The second historical drama I watched this week was The Princess’ Man, quite a good title really, considering what happens in it. 

In The Princess’ Man, the King’s brother, the Grand Prince, wants the King’s throne for himself and is plotting against him. For this purpose he suggests a marriage between his daughter, Se Ryung, and Seong Yoo, the son of the Prime Minister, his greatest enemy. He wants, at all costs, to prevent an alliance between the King and Prime Minister, and tries at all turns to undermine their trust, and this marriage proposal is his latest attempt. Se Ryung, meanwhile, learns of the marriage proposal, and when she learns her cousin the Princess is going to be getting lessons from this same Seong Yoo, she pretends to be the Princess so she can get a look at her future husband, while the Princess uses the lesson time to wander around outside the palace.

But unknown to Se Ryung, the Prime Minister has refused the marriage proposal. Instead, as it is close to the time when the Princess will become married, the Prime Minister and the King have decided to wed their two children, in order to prevent the Grand Prince from claiming the throne after the King has died. While this court intrigue is happening, Seong Yoo and Se Ryung are becoming closer and closer, with Se Ryung happy, believing he is her future husband, and Seong Yoo happy, believing she’s his future wife, the Princess.

The Princess, however, realizing they’re in love, breaks it off by revealing her identity to Seong Yoo and, to Se Ryung’s surprise, saying that the woman who pretended to be the Princess, the woman who he fell in love with, was a palace maid. The Princess, having only learned of it herself recently, reveals that the reason she pretended Se Ryung was her maid was because Se Ryung’s family and Seong Yoo’s family are bitter political enemies, something Se Ryung knew nothing about, including her father’s desire for the throne. So though both Seong Yoo and Se Ryung know they’re not supposed to meet, they still can’t stop themselves from meeting, with Seong Yoo still believing she’s a maid and Se Ryung keeping her real real identity a secret. And eventually, when Seong Yoo’s association with another woman is revealed to the court by the Grand Prince, unaware it’s own daughter, Seong Yoo’s engagement with the Princess is broken off, and the Grand Prince succeeds in his scheme and another nobleman, Seong Yoo’s friend, marries the Princess.

Then the King dies. And everything starts looking very, very bad. Se Ryung’s father, the Grand Prince, starts bullying the young Crown Prince so he can get his way. The Prime Minister’s faction, however, are still there to oppose him, so the Grand Prince plans to kill the Prime Minister, Seong Yoo’s father. Se Ryung learns of the plot and tries to warn Seong Yoo, but her family lock her in a shed. 

And most of Seong Yoo’s family are killed. His father and his brother are killed, and his sister-in-law and niece dragged away. Seong Yoo runs away from his pursuers and hides out, planning to kill the Grand Prince. Crazed and covered in blood, he staggers to the Grand Prince’s house, where commoners are gathered to greet the return of the Grand Prince. He sees the Grand Prince happily smiling at the sight of children-one of whom is the maid he’s in love with, Se Ryung. Shocked, he overhears someone in the crowd point her out as the Grand Prince’s favourite daughter. Seong Yoo, now completely and utterly maddened with hate towards the family and Se Ryung, runs out screaming and tries to kill the Grand Prince. 

He ends up in prison waiting for his execution, filled with absolute consuming hatred and now believing that Se Ryung seduced him on her father’s order! Se Ryung, however, threatens to kill herself by holding a sword to her throat so her father will spare Seong Yoo’s life, and so he is exiled instead. She then visits Seong Yoo in prison, who tries to strangle her before the guards pull him off. She then tells him to live on and come back so she can die in his hands.

Oh! The! Tragedy! What sorted out as a fluffy love comedy with mistaken identities and dates around town and the like has now become a revenge story with so much pain and angst and hatred and sadness that you just can’t stop crying all throughout. Seong Yoo, once so light and happy all the time, has now become an entirely different person; the only thing he lives for now is to get his revenge by killing Se Ryung, the woman he loves, and all her family.

Seong Yoo is shipped off to an island of exile with other prisoners, but the Grand Prince has planned for the ship to sink. Seong Yoo and some of the other prisoners manage to escape, and have a battle to the death with their pursuers until only three are left. One of the prisoners takes Seong Yoo, now a dark and silent man, back with him to the brothel which his wife runs so he can have a place to stay. And the brothel now becomes Seong Yoo’s base for his crazy man vigilante thing.

It really is a complete change; Seong Yoo was once so cheerful and happy, drinking and playing around with ladies and wearing pink and purple outfits and happy happy happy, but now he dresses completely in black, barely talks and sleeps clutching his sword, dreaming only of revenge. I love it! I really love it when characters become evil. Of course, I like Seong Yoo much better once he gets over the crazed revenge thing, but it’s badass while it lasts.

Meanwhile, the news has come back that the ship has sunk, and Se Ryung believes Seong Yoo to be dead. She drifts through the world only half-aware, passive to everything. Well, almost everything; one of the only things that makes her feel better is that she managed to find Seong Yoo’s sister-in-law and niece, who had become slaves of an abusive man, and saved them. Seong Yoo, however, is falsely told that his sister-in-law and niece committed suicide together when his niece was deathly ill, which makes him that much more vengeful and angry towards Se Ryung. Trag-ed-yyy! Seong Yoo, tracking Se Ryung down, decides his first act of revenge will be the one she begged of him; to kill her with his own hands. He kidnaps her, revealing that, not only is he alive, but crazy crazy angry. And Se Ryung, in her usual daughter-of-the-enemy-who-loves-him heartbreaking way, hugs him and tells him that if it would ease his pain she would have him kill her a million times.

Seong Yoo then delivers an unsigned letter to the Grand Prince saying that he will only give her his daughter back if he meets him alone. But unknown to Seong Yoo, the Grand Prince secretly comes along with a troop of archers, one of whom is Seong Yoo’s old best friend who betrayed him because he’s madly, insanely in love with Se Ryung and wants to marry her himself.

Seong Yoo ends up shooting the Grand Prince with an incredibly lame, shallow arrow, while the insane and trigger happy betraying archer best friend of Seong Yoo hidden in the bushes shoots an arrow at Seong Yoo that Se Ryung throws herself in front of. Seong Yoo is shocked as Se Ryung falls down, apparently dead, in front of him, and is then dragged off by his ship prison buddies who have, also, been secretly watching from the bushes. 

Seong Yoo is horribly torn now in his affectations for Se Ryung, who survived the arrow shot, but decides to ignore her for the moment to focus on his crazy murdering vigilante career as BIG TIGER, which is the alias of his father. And because no one knows he’s alive, as Se Ryung has kept her mouth shut, everyone begins talking about how the ghost of the Prime Minister has come back from the dead to punish those who killed him. It really is interesting how this show suddenly jumped from light romantic comedy to super angsty vigilante revenge drama. 

Seong Yoo and Se Ryung eventually see each other again, with Seong Yoo finding it very difficult to reconcile his love for her with the murder of his entire family by her father. She makes it a bit easier by leading him to his supposedly dead sister-in-law and niece. But still, even though he does recognize that, yes, she’s still the same person he fell in love with, they can never be, because she is the daughter of his enemy! Oh tragedy!

The Grand Prince then finally deposes the young Crown Prince and becomes King with Se Ryung, ironically enough, now really becoming a Princess. But Se Ryung starts opposing her father, as she tries at first to refuse the coronation, continually tries leaves the palace and eventually, breaks off all ties with her father. And Seong Yoo has stopped his murdering vigilante thing to become a bit more normal and involved in a revolt with some of his former friends. Se Ryung and Seong Yoo become closer again, and eventually, after much drama, get back together. Yay!

Thankfully, this drama does end happily, though it is a very, very close thing. It almost ended horribly tragically. But I loved this drama as well, as it has secret identities that, when revealed, were extremely tragic in Se Ryung’s case, and completely badass in Seong Yoo’s case, when he returns from the sunken ship with his new black vigilante look. And then there’s the crazy bloody revenge thing, and all the drama! So much drama it hurt! It was even more heart-wrenching that The Moon That Embraces the Sun; that drama was just sad, while this drama, hurt. Physically hurt. But it was oh so good.

And of course, all the hats! I love how in historical kdramas I’m supposed to believe anyone can have a straight face while talking with someone wearing black floppy dog ears or Mickey Mouse ears. I love historical kdrama!

And next I’m going to watch the historical kdrama Sungkyunkwan Scandal, which is gender bender kdrama and I understand to be very light and fluffy.

And of course, though not a historical kdrama, I’m really looking forward to Episode 7 of Fashion King. Kang Young Gul from Fashion King is now, I think, my favourite character in any kdrama I’ve ever seen. My next kdrama post will be all about Kang Young Gul and how completely awesome he is. 

I’ve been watching a lot of Korean drama lately, mostly historical drama which I could never get into before. I would watch an episode, laugh at the funny hats, and then give up.

But now I’ve completely addicted. In the past week I’ve managed to watch two historical kdramas.

The first one was The Moon That Embraces the Sun, that had in it a scenario that I’ve rarely seen in kdramas-where a boy and girl meet, fall in love, one of them presumably dies but wait-actually the one who died didn’t, but just got amnesia, and the two meet again years later not knowing who the other one really is!

It’s the same storyline that was in Winter Sonata, that old kdrama everyone makes a fuss over. And it’s the sort of really overly dramatic storyline I love-amnesia, secret identities, revenge-I absolutely goddamn love it! 

In The Moon That Embraces the Sun, The Crown Prince is due to get married. There are a number of Candidates to be his Princess, but he is in love with one of them, and she in love with him. Her name is Yoon U. She’s also the favourite of the King’s. She eventually bests all the other candidates, and the happy happy Crown Prince is now married to the love of his life. Yay!

But the Queen Dowager had wanted her relative’s daughter to become the Princess, and all her scheming plots to get her relative married to the Crown Prince have failed. She decides the only thing to do now is to kill Yoon U. She orders the head of the Shaman Hall to perform a curse that will give Yoon U a sudden illness, killing her.

But what the Queen Dowager doesn’t know is that the head of the Shaman Hall once had a friend who owes her life to Yoon U’s family, and before she was executed she begged her shaman friend to protect their daughter’s life. Oh, the irony, that the very girl she was asked to protect is the one that she has been ordered to kill!

But this just allows her to trick the Queen Dowager and everyone else into thinking that Yoon U has died. The head of the Shaman Hall later digs Yoon U out of her grave the night she’s buried, but it turns out her magic has had a side effect; Yoon U doesn’t remember who she is! So the head of the Shaman Hall tells her a lie about losing her memory in a shaman ritual, and takes her away to raise her. 

Eight years later, the Crown Prince, now King, has lost his happy nature and is much more bitter. He’s been forced to marry the Queen Dowager’s relative, but never visits her bedchambers in order to make an heir, instead, funnily enough, encouraging rumours that he’s gay. And that’s one of the things I loved about this drama; along with the drama drama drama it was also really funny, mostly with the constant gay jokes the King would make to his attendant who always got overly flustered.

And of course, Yoon U, not knowing that she is Yoon U, skips back into life of the King as a court shaman with the exact same face and personality of the woman he loved and lost eight years ago! Oh the tragedy! He knows it can’t be her, but yet, he’s moved by her. How can a woman other than his lost love move him? He hates her! Eight years he hasn’t seen the woman he loves, and he can’t be anything but cruel to her! Oh the tragedy! I love it!

Of course, she gets her memory back, the truth all comes out, and the King realizes; it’s Yoon U! His lost love! All this time both of them have been suffering, all this time they’ve both been alive and haven’t recognized the other’s existence, all this time he’s been hurting her! And he discovers it’s all the Queen Dowager’s fault. At this point, his deep love for her, his pain and his absolute fear that Yoon U will be taken from his again, make him have the coldest and most venomous hate for the ones that did this to him and Yoon U.

And the drama does have a happy ending, thank god, but oh the drama! I love the drama. Amnesia, secret identities, and the King on a crazed vendetta for revenge-all the things I find so delicious! And all while these things are happening, while all this drama and tragedy and revenge and crying and murdering are happening-they are all wearing the goddamn silliest hats I have ever seen! 

And that is why I love historical kdrama.

My next post will be all about the other historical kdrama I watched this week, The Princess’ Man.