SHOW ABSOLUTELY TO WATCH!
I really liked this drama, it touches sensitive topics: the power when is held by women, power as the highest possible aspiration and how to obtain it, it's legitimate to use every means, the death of innocent people perceived as "collateral damage". Each individual character has his own ideology and his way of obtaining results and therefore a profound political and social confrontation is created that determines the path of events. It isn't a romantic screenplay, it's a political screenplay and the romance, the union between women and men is determined above all by the political benefits that this can bring to individuals. Love is given up for power, feelings are sacrificed for political gains, and the lovers die for the same reason. There are no good or bad characters here, but characters who make more or less questionable choices based on the interaction between the political factions. Let's take the two women most hated by most viewers, Lady Cho and the Queen Mother. Neither was bad by choice of life, but having been used and eventually sold for a political cause ends up turning them into monsters. Lady Cho is deceived by the King, she thinks she is loved, that she has been chosen for love and when she realizes that she was just a pawn in the political game between her father and the King, she directs her anger pathetically towards the other woman, but it must be hard to admit to yourself that your father used you for personal outbursts and therefore better blame those who have nothing to do with it than accept a painful truth. The Queen Mother has a similar path, she loves a man who has abandoned her for the good of the country, she lives obsessed with jealousy towards the woman he has as a legitimate consort and does everything to not lose those few moments that he deigns to share with her and why this happen does not come from doing a masacre. But even the legitimate wife does not have a stimulating situation, for more than half of her life she has been next to a man who loved another woman. Lady Jung is also repeatedly manipulated and in this power play, between the King, Park Gye Won, ministers and political factions they kill her whole family. We also have another interesting topic that clearly develops in this drama: the class struggle which, as Karl Marx would say, is never dead. Contempt towards the people, towards the servants, towards their needs is highlighted at every step of this drama. The King who for once looks the campesinos in the face while they cultivate rice in the palace, Lady Cho who mistreats her servants are examples of how the palace is not really interested in the needs of the lower classes. The actors are all very good, without exception, the disgust I felt for Lady Cho means that Park Ji Yeon did a great job, the hatred I felt for the King and Queen Mother is proportional to the skill of the actors in the play. Special mention for Jang Hyuk, that man was born to act, every performance of him is incredible and therefore his characters always end up becoming among the most charismatic of all. I loved him in his role as Park Gye Won and I also had a lot of sympathy for Lady Jung too, I hated the King, the Minister of War, and I felt a lot of compassion for Lady Cho, the Queen Mother and Gye Won's wife. But these are my personal sympathies for the various characters and therefore are arbitrary. The ending I think is good, it leaves the enigma about what future political plots are going to happen and I wouldn't want to be in Lady Jung's shoes with Lady Cho lurking when she has as her point of reference a figure as fickle and interested in power as the King. For sure there will be more blood shed.
Excellent photography, editing, setting, costumes and OST. I repeat, absolutely to watch, for me a 10/10.