Post by ajk on Aug 12, 2023 13:35:49 GMT -5
■ (Spoken by Lady Hyegyeong) I had my first son at the age of 16. I was pregnant with my second child San, to be the future King Jeongjo of Chosun, when I met the sad death of Jeon. Meanwhile my husband, Prince Sado, did not cease to question the poisoning of King Gyeongjong, which started to provoke more conflicts with King Yeongjo.
Lady Moon gets the news about the little boy dying and she’s all stoked about it, can’t hide her excitement. Boy things sure could get ugly in those royal courts. Wow.
…and poor Lady Hyegyeong, they stick her right back in the massive getup to have to make her rounds in. And then the queen: “A child who dies before his or her parents is an impious one. Forget him.” What an awful thing to tell someone grieving. At least her mom-in-law did better: “I must say that your poise in front of such grief is truly beautiful. Always remember that this will soon pass…I gave birth to seven children and lost three of them.”
■ (Spoken by Hong Bonghan) It was when King Gyeongjong was crown prince. King Sukjong scolded the prince and called in Councilor Lee Ik-myung to talk secretly. What was discussed then was revealed after King Youngjo took the throne. King Sukjong suggested that the crown prince be replaced, but Councilor Lee dissuaded him saying that there were no grounds to do so. But King Sukjong asked for the protection of the two remaining princes, and Kim Yong-taek and Lee Cheon-ki were assigned to the job. The crown prince was 30 at the time and the two [other] princes were Prince Yeoning and Prince Yeonryung. Prince Yeoning is now King Youngjo. It was then that the Soron Party sided up with the crown prince and the Noron with Prince Yeoning. The sharp confrontation between the two parties led to the Shinim Massacre.
Not exactly a high bar to clear, is it! But then we see the self-reflecting side of Youngjo, which is very mature and very healthy. He’s an interesting character, has kind of a pulling and tugging going on within him.
At the end of that whole sequence with the attendants spying on Lady Moon’s mom, mom whispers to the grandkids: “We have to pretend to be poor, right?” Well they sure had me going. What a clever sequence, got a good laugh out of that.
What on earth was this about? Two attendants walking around at night making that slapstick noise, we’ve never seen such a thing before. Anybody know what the point of that is? Is it some sort of traditional ritual to scare away evil spirits, something like that?
Even if we were going to watch a thousand historicals I’d bet big money against a king ever saying THAT. And I'd lose. Go figure.
But in a way it's good...when the queen asked Lady Moon “Weren’t you surprised the first night you served him?”, well that could have gone all kinds of weird. The mind boggles.
“I’ll make sure that I raise him well.” HA! You wondered where Queen Sunhee was going with all of the nice talking and friendly support. You almost wondered if she’d be above all of the cattiness. Nope! But to be fair, she wasn’t acting entirely out of self-interest like everybody else is. And now we know why she held back on telling the king about Lady Hyegyeong’s pregnancy. She put the news to very good use at the perfect time.
There was a bit of tampering with the end of the episode, most likely for music reasons again. They did give us a glimpse of Lady Moon feeling nauseous, we all know what that means.