784, Yi Son was
• 44:38
  invested as Crown Prince, but he died during an epidemic on June
• 44:43
  6th, 1786. So that is depicted in the show
• 44:47
  that their little Crown Prince son dies of.
• 44:51
  In the show, it's measles, Yeah. Measles was really going around
• 44:55
  at that time too, so that's semi accurate.
• 44:57
  Four months after the death of her son, Song, UI Bin died of a
• 45:01
  disease during the last month of her 5th pregnancy, that is
• 45:05
  September 14th, 1786. She was 32 years old.
• 45:11
  The unborn child died with her. King Chong Zhou wrote her
• 45:15
  epitaph where he described his grief and declared his love for
• 45:18
  her. It was said that Lady Song was
• 45:20
  the only woman he loved among his wives.
• 45:23
  King Zhongzhou planted 26,000 trees in the graveyard which is
• 45:26
  known today as Hyocheng Park and is situated in Yongsang
• 45:30
  District, Seoul. So you can still walk amongst
• 45:34
  the trees that each and those character King Zhongzhou planted
• 45:40
  in memory of her. He's a sentimental guy.
• 45:43
  Sentimental to 26,000 trees. That's nothing to sneeze at.
• 45:47
  And a fortress. Yeah, and the fortress for his
• 45:50
  killer dad. So a lot that we have unpacked
• 45:54
  here for the historical context and a lot that they got right.
• 45:58
  And unfortunately, as I just said, she dies at the end of the
• 46:03
  show, which I think spoiler alert, spoiler alert, rocked a
• 46:08
  lot of people, rocked a lot of people.
• 46:12
  That's life, baby. Yeah, I had.
• 46:16
  I had known that it was about a true story and it was based on
• 46:21
  history. And so I, halfway through the
• 46:24
  show, looked up her and him and everything and was like, Oh, no,
• 46:31
  this isn't going to end well is how I went into the last half of
• 46:35
  the show. I'm not sure if other people
• 46:38
  knew or took any sort of initiative to try and, like,
• 46:43
  gird their loins or shore up defenses before the last couple
• 46:48
  of episodes. Did you know the history or were
• 46:53
  you aware going into the finale episodes what was going to
• 46:56
  happen? You know, I did not because my
• 46:59
  whole thing was like my kind of previous knowledge was about
• 47:02
  Prince Sado really. And then I knew that his son was
• 47:06
  a very well received respect. That's why there's been many
• 47:08
  dramas and novels and whatnot about him because he did make
• 47:12
  Chosen really a prosperous dynasty towards its towards the
• 47:15
  end of the Josen Dynasty. And it's really, really
• 47:17
  prosperous. He was seen as like pretty good
• 47:19
  as far as with his ruling capabilities, trying to keep the
• 47:21
  factions from being too misaligned and trying to keep
• 47:23
  everyone united and harmonious like you said.
• 47:26
  But I didn't know that this his drama was going to follow
• 47:28
  history so much to AT and I didn't know anything about
• 47:32
  dogging so. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:34
  Pretty heartbreaking. And that's, I don't want to, I
• 47:38
  feel like that's the biggest spoiler.
• 47:39
  But also if we were going to talk about the history it was
• 47:42
  going to have, it was going to come out eventually that like,
• 47:45
  sorry, bad news, she doesn't make it.
• 47:50
  And of course, he doesn't make it either.
• 47:52
  There is a question that I got on Instagram, somebody asked how
• 47:57
  do you interpret the ending? And I'm actually just going to
• 48:00
  leave this for the spoiler section because the last 10
• 48:04
  minutes are actually kind of open to interpretation maybe.
• 48:09
  But yeah, we have a lot more to unpack.
• 48:12
  There's so much here that I would love to talk about, talk
• 48:16
  through. So without further ado, I'm just
• 48:19
  going to ask you how many soju bottles you would give the show
• 48:23
  out of five, and then we're going to get into the spoiler
• 48:25
  section. Well, this is hard.
• 48:27
  It's so beautiful and so lovely and so much I did love about it.
• 48:30
  I'm going to say 3.5 soju bottle. 3.5 OK, I'm going to
• 48:33
  swerve and say 5 out of five soju bottles because I really
• 48:38
  love the show. I really resonated with it.
• 48:41
  I loved it the first time, I loved it the second time I
• 48:43
  watched it. And again, my only regret is
• 48:45
  that I watched it too fast on the rewatch.
• 48:49
  Didn't savor it enough, but really so much that I
• 48:55
  appreciated about it. And we'll get into that right
• 48:59
  after this. Excuse me, I can't tell.
• 49:02
  I can't tell you no. I have no tingle.
• 49:07
  Oh, sorry. Swear discussing shirts?
• 49:11
  What? Welcome back.
• 49:16
  We're on the other side of spoilers.
• 49:17
  We are going to maybe spoil what's left, talk at length
• 49:21
  about the show and get into specifics.
• 49:24
  So if you don't want to be spoiled, I'm not sure if the
• 49:28
  ending is necessarily a spoiler, but perhaps it is.
• 49:33
  But anyway, let's talk about the question that this person on
• 49:37
  Instagram asked us, which was how do we interpret the ending?
• 49:42
  I think in this instance, the writers and director knew that
• 49:45
  was going to be somewhat unsatisfactory ending as far as
• 49:48
  AK drama, romance, plot point standpoint, and they wanted to
• 49:53
  find a way to give people something to like latch onto.
• 49:56
  So a sort of happy ending thing. And they sort of foreshadowed
• 49:59
  when she's like when it's spring, we can watch the flowers
• 50:02
  bloom, right? Or whatever she said.
• 50:03
  And so they kind of made that like what happens?
• 50:05
  And you could interpret it to me like they're in heaven or
• 50:08
  somehow reunited. And maybe it's a past memory.
• 50:10
  I can see, like, the confusion as to what exactly is it that
• 50:13
  we're looking at. Yeah.
• 50:15
  But I do think that whatever it is meant to be is sort of vague
• 50:18
  on purpose. So the viewer who may feel
• 50:20
  dissatisfied by the death of dogging can be like, well, at
• 50:24
  least like this is here, right? I almost feel I'm conflicted
• 50:31
  first of all because to me it is technically a happy ending.
• 50:35
  I agree. She did marry the king.
• 50:38
  She did become his concubine. They had children.
• 50:43
  What's sad is that life happened.
• 50:45
  The child died of measles. And that's just like, you know
• 50:50
  what I'm saying? Like life happens.
• 50:52
  She's had miscarriages that are not shown on screen.
• 50:56
  Unfortunately, she dies an early death and then he follows many
• 51:02
  years later are still, he's pretty young, 47.
• 51:05
  I'm like, but they still got together.
• 51:08
  But they were still together. They had all this time together.
• 51:11
  The other thing that was stressing me out by the end of
• 51:13
  this drama was like him not knowing her feelings.
• 51:16
  And so I think the one good thing, I guess like or he was
• 51:18
  confused, like maybe she doesn't let me me, she doesn't let me
• 51:20
  like and they they managed to get her to say it like at some
• 51:24
  point towards the end. Yeah, towards the end.
• 51:26
  OK, yes, what, what let me squirrel that away for like, OK,
• 51:30
  for for the second-half of this conversation.
• 51:33
  But as far as interpreting the ending, I feel like in a
• 51:36
  simplistic way it is a happy ending because I got together in
• 51:39
  real life in in their natural lives and then once he died they
• 51:46
  are reunited and I on 2nd watch I think this is all in his head.
• 51:53
  Oh, you know, what I was thinking is because both he and
• 51:56
  she have these moments where they're like, can we just go
• 51:58
  back to how things were? Can we go back to how things
• 51:59
  were? And the answer is honestly, no.
• 52:01
  And maybe that's like setting us up for like, hey, we're going to
• 52:03
  be let down really bad in a bad way.
• 52:06
  But when you know how like when people die in in K dramas,
• 52:10
  sometimes they die either the age that they are when they
• 52:12
  died. So in this case 47.
• 52:14
  And sometimes they die at like whatever was the peak happiest
• 52:16
  time of their life. So age like 21 or something.
• 52:18
  I'm making it up. And so I noticed he he's at the
• 52:21
  end of the show where he is alive.
• 52:22
  He's got like a little goatee that was big with the Royals
• 52:25
  back then. He doesn't have it when he's
• 52:27
  reunited with dogging. And so if this could represent
• 52:30
  his last kind of dying thoughts and dreams he's having as he's
• 52:32
  passing away or he's like in his version of heaven or afterlife
• 52:37
  or whatever. And so he's not no longer the
• 52:39
  king with the goatee that's been reigning over chosen for a long
• 52:42
  time now. He's now aged whatever he was.
• 52:44
  And he was always in that little annex area with with dogging.
• 52:47
  Yeah. I think it's it's a dying man's
• 52:51
  last thought, last dream, last thought, whatever.
• 52:56
  Yes, she does in that same episode say, you know, I want to
• 52:59
  see the flowers with you. It will blossom once more
• 53:02
  someday and when that happens, everything will be OK.
• 53:05
  I would like to go see the flowers with you, just like the
• 53:07
  old days when you were still a Crown Prince and IA palace maid.
• 53:12
  Absolutely, she says that. But also, that's like a
• 53:15
  desperate wish from her at this point.
• 53:19
  She's already been so disappointed, so heartbroken and
• 53:24
  so caged in the palace that this is just a desperate like, let's
• 53:30
  go back to the time when we were happiest and it'll be OK.
• 53:34
  When that happens, it'll be everything will be fine.
• 53:37
  Everything will be right and OK. I think when he died and wakes
• 53:42
  up young back in the same scene as before, in this idyllic
• 53:45
  moment, I still think this is this is in his head because this
• 53:50
  idyllic moment we saw before in the show and she was saying in
• 53:56
  her she's we're getting a lot of her narration and her inner
• 53:59
  thoughts throughout the show. And during that exact moment,
• 54:03
  the first time we saw it, she was saying, I was doing nothing
• 54:07
  all day long, just sitting around waiting for you.
• 54:11
  And now he's just sitting there fucking fanning his face as he's
• 54:15
  lounging on her legs. And she specifically said
• 54:19
  something about this is uncomfortable for me, you laying
• 54:23
  on my legs. And he's just like, oh,
• 54:25
  whatever, Just so relaxed and at peace and having a wonderful day
• 54:31
  with one of his concubines. And that is the moment that he
• 54:36
  goes back to a moment that was wonderful and idyllic and
• 54:40
  beautiful for him, but that it was completely tinged with
• 54:44
  sadness the first time we saw it.
• 54:48
  So to me, I'm like, why would she go back to that moment?
• 54:51
  Why the fuck would she go back to that moment?
• 54:54
  But she did express she wanted to go back to when you're you
• 54:58
  were the Prince and I was the maid.
• 54:59
  So I mean, there's that argument too.
• 55:02
  Right, but she wasn't a palace maid.
• 55:04
  No, later she wasn't. I mean, a lot of this I think is
• 55:06
  like the toothpaste is out of the tube.
• 55:08
  And like a lot of the message behind some of this is like both
• 55:10
  characters are kind of like, can we go back?
• 55:11
  Can we go back to how it was? Can we go back?
• 55:13
  Even when she's with her friends, she's like, can we just
• 55:14
  go back to like how it was when we were younger?
• 55:16
  And you can't 'cause life happens and 'cause there's all
• 55:19
  this other politicking and everything going on.
• 55:21
  Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I think this is all
• 55:24
  in his head. He goes back to a moment that is
• 55:27
  perfect for him, definitely not perfect for her.
• 55:30
  This is obviously when he's already the king.
• 55:34
  She's not a palace maid. It doesn't fit the criteria of
• 55:36
  what she wanted to go back to. So I don't believe.
• 55:42
  And then they do see the flowers, which is some something
• 55:44
  that she did want was to see the flowers.
• 55:48
  In this moment, he ponders if he actually missed her, or if he
• 55:51
  just missed an idealized past. All right.
• 55:54
  And I was like, oh, that's really powerful.
• 55:56
  And he begs her, please love me, Please love me because he's
• 56:00
  still not sure. Yeah, he didn't like hearing it
• 56:02
  from her friend, and he wasn't necessarily convinced by
• 56:06
  whatever she was saying. Because part of it, I think that
• 56:08
  was going to be for everything anyways, because he's the king
• 56:10
  and she's the subject of the king regardless of concubine
• 56:13
  status or whatever, mother of the Crown Prince, she's always
• 56:16
  going to have to say what he wants to hear.
• 56:17
  Right, exactly. I love this is a tangent, a
• 56:21
  little bit of a tangent, but it's sort of related.
• 56:23
  There is a prevailing notion among men that like, oh, if a
• 56:29
  woman smiles at me or, or, you know, nice to me, she's just
• 56:33
  nice to me. She's totally into me.
• 56:37
  And the thing, the first thing people say to rebut that is were
• 56:42
  you paying her for a service? Were you in a coffee shop?
• 56:46
  You were you at her job? Like, was there a reason for her
• 56:50
  to be nice to you? Maybe she wanted tips like you
• 56:53
  know what I'm saying? Like.
• 56:55
  This is not only that, it kind of reminds me of like the me too
• 56:58
  stuff, just not in the sense that any of this is me too, but
• 57:00
  the hashtag me too movement where a lot of people realize
• 57:02
  that realizing maybe for the first time that when there's an
• 57:04
  imbalance of power, then there's a lot of things that get skewed.
• 57:08
  Like did he? I think that's where some of her
• 57:10
  like moments of like, does she or doesn't she?
• 57:13
  Is she exactly? Well she has to love him cuz
• 57:16
  that's her king and she's that's like, you know, did.
• 57:18
  She have a choice. Like think, yeah, think about
• 57:20
  it. Did she have a choice?
• 57:21
  So applying to him and their situation, yeah, she was going
• 57:27
  to wait on you, do whatever you wanted, fan you in the sun, let
• 57:32
  you make her legs fall asleep because you're laying on them
• 57:35
  with your peft. Because she has no other choice.
• 57:40
  She is literally Either she was your basic slave in the palace
• 57:46
  as a palace maid, or she is now your sexual slave as a
• 57:52
  concubine. There is no choice here.
• 57:56
  There's an illusion of choice in the show.
• 57:58
  I love that she expresses it, that they have her character
• 58:00
  Espresso. Like I didn't want this.
• 58:02
  I did not want this. My God, I didn't ask.
• 58:04
  That's also in the final episode.
• 58:06
  But to wrap up the freaking final final ending bit is his
• 58:11
  voice over says, I do not care if this is the past.
• 58:14
  I do not care if this is a dream.
• 58:16
  I do not care if this is death. I choose this moment when I can
• 58:20
  be with you and I will hope that this moment never passes.
• 58:25
  May this moment last forever. So it kind of skews toward this
• 58:28
  is all in his head because he's he kind of recognizes like this
• 58:32
  is too good to be true. The thing that throws it all in
• 58:36
  question is that you then hear her voiceover say, And so this
• 58:42
  moment became our eternity. So you're like, okay, wait, was
• 58:47
  she actually there? Did he summon her spirit,
• 58:51
  essence, whatever to be here with him in his head?
• 58:56
  Or is this their eternity? Is are they?
• 58:58
  Is she even said in the afterlife, ignore me, Yes, don't
• 59:02
  look at me and he got to say. I don't think that she's really
• 59:06
  there. I think this is still all in his
• 59:08
  head and he wants her to be happy, to be there for eternity
• 59:12
  or however long that moment lasts for them.
• 59:15
  So I maybe that's a bit of a pessimistic angle on it, is that
• 59:20
  they didn't spend the afterlife together.
• 59:24
  I don't think she wanted that. I don't think she wanted that
• 59:26
  either. OK, so we're on the same page
• 59:28
  about that. OK, so let's move on to the.
• 59:32
  I don't know if we have to. I think we're working backwards
• 59:34
  on this because because did she or did she not love him?
• 59:42
  Was the question that he wanted answered throughout the show?
• 59:45
  I think she did love him. It was just complicated.
• 59:49
  Very. It was just extremely
• 59:50
  complicated. I think it's super telling that
• 59:54
  on her deathbed she says to bring her friends.
• 59:56
  She's like go get my friends, I want to see them and her
• 1:00:01
  motherly. Blow, by the way.
• 1:00:03
  Oh my God, Oh my God, what a fucking blow to have your
• 1:00:08
  motherly figure, this palace maid who you've known all your
• 1:00:12
  life, go against your last wishes and bring the king.
• 1:00:17
  She was like, why are you here? Yeah.
• 1:00:22
  I just love that final moment because he was like, you didn't
• 1:00:25
  want to see me. And she's like, I wanted to see
• 1:00:28
  my friends. Like we he had no respect.
• 1:00:33
  I feel for that bond that the friends had.
• 1:00:37
  I mean, she's went on to say, when you see me in your next
• 1:00:40
  life, just pass on by. Ignore me because I don't want
• 1:00:45
  to deal with you. I I might love you.
• 1:00:48
  I might respect you. I might, you know, be with you
• 1:00:51
  now. And I chose to be with you now.
• 1:00:53
  It was always my, she says. I was, it was my choice.
• 1:00:57
  But she also says I want to live the way I want in my next life.
• 1:01:01
  She also says like I would have left you somehow or some way, no
• 1:01:04
  matter how I had to, had I not at least somewhat wanted to be
• 1:01:08
  here. Exactly.
• 1:01:08
  But what was? What would that look like?
• 1:01:11
  Horrible. It would be horrible.
• 1:01:13
  For her, yeah, yeah, not really that feasible, yeah.
• 1:01:17
  It would be a shit life. It was never going to be.
• 1:01:21
  She was going to live in the palace as a palace made with her
• 1:01:24
  friends for the rest of her life.
• 1:01:27
  It sucks because like that's life for some in some regard
• 1:01:30
  with for everyone. A lot of things is out of are
• 1:01:32
  out of your control. You can't shoot, you know,
• 1:01:34
  choose to live a certain way. She she all she wanted was like
• 1:01:36
  some level of like liberation, freedom.
• 1:01:39
  All of her life was like some kind of transactional thing in a
• 1:01:41
  way, because it's like her father in the store in the drama
• 1:01:44
  was like the guard for Prince Otto and Prince Otto dies.
• 1:01:47
  All his guards have to die too. I don't know if it's a guilt by
• 1:01:49
  association thing or why, but they execute her father.
• 1:01:52
  She had separated from her brother in the show and so and
• 1:01:55
  her mom has like, left Earth as well because of all this.
• 1:01:58
  So she has no real choices. Like, she's like, I'm gonna
• 1:02:01
  live. How do I live?
• 1:02:02
  I want to live. How do I live?
• 1:02:02
  I want to retain the small amount of control over my life
• 1:02:04
  that I have. And she has like, next to none.
• 1:02:06
  And so she is like in constant negotiation with, well, do I
• 1:02:10
  just like succumb to like all his advances and become a
• 1:02:13
  concubine? Or do I try to like, could she
• 1:02:15
  have really run away? I mean, look what's happening to
• 1:02:16
  her friends and the other court ladies getting tortured in the
• 1:02:18
  dungeons and all this crazy stuff going on.
• 1:02:21
  So it's not that easy. Someone could have easily found
• 1:02:23
  her again and drug her back into because where is she supposed to
• 1:02:26
  go? To another Kingdom?
• 1:02:27
  Somewhere else? Like where right?
• 1:02:30
  And there's so many points where she tells him explicitly, I
• 1:02:36
  don't want to be your woman. I've never wanted to be your
• 1:02:38
  woman. If I become your concubine, I'm
• 1:02:41
  going to lose everything. Yeah, and it's so complicated
• 1:02:45
  because she does, like I said, she likes him in general, maybe
• 1:02:48
  in a on a crush level or whatever.
• 1:02:49
  Does she ever really love him? This show had me questioning
• 1:02:52
  kind of like almost what is love or what is love for her?
• 1:02:54
  What is love for the two of them?
• 1:02:56
  Yeah. What can it be?
• 1:02:57
  What can it be? Because of the power and
• 1:02:58
  balance, because of her circumstances and the era in
• 1:03:00
  which she's born, era in which she is born and where's her
• 1:03:04
  station life, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:03:05
  What could love even look like for either of them, for their,
• 1:03:08
  for their romance? It's very complicated.
• 1:03:11
  Anyway, it's super. Complicated like we said in the
• 1:03:14
  non spoiler section. And it's not a simple Oh well
• 1:03:17
  they like each other, they can just get together.
• 1:03:19
  No baby no. And I have the quote from when
• 1:03:23
  she tells him explicitly like I do not want to be your concubine
• 1:03:28
  because I will lose everything. In episode 13, she says if I
• 1:03:30
  become your concubine, I must give you my everything and
• 1:03:33
  nothing of my own will remain. It is human nature to want
• 1:03:37
  everything from the man that you give your everything to.
• 1:03:39
  However, your Majesty, you cannot give your entire self to
• 1:03:44
  me. I will mainly be just one of the
• 1:03:46
  countless women in your life, but my entire life will change
• 1:03:51
  and there will be no going back. I'm afraid that I'll lose
• 1:03:55
  everything. I'm afraid I will lose myself
• 1:03:58
  itself. Maybe this is highly unusual for
• 1:04:00
  the time. I don't know if you there's a
• 1:04:02
  lot of literature from women of the era expressing this type of
• 1:04:08
  resilience and strong sense of identity and self that she
• 1:04:14
  exhibits, that she somehow has fostered this in herself.
• 1:04:19
  Even with growing up in the palace as a palace made and
• 1:04:24
  being trained to just accept anything that happens.
• 1:04:29
  She's expendable is the general concept.
• 1:04:33
  We see it when she's a child charging people like 100,
• 1:04:36
  whatever the currency is in order to or one, whatever the
• 1:04:40
  whatever the amount is to do little tasks here and there.
• 1:04:43
  I'll read you a story, I'll transcribe something because
• 1:04:46
  she's a little hustler even from then.
• 1:04:48
  So even from a child, her childhood, she's trying to
• 1:04:50
  maintain or get some kind of control.
• 1:04:53
  She's forward thinking. She is very kind of she's very,
• 1:04:56
  she knows herself even at it from a young age.
• 1:04:59
  And she asserts that all the time and she's very principled.
• 1:05:02
  And so it's all this. It makes it so much harder for
• 1:05:04
  her to just be like a kind of kind of accept like on one hand,
• 1:05:08
  it's it's easy to accept your like station in life.
• 1:05:10
  Even her friend though, who like runs off of this other guy and
• 1:05:12
  has to be for some reason executed for that.
• 1:05:14
  I didn't totally understand that.
• 1:05:15
  I guess she was going to have his kid or whatever, but
• 1:05:18
  everyone is just like trying to live their life the way they
• 1:05:21
  want to on some level, but they're bound by these societal
• 1:05:24
  expectations. The thing about when she's like,
• 1:05:26
  you can't give yours all to me. What also I thought of was when
• 1:05:30
  their son dies and she's in mourning and grief, grieving
• 1:05:33
  over it. He's like, he's like, hey, he's
• 1:05:35
  not only our son, like we have a responsibility to the entire
• 1:05:38
  country. And I think that was when she
• 1:05:40
  was like, God, I don't like not only does she not have him from
• 1:05:43
  a romantic, maybe even sexual standpoint, she doesn't have
• 1:05:46
  only him from this like this aspect of like he's in charge of
• 1:05:49
  this entire country. She's just in ruling chosen.
• 1:05:52
  And so like, I don't have I'm not the main priority here, or I
• 1:05:55
  can't be or the only priority. Here, but 100 percent, 100%,
• 1:05:59
  she's sharing him with other women and she's sharing him with
• 1:06:02
  the responsibility of caring for the entire nation.
• 1:06:05
  And that moment in episode 17 is really brutal because she's laid
• 1:06:09
  up in bed, not eating, basically catatonic after losing her son.
• 1:06:15
  And he literally comes in to yell at her to get up.
• 1:06:20
  Stop mourning. There's over 100 kids who've
• 1:06:22
  died of measles inside the city. You're not the only parent who's
• 1:06:25
  lost a child, he says. Hide your sorrows and show
• 1:06:29
  dignity to the people. Crazy.
• 1:06:33
  And that is wild to me. I mean, I'm a woman of 2025 and
• 1:06:38
  that's really really brutal and cruel to me.
• 1:06:42
  But she gets up and says if this is because I'm a first rank lady
• 1:06:47
  of whatever whatever, fuck that. I never wanted this.
• 1:06:51
  And that's when she says I never wanted this again.
• 1:06:55
  She tells him like this is bullshit.
• 1:06:58
  If I'm expected to be different, act different because I'm a
• 1:07:02
  concubine. News flash, I never wanted to be
• 1:07:06
  here anyway, So I love that reality check that he tries to
• 1:07:12
  come in and give her and then she like boomerangs it back and
• 1:07:14
  she's like, well, let me tell you once again, why am I here?
• 1:07:20
  You know what I was confused by? When she's getting bathed for
• 1:07:24
  her first night as concubine, Yeah, it's it was sort of I was
• 1:07:28
  like, OK, she likes him enough or like she's in love with him
• 1:07:31
  enough, you know, sort of like sufficiently.
• 1:07:34
  Maybe he loves her more still, but she loves him too.
• 1:07:36
  But that bathe, the bathing scene where they're like dolling
• 1:07:39
  her up and everything and she looks miserable.
• 1:07:42
  Oh my God, like somebody died. Like, yeah.
• 1:07:45
  And I was a little confused because I was like, wait a
• 1:07:46
  second. I thought she kind of did,
• 1:07:48
  though. Like, or she at least accepted.
• 1:07:50
  She's like, I love him enough, I can accept this.
• 1:07:51
  I can do this. But then later it was like, no.
• 1:07:55
  I I totally understand where you're coming from because at
• 1:07:57
  the beginning of episode 16, there had been a year long time
• 1:08:02
  jump where she was outside of the palace, whatever.
• 1:08:06
  Then she gets reinstated as a palace maid and they do have
• 1:08:09
  this reconciliation. You know, she does say yes to
• 1:08:14
  his proposal. He's like, if I asked you to be
• 1:08:16
  my concubine, would you say if? I commanded you if I.
• 1:08:19
  Commanded you which thank you for pointing out that little.
• 1:08:23
  The nomenclature here is, I think important if I commanded
• 1:08:26
  you and she says. Yes, even that yes is not like a
• 1:08:31
  resounding. Joy no.
• 1:08:32
  Can't wait for that to happen. I think, she said perhaps.
• 1:08:36
  She said Perhaps I perhaps I do like you is.
• 1:08:40
  She never like you. Perhaps I do.
• 1:08:42
  I don't know. You tell me.
• 1:08:44
  I love. It keep them always guessing so
• 1:08:48
  but she essentially she says yes.
• 1:08:51
  I'm like, is it yes, or is it acquiescence?
• 1:08:53
  Like this is true? I don't know if other viewers
• 1:08:55
  had this like thing of it. You know, this is her station
• 1:08:58
  considering her, the logic of it all.
• 1:09:00
  She's so practical. She's very pragmatic.
• 1:09:02
  The logic of it all, How? How much can you refuse a king?
• 1:09:05
  How many times he's at least nice and benevolent and not like
• 1:09:08
  his dad? But what?
• 1:09:09
  How many? How long will that last?
• 1:09:11
  She's got to weigh all her options here and decide, like,
• 1:09:14
  do I just give in? Right, right.
• 1:09:16
  Do my feelings even matter at this point?
• 1:09:18
  He's not letting her go. Right.
• 1:09:21
  Even if he said that he would let her go, would he really?
• 1:09:23
  He's not. Would he really?
• 1:09:25
  He hasn't been historically. Yeah.
• 1:09:27
  Track record. His track record.
• 1:09:29
  Stupid, yeah. It's just you have to think
• 1:09:32
  about it that way. And I'm sure that on 1st watch
• 1:09:35
  in 2021, a lot of people didn't, a lot of viewers were like, what
• 1:09:40
  the fuck? She's really difficult.
• 1:09:43
  She's not saying yes to this incredible man.
• 1:09:47
  And second of all, it's Ichino who's so hot, he's so fine Cape
• 1:09:52
  up idol in the in the flesh. And he's just so charming A a
• 1:09:57
  lot of the time. I don't think it occurred to a
• 1:09:59
  lot of people that there was maybe a, a death sentence, you
• 1:10:04
  know, hanging over her at any given point in the show.
• 1:10:07
  Yeah, I think so. And I do again, I attribute it,
• 1:10:09
  at least this is just my opinion to like kind of how we normally
• 1:10:13
  see K dramas play out. They all lived happily ever
• 1:10:15
  after and they secretly liked each other the whole time.
• 1:10:17
  And they were like in denials, like wading through the river of
• 1:10:20
  denial. And then they like reached this
• 1:10:22
  point of self realization, self actualization, where they're
• 1:10:25
  like, you know what? I do love him.
• 1:10:27
  And it's definitive. Like when they reach that point,
• 1:10:28
  you're like, OK, final, it's like this payoff moment.
• 1:10:32
  And we never get this, that same kind of payoff moment.
• 1:10:34
  No, you're right. You're right.
• 1:10:38
  It's very like, oh, and there it is.
• 1:10:40
  They are in the bedroom now. She's all dolled up.
• 1:10:44
  She's ready to go. And still he, he has to, like,
• 1:10:48
  convince her. The question I think he poses to
• 1:10:51
  her is, if you can bear to never see me again, I'll let you go.
• 1:10:57
  We'll just pretend this never happened.
• 1:10:59
  She was like, all right, fine, bitch like.
• 1:11:03
  But you know, when I think about their time in the library where
• 1:11:06
  she's they're like both giggling over books or whatever, I really
• 1:11:08
  think there's this aspect of this where from a platonic
• 1:11:11
  standpoint, they can she's like, we can hang, right, Right.
• 1:11:15
  But he's like, hi, Keith writing her with like, what if I ended
• 1:11:19
  your blouse right now? Then what?
• 1:11:19
  It's like whoa. Whoa, that and that did happen.
• 1:11:23
  Like it's not like a hypothetical.
• 1:11:24
  He actually did do that. He's like, what if I undo your
• 1:11:28
  blouse right now? And if you refuse to be my
• 1:11:31
  concubine? Basically saying you have to be
• 1:11:33
  you like I if I wanted to I could make you and like he's
• 1:11:36
  like almost like I'm being benevolent by not making you and
• 1:11:38
  giving. Like I'm such a, I'm such a good
• 1:11:40
  guy. I am such a good guy by not
• 1:11:44
  making you be my concubine, by not saying.
• 1:11:48
  Masculinity is a bitch. I can't.
• 1:11:53
  I think what finally convinces her a little bit is that he says
• 1:11:56
  I love you. I don't care if you love me
• 1:11:58
  back, right? And he says, I don't care if
• 1:12:01
  it's loyalty or pity that has you here right now, that.
• 1:12:03
  He does care though, he's full of shit and the thing.
• 1:12:05
  Is he's full of shit, he does care.
• 1:12:08
  He said at least he says that, but yeah, he does.
• 1:12:10
  He does. The things that men will do to
• 1:12:12
  get you to sleep with them. So he says all of this.
• 1:12:16
  She does sleep with him. And it is actually really sweet.
• 1:12:19
  Like the morning after you see her, she's finally allowing
• 1:12:22
  herself to caress his face. Morning kisses.
• 1:12:25
  It's very sweet. But it is an immediate life
• 1:12:30
  change for her. You know, her friends are
• 1:12:33
  astonished that overnight she's just elevated to this whole new
• 1:12:38
  status. And the friends are like, you
• 1:12:41
  can't fall in love with this guy.
• 1:12:43
  Yeah, you can't fall in love with this guy.
• 1:12:44
  Love that girl talk. Oh my God, that's what she
• 1:12:47
  needed to hear. They were like world talk.
• 1:12:49
  Do not fall in love with this guy.
• 1:12:51
  Just do as little as you can without losing his favor, is
• 1:12:54
  what they tell her. And always maintain this like
• 1:12:56
  emotional distance with him. Don't let him know and don't let
• 1:12:58
  him believe. Don't give him a seconds like
• 1:13:01
  assurance. Yeah, you're in it.
• 1:13:03
  Yeah, this with him, you. Know and she confirms.
• 1:13:05
  She says out loud. I may be in love with him but I
• 1:13:08
  will never let him know that. And that's something that I
• 1:13:12
  think she decided even before her friends showed up and were
• 1:13:15
  like what the fuck. Second of all, don't what like
• 1:13:18
  guard your heart? She that's real, that is, I
• 1:13:21
  mean, I hate to say it, but especially in this power
• 1:13:23
  dynamic, it is real. This is not like a mutual love
• 1:13:26
  of equals or whatever in any sense, any capacity.
• 1:13:30
  He's someone who never hears No, he doesn't have to hear.
• 1:13:32
  No, he can change rules. He can execute whoever.
• 1:13:35
  She just doesn't have any like of her own anything.
• 1:13:39
  Yeah, and he's just deluding agency.
• 1:13:42
  Yeah, she has no agency. And he isan keeps deluding
• 1:13:46
  himself into over and over he says I'm not going to love like
• 1:13:49
  my grandfather. I'm going to protect those that
• 1:13:51
  I love. I promise.
• 1:13:52
  I'm going to protect you. Have faith in me, believe in me.
• 1:13:56
  And she's just like, okay, sure. I love that she has no chill.
• 1:14:02
  She can't even like like she's like doing all that.
• 1:14:04
  She knows all the court rules by heart.
• 1:14:06
  She knows the proper procedures in the palace, procedures for
• 1:14:09
  everything, but she has no chill.
• 1:14:11
  She can't hide her facial expression.
• 1:14:12
  She can't hide her like attitude problem like nothing.
• 1:14:14
  Nothing. Yeah, she's just like, sure,
• 1:14:17
  man. There's so many infractions that
• 1:14:21
  he does as well in the final two episodes, where, first of all,
• 1:14:25
  we already covered one, which was he tells her to like man up
• 1:14:28
  after her son dies tragically when she's pregnant.
• 1:14:31
  She falls pregnant after just three months of being with him.
• 1:14:34
  And the night that he finds out that she's pregnant, he's
• 1:14:37
  overjoyed and immediately goes to stay with the Queen.
• 1:14:40
  Man. Immediately goes to leaves her
• 1:14:44
  alone on that night and she was expecting him the whole day.
• 1:14:47
  Listen, I know that's his stepmom, but like, this hot,
• 1:14:50
  pretty queen and he's like, Oh my God, we're pregnant.
• 1:14:53
  Wait, I gotta go hang out with my stepmom.
• 1:14:54
  EW, why? No, you don't.
• 1:14:56
  She's like, too young and too pretty and like, you know, I
• 1:14:58
  don't. Know no, it was the real queen,
• 1:15:00
  his real queen, not the not the Empress Dowager his.
• 1:15:04
  Oh sorry, I was thinking it was the Dowager.
• 1:15:05
  Lady no. He had a a real a queen who they
• 1:15:10
  said, oh, they were trying. They've been trying to have a
• 1:15:12
  child and all this time. And of course, only after three
• 1:15:17
  months of being with his new concubine, the one that he's
• 1:15:19
  been head over heels in love with his entire life, she gets
• 1:15:23
  pregnant and the queen still has no children.
• 1:15:25
  So that's why he went to console the queen instead of celebrating
• 1:15:29
  with her. And it's heartbreaking.
• 1:15:31
  He also says towards the end of the episode, she asked him like,
• 1:15:34
  hey, have you ever imagined a scenario where you're a commoner
• 1:15:39
  and we can just be together, you know, a whole new life
• 1:15:43
  essentially, that is free from all of these structures and this
• 1:15:47
  chasm of a power imbalance between them.
• 1:15:50
  And he says, no, I've never thought about that.
• 1:15:55
  Never had that crossed my mind. Why would he?
• 1:15:58
  Why the hell would he? He says, oh, it just suits you
• 1:16:01
  to be a court lady. And she says, well.
• 1:16:03
  That was. Suits crazy to me and I was
• 1:16:05
  like. Why was this conversation
• 1:16:07
  happening? That's that's a lot.
• 1:16:11
  So I mean, the hits just keep coming these last two episodes.
• 1:16:16
  I'm not sure how you could have thought he's great.
• 1:16:19
  He totally deserves to be with her.
• 1:16:22
  You know what made me think like, not that he's great and
• 1:16:24
  deserves to be with her, but like when they bring in that
• 1:16:26
  other lady concubine that he first and she's like a bitch.
• 1:16:30
  Yes, yes, yes. You're like, OK, you know what?
• 1:16:34
  He concubine. Kwabin who's out here trying to
• 1:16:38
  catch the king in the act? Like I'm confused about why she
• 1:16:41
  was trying to incite him to be with home girl Pokémon.
• 1:16:48
  Like what? What was that I?
• 1:16:50
  Think just to get her away. That's it.
• 1:16:52
  I I don't know. So anyway, and then she's like
• 1:16:54
  starts beating her and giving her difficult jobs at night that
• 1:16:58
  are against palace rules and I mean, just all kind of shit.
• 1:17:03
  Anyway, so that's the last two episode.
• 1:17:05
  We basically covered the last two episodes on the show, but
• 1:17:09
  there is a lot that just happens in the show.
• 1:17:13
  And I want to touch on the fact that Pokim was groomed for him
• 1:17:22
  that I think hurt her very deeply, hurt the character,
• 1:17:26
  female lead very deeply. That her entire life of her
• 1:17:32
  growing up in the palace and working in the library and
• 1:17:36
  transcribing all of these books that he has been studying.
• 1:17:39
  So that she also, as she's transcribing, absorbs this
• 1:17:44
  information and studies it as well.
• 1:17:46
  All of this time being in close proximity to him and overhearing
• 1:17:50
  his voice as he's going through lessons and stuff nearby.
• 1:17:54
  All of this was by design. She was groomed for him.
• 1:18:00
  Do you have thoughts on that? It's it's hard because it's like
• 1:18:04
  the I just talk so much of it to like her station life, the
• 1:18:07
  circumstances of their life. She's a court lady.
• 1:18:10
  She's not just a regular commoner going through like the
• 1:18:12
  village market like other people are.
• 1:18:13
  So it's like, and like, who else is he hanging around?
• 1:18:16
  Like she he's gonna want to like some of these ladies.
• 1:18:18
  Like he also knows like one of these court ladies, any of them
• 1:18:21
  can be made concubine at any time or not even my official
• 1:18:23
  concubine, but just someone I like, you know, can do whatever
• 1:18:26
  I want with. So so on some level it's like,
• 1:18:28
  well, inevitably, yes, but like, I do think she has this like
• 1:18:33
  pride and I think like not enough things explore the pride
• 1:18:36
  of like a little bit like in parasite maybe.
• 1:18:38
  But like you don't really see a lot of like the pride of people
• 1:18:41
  who are either impoverished or in this like lower class social
• 1:18:44
  class in life. I'm putting a class like air
• 1:18:46
  quotes because you know, what even is it?
• 1:18:48
  But like their social status or social whatever.
• 1:18:50
  And and then in this case, it's such an extreme version because
• 1:18:52
  he's literal royalty and she is literally a palace made.
• 1:18:57
  So it doesn't get any more stark than that, but from an emotion.
• 1:19:00
  That's why I'm like, what is love?
• 1:19:02
  What could love be for them? And like, what would that look
• 1:19:04
  like? Can it even exist?
• 1:19:05
  You know it's too hard. Yeah, I think that even before
• 1:19:11
  there's a scene before when she finds out from the head court
• 1:19:14
  lady that she. I want you to be his concubine.
• 1:19:18
  I've been. All of this is by design.
• 1:19:21
  You know, if you have feelings for him, great, because I want
• 1:19:23
  you. I want to install you as his
• 1:19:25
  concubine. And that scares her really
• 1:19:28
  badly. But before that, she's talking
• 1:19:31
  with her, her brother, her older brother that she's finally seen
• 1:19:34
  for the first time in a long time.
• 1:19:36
  And he tells her, you're a free spirit by nature, and you should
• 1:19:40
  be able to freely roam the world.
• 1:19:42
  It's sad that you must be caged in the palace where it was his
• 1:19:46
  direct words. And then she's like, oh, no,
• 1:19:49
  don't worry about me. And she lists three things that
• 1:19:51
  make her life as a palace made likable, bearable even.
• 1:19:55
  She says, what's so great about getting married and living an
• 1:19:57
  ordinary life? I have so many things.
• 1:20:00
  There's Court lady Saul, who's like a mother to me and my
• 1:20:03
  friends who are like, family. Also.
• 1:20:06
  I'm like really good at my job. She's like, I'm the best palace
• 1:20:09
  maid. I do think like, has she been
• 1:20:12
  allowed to just live in the library for the rest of her
• 1:20:14
  life? She would have been golden on
• 1:20:16
  some level, you know, because because I don't know, I kind of
• 1:20:19
  do believe her being like, well, what's so great about being
• 1:20:21
  married? Because either way, at that time
• 1:20:23
  especially, you're beholden to your husband, your husband, even
• 1:20:26
  commoners back then could take concubines and did.
• 1:20:29
  So I, I think she kind of was being serious and she's like,
• 1:20:32
  well, what's so great about that?
• 1:20:32
  But again, like it's like she found little spaces of where she
• 1:20:36
  felt free and was in being in charge of the library.
• 1:20:39
  But then when that was taken away, she's like, oh God, I
• 1:20:42
  can't. Right, right.
• 1:20:44
  There was these little pockets of joy and freedom in the
• 1:20:48
  palace, and there were like, consolations for her giving up
• 1:20:53
  so much of herself and her life being a palace maid.
• 1:20:57
  And this was already, she's like, sort of, definitely
• 1:21:01
  attracted to him, but very sort of in love with him.
• 1:21:05
  And she's still like, yeah, I love my life because of these
• 1:21:09
  three things. And eventually she loses all of
• 1:21:12
  these things just by being with him.
• 1:21:15
  Just by virtue of being with him, she loses everything that
• 1:21:17
  made it worthwhile to stay in the palace because she did have
• 1:21:21
  the option to just run away with her brother.
• 1:21:24
  And she did leave for a whole year and then was compelled to
• 1:21:27
  come back, which kind of sucked, but.
• 1:21:28
  Oh yeah, yeah. For sure.
• 1:21:30
  So a lot of things that fractured their relationship and
• 1:21:33
  made it, it was still the most viable option for her, but it
• 1:21:38
  wasn't the thing that was going to fulfill her.
• 1:21:41
  Ever. That's how I feel too.
• 1:21:44
  Yeah, I had someone in my DM say, oh, but I feel so bad for
• 1:21:49
  the Crown Prince, for Ijuno's character, King Jeong Jo.
• 1:21:52
  And and she was like, I feel so bad for him because he never
• 1:21:57
  knew that she loved him. He didn't.
• 1:21:59
  Ever have. I mean, that's true.
• 1:22:00
  I also felt kind of bad about. That and I said something kind
• 1:22:04
  of harsh to this person in the DMS, but I actually just I do
• 1:22:08
  feel the same way now. So I will repeat the harsh thing
• 1:22:11
  that I said. I said, oh, he got everything he
• 1:22:15
  ever wanted. He got everything he ever want.
• 1:22:19
  He ascended the throne safely. He brought about a renaissance
• 1:22:23
  in Korea and got to finally, you know, accept his lineage from
• 1:22:29
  his Prince Sado father and build what he wanted and have the
• 1:22:35
  woman of his dreams by his side. He could sleep with her whenever
• 1:22:39
  he wanted. And then he had all these other
• 1:22:42
  women as well, just like a full ass harem.
• 1:22:46
  He had sons, which was like a big deal.
• 1:22:48
  He had sons and daughters and it's so unfortunate the poor
• 1:22:53
  thing didn't know that she loved him.
• 1:22:56
  I mean, I really do think. I don't feel badly at all for
• 1:23:00
  him. And I don't know if she knew
• 1:23:03
  100% either because this like question of like, well, she did
• 1:23:06
  love him just like a certain way or to a certain extent if they
• 1:23:10
  could have like really been good friends as well as maybe even
• 1:23:12
  romantically like a dated, if that was like a thing.
• 1:23:14
  I don't know at the time, but I don't know, like she was like
• 1:23:18
  his everything, at least in the drama, right?
• 1:23:20
  And I don't think she knew like I think she's more like, I don't
• 1:23:24
  even know. My frame of reference is small.
• 1:23:25
  I live this kind of small life because I live in the palace and
• 1:23:28
  I like serve you and your, you know, relatives or whatever.
• 1:23:31
  And so, so on some level she's like, but what if like the what
• 1:23:34
  if factor or something like that was in her mind constantly,
• 1:23:37
  like, you aren't my whole world because there's a whole other
• 1:23:39
  world out there and I don't even get to explore it.
• 1:23:41
  So she always kind of had this like kind of, I don't know if
• 1:23:43
  it's doubt or misgivings, but something along those lines of
• 1:23:46
  like, but what if or like, what else is there?
• 1:23:48
  Like maybe it would be my whole life, my whole world if I could
• 1:23:51
  see the rest of the world and she couldn't.
• 1:23:53
  So I think this like, conflict, it was just a lot of conflict
• 1:23:55
  for her about this question of like, it's not for me at least,
• 1:23:58
  it was so nuanced and not like we were saying earlier, not so
• 1:24:01
  directly. Like, yeah, I love him, Let's
• 1:24:02
  get together. We love each other at the end.
• 1:24:04
  Like so much going on internally for her.
• 1:24:07
  And there's so many red, red freaking flags for him that he
• 1:24:12
  does. We mentioned one earlier where
• 1:24:13
  he like, threatens to just take her right there, like rape her
• 1:24:16
  basically. And then if she doesn't accept
• 1:24:19
  him, then she's going to get ostracized, ostracized and sent
• 1:24:23
  to the back of house. And that'll be the rest of her
• 1:24:25
  life in living in shame. And like halfway through the
• 1:24:29
  show, we get the library scene, a library scene where he's mad
• 1:24:35
  with jealousy. He just saw her being intimate.
• 1:24:38
  And I put in air quotes with her brother and he because she gets
• 1:24:45
  like arm sleeves. He gives her like sleeve cuffs
• 1:24:47
  to presumably to keep her warm. And he goes crazy.
• 1:24:50
  He's like, then does your everything belong to me?
• 1:24:53
  Your thoughts, your will, your heart, Do they belong to me?
• 1:24:55
  Answer me. And she's like, no, even a
• 1:25:00
  palace maid has her own will and heart, even though they may seem
• 1:25:03
  trivial to others. Even though I belong to you, my
• 1:25:07
  everything does not belong to you.
• 1:25:09
  And he, like, has got her up against the bookcase, almost
• 1:25:14
  caresses her face. You think he's going to be soft
• 1:25:16
  with her after she says this inflammatory thing?
• 1:25:20
  And then no, he grabs her by the neck.
• 1:25:24
  It's so aggressive. He says, I alone decide your
• 1:25:27
  fate. Everything you own belongs to
• 1:25:30
  me. I decide whether you live or
• 1:25:32
  whether you die. Never forget that, That I'm
• 1:25:36
  like, what are we doing here? He wants to assert his
• 1:25:41
  dominance, his control over her, actively taking away her agency
• 1:25:45
  even in his this speech to her, wants to take away her sense of
• 1:25:50
  self. Nothing.
• 1:25:50
  She can't own anything herself, any semblance of safety, because
• 1:25:55
  he's like, I decide whether you live or die.
• 1:25:57
  So she's like got to be fucking nervous.
• 1:26:00
  Nervous as shit. He's also mad she's never afraid
• 1:26:03
  in his presence or like nervous in his presence, but I think the
• 1:26:06
  conflict does mention with her where she's like, I don't know.
• 1:26:08
  There's also a conflict in a way with him because it's like he's
• 1:26:12
  sometimes like I don't give a shit if you actually really love
• 1:26:14
  me or not. That's irrelevant.
• 1:26:15
  I'm going to make you love me, you know, kind of thing, or like
• 1:26:17
  I'm going to make you my concubine there for you do love
• 1:26:19
  me, but then he's like, but do you love me?
• 1:26:20
  Please love me. Do you love me?
• 1:26:21
  Do you love me? Please love me like.
• 1:26:22
  Right. Hello.
• 1:26:25
  Chill out. Yeah.
• 1:26:27
  It's it's frustrating because he's so he's trying to put on a
• 1:26:32
  brave face when he really does crave her, her love, her
• 1:26:37
  genuine. Yeah, he wants her genuine love
• 1:26:40
  and affection and everything she's got.
• 1:26:42
  And she's like, I'll give you something.
• 1:26:45
  Yeah, but not everything. And maybe it's a difference of,
• 1:26:50
  you know, she's a like the love languages, he's words of
• 1:26:55
  affirmation or something. And she is actions, right,
• 1:27:01
  Right. I forget what they are.
• 1:27:02
  But the fact that she never explicitly says, but her mere
• 1:27:07
  presence in his life is evidence enough that she cares enough
• 1:27:15
  that she loves him enough it is. That's ridiculous.
• 1:27:20
  It's a little. Another thing that maybe is like
• 1:27:22
  dissatisfactory, if you're like AK drama viewer who lives for
• 1:27:25
  those moments so that he he's not her all and everything,
• 1:27:28
  everything's not OK just because they're together.
• 1:27:29
  Whereas like a lot of K dramas have that kind of romantic ones,
• 1:27:32
  I mean, have that kind of aspect to it where it's like they got
• 1:27:34
  together, they won at life, they're going to be together
• 1:27:37
  forever and everything's OK now. And like there's not as many
• 1:27:40
  dramas where like everything's so conflicted and complicated
• 1:27:43
  and like this one was. So I kind of respect that about
• 1:27:45
  this, but. Yeah, I do too, talking about
• 1:27:49
  things that he does wrong. I just remembered this right now
• 1:27:54
  that the Royal Preceptor kind of loses his shit.
• 1:27:57
  He goes batshit crazy toward the end of the show when his little
• 1:28:01
  sister dies, who he marries her into be a little concubine and
• 1:28:07
  bra bra bra bra. So he goes nuts and starts
• 1:28:13
  kidnapping court ladies and torturing them and planning to
• 1:28:17
  frame the Empress Dowager for murder for his sister's murder,
• 1:28:23
  which is all lies, all of its lies.
• 1:28:25
  And the King will, the now King Juno's character knew about his
• 1:28:33
  antics, knew that he was keeping all these court ladies hostage
• 1:28:37
  and then he was doing them harm and he was kidnapping more.
• 1:28:40
  And there was just a trail of bodies in his wake.
• 1:28:43
  And he was like, I'm just waiting for him to what?
• 1:28:49
  Confessed to his cry. I was super confused about that
• 1:28:54
  whole thing. This is also something that I'm
• 1:28:56
  sure fractured their relationship because she did not
• 1:29:01
  trust him to provide justice for her and her friend who got
• 1:29:06
  kidnapped. Do you think the whole thing
• 1:29:09
  with the the scholar existed in real life as you were talking
• 1:29:11
  about before they changed his name for some reason, This may
• 1:29:13
  because he was sadistic in this show, but because there's no
• 1:29:17
  evidence that the real person did anything like this.
• 1:29:18
  But the real person was power hungry as well to a certain
• 1:29:21
  extent and was trying to like, you know, get one over on him or
• 1:29:23
  whatever. But but do you think that the
• 1:29:25
  whole like this pot line which I found very random and on some
• 1:29:28
  level was like supposed to mirror the real life Prince Otto
• 1:29:32
  and his antics or like why was this happening or like why was
• 1:29:35
  this a plot point? I don't know.
• 1:29:38
  I don't know. I think it's strange even saying
• 1:29:41
  out loud like what he was doing into what end is really strange
• 1:29:45
  because it doesn't look helpful to his cause.
• 1:29:49
  And if he was trying to vie for power, why I'm confused about
• 1:29:55
  this whole plot to Fair Rain the Empress Dowager.
• 1:30:00
  It was crazy. It was just unhinged.
• 1:30:04
  Were they just like we need drama another.
• 1:30:06
  Action I think. I mean honestly it could just
• 1:30:08
  the ninja. Ninja court ladies weren't
• 1:30:10
  enough Ninja like court ladies? What was that even?
• 1:30:14
  So many things in this show was like, that's why I give a 3 1/2
• 1:30:16
  sojuice because I was like, what are we doing?
• 1:30:18
  I think I forgive a lot regarding the fairy Palace and
• 1:30:24
  the ninja court ladies and them trying to.
• 1:30:30
  I mean, the secret cult thing was it was beyond me because.
• 1:30:34
  Societies, they're like, yeah, really weird.
• 1:30:36
  They're in the Illuminati or whatever.
• 1:30:38
  It was basically, yeah, it was basically this underground
• 1:30:42
  secret Society of evil. 'Cause they also did nothing
• 1:30:46
  like fine, you have like there's this made secret society.
• 1:30:49
  There's a Prince himself is in one.
• 1:30:51
  Why? To do what what what was
• 1:30:55
  happening? Yeah, I could drop my score to a
• 1:30:57
  four, but I'm still really enamored with the show.
• 1:31:00
  But like this doesn't make I like the concepts that it
• 1:31:04
  introduced of never trust the king was their motto for the
• 1:31:10
  organization. That was interesting.
• 1:31:13
  But to me, the whole lore of the group and the moon fairies
• 1:31:18
  coming down and they get to choose the king and they're in
• 1:31:25
  it to protect the palace maids and all this stuff so that, you
• 1:31:30
  know, another Prince Sido doesn't rise up and start
• 1:31:33
  slaughtering and raping everybody.
• 1:31:36
  I mean, I, I don't have words like that sounds crazy.
• 1:31:41
  I see you like cringing. It is weird.
• 1:31:45
  Weird. It's weird.
• 1:31:46
  The tiger episode I thought was weird enough and then I went to
• 1:31:49
  this whole other. Level the tiger.
• 1:31:50
  All the CGI tiger I was like is this a low point or a high point
• 1:31:56
  because the CGI tiger like in mid air pouncing at him I was
• 1:32:00
  like damn what is? Also like at that point I still
• 1:32:05
  wasn't taking Junho seriously enough.
• 1:32:06
  Like in my mind he was still like.
• 1:32:08
  All talking about you, yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:13
  Yeah, so, so I was like he he's fighting a tiger.
• 1:32:17
  Like, OK, I don't think so, but OK, like could not suspend
• 1:32:21
  belief for that one. But I guess we can segue into
• 1:32:25
  the head palace lady Loved her because I loved her.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah. Why did you talk about?
• 1:32:31
  It I don't really even know again, what the point of her was
• 1:32:35
  other than to orchestrate this whole thing with getting dog
• 1:32:37
  Game involved in his life and having her be her stooge,
• 1:32:40
  basically her spy or both. And but she was just cool.
• 1:32:44
  Like, and I also didn't fully understand the like power
• 1:32:47
  structure of like the head court lady and she had all this power,
• 1:32:50
  but like kind of why? And like, how do you know that
• 1:32:52
  you have to listen to her? And like, there's a lot of like
• 1:32:54
  questions in my mind about that. But she was just really cool and
• 1:32:56
  she knew how to like manipulate everybody, and I respect that.
• 1:33:02
  Yeah, like the moment that she, because she basically gets found
• 1:33:08
  out, she goes she goes to the prison for all the things that
• 1:33:14
  she actually did. The whole lore behind her was
• 1:33:18
  that she could have been another concubine for the Grandpa King.
• 1:33:23
  And the face off that she has with the Grandpa King is one of
• 1:33:29
  my favorite scenes because she claims it was her own petty
• 1:33:33
  revenge for hating Concubine Yongbin.
• 1:33:38
  But the king, the Grandpa king, knows better.
• 1:33:42
  He had earlier said. I never chose you because we're
• 1:33:47
  the same, you know, we're both really cruel and cut from the
• 1:33:53
  same cloth, is what he said. But Concubine Youngbin, there's
• 1:33:58
  a lot of warmth to her, and I felt that ease with her, was
• 1:34:03
  what he said. She basically brought him some
• 1:34:05
  measure of peace in his tumultuous life.
• 1:34:09
  Home girl, the head court lady was never going to do that for
• 1:34:12
  him. That hurt her very deeply.
• 1:34:15
  And the moment where she says, oh, I just did it for petty
• 1:34:18
  revenge, he's like, no, you resented me.
• 1:34:23
  She as part of the fairy palace. Just saying it is stupid.
• 1:34:30
  Chose him a king of humble beginnings to roll and she
• 1:34:34
  arrogantly thought that she could become his concubine.
• 1:34:38
  And I don't know if that means the fairy palace poisoned his
• 1:34:42
  older brother. I guess another bit of like
• 1:34:46
  revisionist little history there I guess is they are insinuating
• 1:34:51
  that the fairy palace killed his older brother in order to
• 1:34:54
  install the grandpa king. And so the king recognized that
• 1:34:58
  he did use her up and throw her away, and perhaps she did help
• 1:35:04
  him ascend to power and he was going to be merciful and let her
• 1:35:08
  live, which I thought was crazy. But but both him and his
• 1:35:13
  grandson are like that, like they're both kind of softies.
• 1:35:15
  Even though he was cruel or cruel as a king in certain ways,
• 1:35:18
  you would pain him. Like the times he was punishing
• 1:35:21
  San, it was really paining him a lot.
• 1:35:24
  So this was like, I kept feeling like all the time, like they
• 1:35:27
  were related. But but but to go back to her
• 1:35:28
  quickly, I just want to say one thing.
• 1:35:29
  She and he were like great casting.
• 1:35:31
  Yes, he was played by Edoqua actor Edoqua and then she was
• 1:35:38
  played by Pakji Young. They played that scene so well
• 1:35:41
  and they were so good together and you really believed
• 1:35:43
  everything that they were doing with each other, like in terms
• 1:35:46
  of their acting. Absolutely.
• 1:35:48
  Yeah. And she says to him, Your
• 1:35:50
  Majesty, you have always only taken from me.
• 1:35:53
  Will you give something to me? Just once?
• 1:35:55
  And I thought that was really powerful of her to say that
• 1:35:58
  you've only taken from me. I mean, this is a woman who has
• 1:36:02
  schemed her way to the top, who has killed people, who has
• 1:36:09
  planned assassinations. She tried to assassinate Isan,
• 1:36:13
  tortures people, tortures people, old palace maids who
• 1:36:17
  couldn't hurt a family. She's torturing them.
• 1:36:20
  And this lady is like you. The king took everything from
• 1:36:25
  me. It's almost like a a mirror kind
• 1:36:28
  of deal that she's mirroring Dokima the.
• 1:36:31
  Female off each other. Well, yeah, but yeah, both her
• 1:36:35
  acting with the actress who played Dokim, the act like
• 1:36:39
  playing off with the king, all that was she's just great.
• 1:36:41
  Like I loved her so much in terms of her everything, how she
• 1:36:44
  played the character, everything.
• 1:36:46
  Yeah, and at that point, like those two, the Grandpa King and
• 1:36:50
  the head court lady, they are beyond saving, like both of
• 1:36:54
  them. And she doesn't believe him.
• 1:36:56
  She doesn't believe that he's going to save her.
• 1:36:58
  And he promises to like, basically send her off and she's
• 1:37:02
  going to live the rest of her life in health and peace and OK,
• 1:37:06
  after she tried to kill his grandson, the Crown Prince.
• 1:37:09
  Bullshit. So she doesn't believe his oath.
• 1:37:12
  She doesn't trust his favor. And she kills herself with a
• 1:37:14
  tiny knife, which is called a jangdo or UN jangdo, meaning
• 1:37:19
  silver knife, commonly carried by both men and women.
• 1:37:23
  These knives were not just for practical use but also for
• 1:37:25
  status. They were also used for
• 1:37:27
  self-defense. And for women, they were
• 1:37:29
  sometimes believed to be used for suicide rather than
• 1:37:31
  submitting to an attacker. And that's exactly what she does
• 1:37:35
  in that scene. She commits suicide rather than
• 1:37:38
  like be taken alive or let off the hook.
• 1:37:41
  I think at that point he, I think, I do believe that he
• 1:37:44
  would have let her off the hook. I think she would have seen that
• 1:37:46
  as some kind of defeat. Like she lost, Like
• 1:37:49
  unequivocally she lost. And I don't think she could live
• 1:37:51
  with that either. So the grandpa king dies, but I
• 1:37:54
  want to talk about the grandpa king and how the first time I
• 1:37:57
  watched this I think I was a lot harsher on him or thought more
• 1:38:02
  harshly toward him and then I really softened toward his
• 1:38:07
  character on this rewatch. Did you have thoughts about the
• 1:38:11
  Grandpa King? I mean everyone was I think
• 1:38:14
  because he killed his own son is like the the view of him
• 1:38:18
  prevailing view of him in around court was that he was harsh and
• 1:38:21
  strict and by the book and then when his grandson ascends to the
• 1:38:25
  throne, he's also trying to be. But they're both like I was
• 1:38:27
  saying earlier, just super softies like they they have this
• 1:38:31
  like all this humanity in them that a lot of cuz like again,
• 1:38:33
  when we we juxtapose them with that other concubine lady
• 1:38:37
  popping and she has no like she does not care.
• 1:38:41
  She's in it for herself. She's in it for like the power.
• 1:38:44
  She does not care and she's not about to be like embarrassed by
• 1:38:47
  Dolby or anybody. And and she's so like, you know,
• 1:38:50
  the whipping and all that that they didn't do.
• 1:38:52
  Whereas like freaking son when he's king is like, no one does
• 1:38:55
  laundry after night. You might catch a cold.
• 1:38:56
  I was like, what? But so the grandfather's not
• 1:38:59
  quite as softy as him. But yeah, he I didn't think ever
• 1:39:03
  see him as like super harsh as everyone was like saying.
• 1:39:06
  And I just chalked it up to like.
• 1:39:09
  Yeah, yeah, I agree. I, I felt a lot more sympathy
• 1:39:12
  for him this time around. Thought that he did have Yisan's
• 1:39:17
  best interest at heart and that he was shielding him from a lot
• 1:39:22
  and was certainly afraid, terrified of him becoming mad
• 1:39:29
  like his son Prince Sado. But that manifested in being
• 1:39:35
  very strict with him, with, you know, slapping him around and
• 1:39:39
  abusing him every so often to try and train some sense into
• 1:39:43
  him. And yes, it's abusive.
• 1:39:46
  Yes, it's wrong. Also, I I think he did the best
• 1:39:49
  he could. And that is, I think the softer
• 1:39:52
  side of this rewatch coming out that I was like, I I'm a little
• 1:39:56
  more like, yeah, but he tried his best.
• 1:39:59
  He didn't know how to do this right.
• 1:40:02
  Like how to? I wonder if we go to like the
• 1:40:04
  actual history of it where his real life Prince Otto felt
• 1:40:08
  neglected. The wife corroborated that he
• 1:40:10
  was kind of an aloof parent to his married 11 year old son or
• 1:40:15
  whatever, married nine year old son.
• 1:40:17
  And you know, the sting of that, if we were to apply it to the
• 1:40:20
  way they were the script, maybe they use maybe some of that
• 1:40:22
  information and was like, he's now trying to make sure he's so
• 1:40:26
  attentive to everything Isan is doing and making sure that E son
• 1:40:29
  doesn't go down this path of psychosis or whatever is going
• 1:40:32
  on sociopathy. I don't know.
• 1:40:34
  He so he's like really attentive now and he's really like strict
• 1:40:37
  and really rigid and non not forgiving.
• 1:40:40
  So he there's no way he can become as unhinged as his father
• 1:40:43
  had because it was traumatic for him too.
• 1:40:45
  He doesn't want to put in another rice casket or whatever.
• 1:40:47
  Oh my God, please. Something that I noticed earlier
• 1:40:53
  in the show is that whenever Tolkien is upset or angry or
• 1:40:59
  something, she wants to take it out on somebody.
• 1:41:01
  She just goes to this pond and starts skipping rocks or
• 1:41:04
  throwing rocks in the pond. And she, like, lets out all her
• 1:41:06
  frustrations and she bends and she's talking out loud to
• 1:41:09
  herself. And I thought that was really
• 1:41:11
  endearing. And later in the show, as the
• 1:41:14
  show progresses, she does not do that.
• 1:41:16
  She instead goes to the same pond and creates a little leaf
• 1:41:21
  boat and sends that floating on the pond instead of disturbing
• 1:41:26
  the water and picking up a rock and being a little more violent.
• 1:41:30
  And I thought that was really telling of basically a maturity
• 1:41:36
  happening with her, but also a loss of innocence for her.
• 1:41:41
  And the story I feel ultimately is a loss of innocence and a
• 1:41:46
  story of betraying yourself in order to fulfill any kind of
• 1:41:53
  romantic love that is available to you.
• 1:41:56
  And that's tough. That's a little tougher to
• 1:42:00
  swallow. Then this is a straight love
• 1:42:03
  story between a king who absolutely adored this
• 1:42:06
  concubine. It was so chilling when the
• 1:42:11
  mother lady, I forgot how they called her, takes her for the
• 1:42:13
  concubine first night and she's like, just come with me, don't
• 1:42:17
  argue, just come on. And then she's like Tonkima, you
• 1:42:19
  have to do what the king said. I was like, no.
• 1:42:23
  And then she's just like harrowedly getting her, you
• 1:42:26
  know, bath done or whatever, meeting him.
• 1:42:29
  And she's just like, Oh my God, it's hitting her so hard.
• 1:42:32
  And yeah, the I mean, you were talking about the last of
• 1:42:35
  innocence, but it's also like, like you're forced to grow up a
• 1:42:38
  lot of times. Most of us are forced to somehow
• 1:42:40
  some way to like grow up a little.
• 1:42:41
  Like, you know, stop acting like a kid in a way and stop being a
• 1:42:44
  dreamer in a way, like idealizing your future.
• 1:42:47
  And just based up to the fact like maybe you're always going
• 1:42:49
  to be a corporate cog in the machine in in our today's world
• 1:42:52
  or something. Or maybe you're always going to
• 1:42:53
  do whatever. You're never going to be a
• 1:42:54
  baseball player, whatever it is that people.
• 1:42:56
  Right, Right. She kind of is at this point
• 1:42:58
  where she's like, OK, well, this is my life.
• 1:43:02
  This is my life, this is the cards that I've been dealt and
• 1:43:06
  it's probably going to do me more harm to it.
• 1:43:08
  It's much easier to just say yes.
• 1:43:11
  Yeah. Then it would be to try and
• 1:43:13
  extricate from the situation. The I don't know.
• 1:43:17
  Do you have anything else you'd like to talk about?
• 1:43:20
  I think just one last thing is maybe the the scholar guy to go
• 1:43:23
  back to him going nuts and torturing maids for no real
• 1:43:26
  reason. At first.
• 1:43:29
  At first I thought that was like related to his intense hunger
• 1:43:32
  for power. But kind of the way he was
• 1:43:34
  playing, at least to my viewing of it was like his immense grief
• 1:43:37
  over the loss of his sister. But he's at some points he
• 1:43:41
  seemed ruthless in quotes enough to be.
• 1:43:43
  I mean, he's feeding a child to be the concubine of his his king
• 1:43:46
  friend for his own sake, like we're going to get power from.
• 1:43:50
  This where his son feeding is such a great word.
• 1:43:54
  Yeah, right. And so then, but then you see
• 1:43:56
  him instead of like just being maybe torturing me out of anger
• 1:43:59
  that he isn't going to be in the power place that he wants to be.
• 1:44:02
  He's almost just like so sad and he can't, he can't cope with it.
• 1:44:05
  And I'm saying, oh, he should have gotten over though like
• 1:44:07
  child's death. But he's like the where it's
• 1:44:10
  coming from was weirding me out. So I don't know why they did
• 1:44:14
  that. Maybe to humanize him somehow
• 1:44:15
  for some reason, but in a way he's still torturing other
• 1:44:18
  women. So it's not really humanizing.
• 1:44:20
  Right. It's.
• 1:44:21
  It's weird we have to talk about bath time in episode 6.
• 1:44:25
  Yeah. OK, so this is a really sexy
• 1:44:29
  scene. There's a lot of sexual tension
• 1:44:31
  throughout the show. But this particular scene, I
• 1:44:35
  remember lighting up social media.
• 1:44:37
  Yes. And so many Tik Tok's reels and
• 1:44:40
  it's. Just this because she just falls
• 1:44:45
  in the water and he catches her. He had gone to help her with
• 1:44:51
  pouring this heavy bucket of water, which I'm like OK,
• 1:44:54
  really. Like this is not something that
• 1:44:56
  he does with every other palace maid who's in there helping him
• 1:45:00
  take a bath. Every other bitch has to hoist
• 1:45:03
  up that bucket of water by themselves.
• 1:45:05
  But because it's her, he tries to help her and this really
• 1:45:10
  silly looking fall happens and they're in this hop bath water
• 1:45:16
  together and you see Juno's chest in his abs and everything.
• 1:45:21
  What did you think of the scene? Looked good.
• 1:45:23
  Looked looked good. No, I know it's so funny
• 1:45:26
  because, you know, at the time I didn't watch Red Sleep when it
• 1:45:29
  came out, but it was a very hyped up show.
• 1:45:31
  The fans were out here and the edits were out here and it was
• 1:45:34
  always that freaking scene, which was at the time I wasn't
• 1:45:36
  complaining, but this time it looked 10 times cornier for some
• 1:45:39
  reason. It.
• 1:45:39
  Did. I was like, I don't remember
• 1:45:42
  being this cringy, but it kind of did come across that way this
• 1:45:45
  time. But yeah, I mean, why was that
• 1:45:47
  happening? Who knows?
• 1:45:48
  I had to give us something, right?
• 1:45:49
  There's so much about K drama romances that they weren't
• 1:45:51
  giving us that they probably were like, we got to get you
• 1:45:54
  guys invested in this, and especially because we know we're
• 1:45:56
  going to let you down really badly later.
• 1:45:58
  So I guess it was just an element of that.
• 1:46:00
  I don't think it's any deeper than that.
• 1:46:02
  But yeah, how funny of a little scene there.
• 1:46:05
  Yeah, I mean, that scene is preceded by her lecturing him
• 1:46:11
  about because he gets jealous again, she's too close to the
• 1:46:16
  royal preceptor, but the royal preceptor was getting close to
• 1:46:19
  her. He was getting handsy with her
• 1:46:21
  and trying to be like really aggressively flirtatious with
• 1:46:24
  her in a in a single moment. And he oversaw, he saw it.
• 1:46:29
  And she says then you should have scolded him for harassing
• 1:46:33
  this palace maid. Why did you just watch?
• 1:46:36
  Weren't you aware that Sir Preceptor constantly harasses
• 1:46:40
  the palace maids that he makes them tell him secrets that they
• 1:46:43
  see in the palace? You never scolded Sir Preceptor,
• 1:46:48
  your right hand man, but chose to lash out at me this powerless
• 1:46:51
  palace. And I was like bitch if you
• 1:46:54
  don't slap this guy. And then the corniest fall in
• 1:47:00
  the history of K drama when she falls back.
• 1:47:02
  We all love the like, hate to love, you know, kind of things.
• 1:47:06
  So I do. I really think it was just candy
• 1:47:09
  for K drama viewers. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:47:11
  Things like that. And I think it was well done.
• 1:47:13
  At least it felt well done at the time.
• 1:47:15
  But now. I know you're kind of like,
• 1:47:18
  wait. But we got Juno in like in damp
• 1:47:21
  clingy clothes. So like or wet clingy clothes?
• 1:47:23
  Right. Transparent white silk garb.
• 1:47:27
  Yeah, there was a moment. There's so many moments earlier
• 1:47:30
  in the show where she is made to feel small, where she as a
• 1:47:34
  palace maid, they're like, who cares about you and your
• 1:47:38
  feelings? Why do you?
• 1:47:39
  Why should you get a say? And she's disrespected over and
• 1:47:42
  over again, even by him, right by Igeno's Crown Prince.
• 1:47:49
  I think that that's makes for a shaky foundation for a romance
• 1:47:53
  to me. When everyone around her saying
• 1:47:56
  you don't matter, you know, who cares about your feelings?
• 1:47:59
  How do you think he feels about you and the royal preceptor
• 1:48:03
  asking her this instead of going directly to the Crown Prince and
• 1:48:07
  asking, hey, what do you think of Dokima?
• 1:48:10
  And she's like, I don't know, why don't you ask him yourself?
• 1:48:12
  He walks away and she goes, hey, wait a minute, Don't you want to
• 1:48:17
  know what I think of him? Yeah.
• 1:48:19
  What's in my heart? What are my feelings?
• 1:48:21
  And he's like, I don't fucking care.
• 1:48:23
  I don't give a shit. Who cares what's inside a palace
• 1:48:25
  maid's heart? Aside from the palace maid
• 1:48:27
  thing, most people weren't really notoriously caring about
• 1:48:30
  women's thoughts and feelings anyway.
• 1:48:32
  Yeah, exactly, Exactly. 2 last things I'll say is that So we'll
• 1:48:38
  talk about him first. Crown Prince Ijeno's character,
• 1:48:43
  I love this moment when she reads him poems from this book
• 1:48:48
  of odes that he loves. And they're on the other side of
• 1:48:50
  the wall. Yes, that is one of my favorite
• 1:48:53
  scenes in the whole show. I think it just so sums up their
• 1:48:57
  relationship and how there is always something between them.
• 1:49:02
  You know, as a book lover, that is porn to me.
• 1:49:04
  Oh my. God, that's loved it, yes.
• 1:49:07
  You're also a book lover, so yeah.
• 1:49:09
  Absolutely. I think that the moment when the
• 1:49:13
  grandpa comes and basically beats his ass and then he leaves
• 1:49:18
  and she's there across the wall. 'Cause he's in like, he's in
• 1:49:22
  like a little house arrest. Yes.
• 1:49:24
  He's under like a little mini house arrest.
• 1:49:27
  And she says, do you bear it because you have no other
• 1:49:29
  choice? And he said he goes feral.
• 1:49:31
  He goes like full Daniel Day Lewis in this scene.
• 1:49:34
  It's like an acting showcase. There's like, many in this show
• 1:49:38
  where you're like, well, damn, you know, like, I didn't know,
• 1:49:41
  geez, like, give me a second to breathe.
• 1:49:44
  This is one of those moments. It's like ragged breathing,
• 1:49:47
  shaky delivery, tears streaming down his face as he says to her.
• 1:49:51
  I hold back to attain my aims and I bear it to get what I
• 1:49:55
  want. I know what pain is and I know
• 1:49:58
  how many others are also suffering.
• 1:50:00
  I am the Crown Prince of this land.
• 1:50:02
  One day I will have the strength.
• 1:50:03
  With that strength, there are so many who I can help.
• 1:50:06
  I have so many plans in store for the future.
• 1:50:09
  Do you have any idea? As for you, just stay by my
• 1:50:13
  side. That'll be enough.
• 1:50:15
  And that gets at that idea that you were talking about that she
• 1:50:18
  really respects him. She respects his aims.
• 1:50:21
  He's got lofty ideals. He's got grand plans for the
• 1:50:24
  country. She hopes he's going to be a
• 1:50:26
  good king. That's all she wants for him.
• 1:50:28
  She wants the best for him, right?
• 1:50:29
  Like I wish nothing but the best for you is what she says to him
• 1:50:32
  a couple of times in the show. This moment is really impactful
• 1:50:37
  because you see that he is really noble.
• 1:50:41
  He has redeeming qualities. So many times you see kings, I
• 1:50:43
  know he's like based on a real person who was seen benevolent
• 1:50:46
  for the most part. But so many times in shows you
• 1:50:48
  see people who are royal people who are rich people who are Che
• 1:50:51
  balls just act like unhinged all the time and like power hungry
• 1:50:55
  and crazy. And there are other people in
• 1:50:56
  this show who are like that and he's not.
• 1:50:58
  He's not like that when he easily could be.
• 1:51:00
  And so that unto itself is almost like a redeeming factor
• 1:51:03
  for him. And then the other thing I
• 1:51:05
  wanted to say was about her and that the entire Yong Bin book
• 1:51:10
  debacle happens and she swept up in this possible beheading
• 1:51:13
  because they think she stole it. She has to make the king
• 1:51:16
  remember that he gave it to her on the night of Concubine Yong
• 1:51:20
  Bin's death. That whole scene also a favorite
• 1:51:25
  of mine. I love, love, love that scene
• 1:51:28
  because she summons all of her powers, right?
• 1:51:32
  She's a storyteller, she's a creative.
• 1:51:35
  She loves to read and write. She would have been an English
• 1:51:38
  major or something if this was a modern day.
• 1:51:41
  So this is hugely touching moment when he finally does
• 1:51:45
  remember and he says, do you remember why I gave you the
• 1:51:49
  book? And she's like, no, I can't.
• 1:51:52
  I don't really remember exactly why you gifted me this precious.
• 1:51:56
  Book I was 10 years old. Because I was 10 years old.
• 1:51:58
  She remembers everything else about the day.
• 1:51:59
  It's just a very sensory experience.
• 1:52:01
  She's like light, some incense. So she remembers a lot.
• 1:52:04
  But not that, he says. Because you wanted to have good
• 1:52:07
  handwriting. And Lady Youngbin had beautiful
• 1:52:10
  penmanship. And he goes, I'm glad I did, and
• 1:52:14
  calls her by name. He remembers her name.
• 1:52:16
  Yeah, her whole name song her. Whole name and he says you have
• 1:52:19
  beautiful handwriting. Yeah.
• 1:52:22
  Just so emotional the stakes were high.
• 1:52:25
  I just really loved that scene. It was beautiful beautifully
• 1:52:30
  acted, beautifully written. And it's also really just
• 1:52:34
  heartbreaking because that was a priority for her.
• 1:52:37
  She loved transcribing books. She loved reading and writing.
• 1:52:40
  She loved telling stories. And each of those character
• 1:52:43
  always thought of it as lesser. He was like, why are you reading
• 1:52:48
  these? You know, why a thick to these
• 1:52:51
  girls everyday, basically. And when she becomes his
• 1:52:56
  concubine, she can no longer do this thing that she loved, which
• 1:52:59
  was writing and transcribing for money.
• 1:53:03
  It was. It was part of her agency
• 1:53:04
  package, the one thing that she had, and she couldn't do it
• 1:53:08
  anymore. When the King remembers that
• 1:53:10
  about her, it's like she's being seen finally by her friends who
• 1:53:14
  are the only other people really and like her.
• 1:53:15
  Ajamal, I don't know Oma, whatever lady, but like the King
• 1:53:19
  sees her. Like who sees her?
• 1:53:21
  Almost nobody. She's, like you said,
• 1:53:22
  disrespected and dismissed so much, but the King saw her,
• 1:53:26
  which is awesome and really redemptive.
• 1:53:28
  And as a child and then made the connection to her now, Oh my
• 1:53:33
  God, I like lose it every time. So there again, is a lot to
• 1:53:38
  unpack in the show, but we are going to wrap it up.
• 1:53:41
  Do you have any? Last thoughts, No, but now I'm
• 1:53:44
  going to listen to 2:00 PM after this.
• 1:53:46
  Oh. My God, if you've come all the
• 1:53:49
  way to this point and you have not listened to 2:00 PM, we both
• 1:53:53
  encourage you to like deep dive into that discography.
• 1:53:59
  We have been singing two different songs, man.
• 1:54:04
  I'm gonna post the video, the music video that I keep
• 1:54:09
  replaying in my head. It's too much.
• 1:54:12
  It does not compute with Eugeno in this drop, which is nothing
• 1:54:16
  to do with that. So stark the difference.
• 1:54:19
  Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:54:23
  So appreciate your insight and and rewatching this entire show.
• 1:54:27
  As I said, the episodes kept getting longer.
• 1:54:29
  It would be an hour and 10 minutes for like 12 episodes
• 1:54:32
  straight. And then it started getting into
• 1:54:35
  an hour and 22 minutes, an hour and 26 minutes, an hour and 28.
• 1:54:40
  The final episode was an hour, 40 minutes.
• 1:54:42
  It was ridiculous. Yeah, I can't condone that.
• 1:54:46
  It's beautiful and, you know, lovely that it is visually and
• 1:54:50
  in some cases, like some of the plot points, the acting is
• 1:54:52
  great, phenomenal. It is a lot.
• 1:54:54
  It's a lot to take in, but still good stuff.
• 1:54:57
  Still good stuff, highly recommend.
• 1:54:59
  Where can we find you online, Mina?
• 1:55:01
  I'm on Instagram at K Pop bookshelf so hit me up there if
• 1:55:05
  you'd like to. Nice.
• 1:55:06
  And that's been our show. I'm Jessica and this has been
• 1:55:09
  the Tabak Here Rambles podcast.