Okay. Where do we start with this messy situation.

The story is told by Kye-Sook, so it can be total bullshit, but okay, okay. Let’s assume this is what happened.

This scene explains so little in the most confusing way possible.

From the way things are depicted (i n kye-sook story, bear with me ) king Il didn’t even have any proof. Don’t get me wrong - Il never struck me as a genius ruler, but murdering his brother and greatest supporter because there is a possibility he might have killed his wife is just dumb. This arc suddenly portrays Il as not just a weak, but also spiteful dumb person with absoultely no problem murdering his brother without even flinching. It’s a 180 on his character and honestly hard to believe.

It is okay if a good character turns out to be a bad person, but this revelation literally changes Il into a different character with completely opposite personality.

We honestly get no information whether Yu-Hon did it or not. Yon-Hi considers it a possibility, but her thoughts have been a dumpster fire since she learned her blood has no special role to play. She is a good person, but very very unstable.

This lil’ shit. I should probably say upfront - I hate him so my opinion can be biased ( probably is ). Even his mother is low-key “my child might be satan”. What I dislike so much about him since the beginning is how he is portrayed as “not really a bad person” despite the fact he totally is. This chapter really confirms all my negative suspicions about this character.

1. If what he wanted was the good of the country, there were around hundred other ways to do it. Let’s just not sugarcoat it - it was a revenge plot, nothing else.

2. Creme de la creme of this chapter: i dON’t neEd to tAke yOnA inTO conSIDeraTIoN iN aLL oF tHis. So for the next several years he was deepening his friendship with Yona, while developing a plot to murder her dad. He’s basically saying “not taking all the matters into consideration is the best way to do things :DDD”. THOSE ARE NOT SEPARATE MATTERS YOU IDIOT. THIS IS BASICALLY THE SAME MATTER.

To conclude: If this backstory serves to justify everything Soo-Won did so far, it had an opposite effect on me. Now I condemn his actions even more. What he did to Yona was despicable and cruel.

And now we are probably coming back to the present day arc I already wasted too much time writing about.