#i wonder how will they execute sado being put in the rice chest for him to die

[forleejehoon]

"I do politics to save lives, not to end them" 🙌 my super leftie ass is enjoying this interpretation of prince Sado's story so much. they really made it veeeery political compared to historical speculations about what kind of person the Crown prince actually was. such cheesy grandiose line but this scene (and the entirety of the 16th episode tbh) was so incredibly satisfactory 🥲

Han Seok-kyu is stellar here, as well as Park Eun-bin is beyond amazing in the role of Lady Hyegyong, prince Sado's wife. I feel like the three of them including Jehoon – their characters' interactions with each other are so captivating to watch here. I'm also loving how they made Sado into this idealist revolutionary political figure, I'm having a bit of a moment experiencing meaning of life vicariously through him, it's totally giving me immense emotional strength to deal with life right now lol 🫂

surprisingly I never saw people talking about "Secret Door" that much? compared to other sageuks. but honestly it might go in my top 3 sageuks list! most probably still after "Six Flying Dragons" though haha

[swordsandparasols]

Haechi: The Heir of Prince Sohyeon

In last week’s episodes of Haechi, Prince Milpoong attributed his greater claim to the throne as being due to his being descended from Crown Prince Sohyeon.  Prince Sohyeon was the son of King Injo, who came up during The Crowned Clown due to successfully usurping Gwanghae in history.  You’d think that orchestrating a coup to dethrone what was considered a tyrant in his own time and being the direct ancestor of all subsequent Joseon kings would result in Injo being the protagonist in any number of movies and shows, but nope, dude is always an antagonist, or at best an obstacle.  The main reason is because he was just a bad king.  During The Crowned Clown, I may have said that choosing Injo over Gwanghae was like saying you were voting for Donald Trump in the US 2016 elections even though you knew he was unqualified because you thought Hillary Clinton was unlikable.  If I didn’t say that then I probably should have.  In both cases, the more qualified and competent candidate may have been considered less likable and had plenty of their own problems, but they were still a much better choice.

 Another reason was Crown Prince Sohyeon.  By most accounts, despite the Dad Is A Weak King issue, Prince Sohyeon is considered to have probably been a pretty good candidate for being king.  Due in part to the whole thing with Injo being a bad king, Prince Sohyeon, his wife, Princess Minhoe, and his brother, Prince Bongrim, spent several years as hostages in the Qing court.  Prince Sohyeon worked on establishing strong ties and alliances, which allowed him to work as an advocate for Joseon citizens who came in conflict with the court, as well as those who had been captured and enslaved in raids.  When he returned to Joseon, King Injo considered him to be too pro-Qing.  He also came back with ideas about science and Christianity. Those didn’t go over well with dad either.   Cue lots of fighting and distrust.  It didn’t help that Injo was somewhat on the paranoid side.  Getting everyone to help you steal someone else’s job and then not being very good at that job doesn’t exactly make a person feel like they have good job security.  

 In any case, one day Prince Sohyeon was found dead in King Injo’s chambers.  The most popular theory in that, in a fit of temper, Injo threw an ink slab at his son’s head.  Slightly less popular is that King Injo had his son poisoned.  It was never properly resolved.  Injo soon had Prince Sohyeon’s children exiled to Jeju island, where all but the youngest soon died.  Princess Minhoe fought to learn the truth about her husband’s death, but was soon conveniently accused of treason and killed.  Prince Bongrim, who had considerably less fond memories of his time as a hostage than his older brother, was made crown prince and eventually became King Hyojong who, as far as I know, is the direct ancestor of all subsequent Joseon kings.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m told the sageuk Cruel Palace is a very good accounting of all this.  

 The sole surviving child of Prince Sohyeon was Prince Gyeongan, who you might remember as the almost supernaturally well behaved toddler in Chuno.Prince Gyeongan died fairly young, but not before having his own son, who eventually became the father of Lee Tan, aka, Prince Milpoong. I haven’t been able to find much online about the actual Prince Milpoong, but from what I can tell, while he did oppose Prince Yeoning’s appointment as Crown Prince and later rebelled against him once he was king (the rebellion I mentioned a few weeks ago that Park Moon Soo helped put down) it was for the more generic “I feel I have a better claim to the throne than you and also I hate your politics” reasons and not his being a creepy sadistic serial killer who keeps trophies from his victims.  He also probably had nothing to do with the poisoning of King Gyeongjong, which he’s implied to have done in the show.  (There were rumors that Prince Yeoning poisoned him, but there were never any evidence or reason to go with that other than it being a convenient accusation.)

 I’ve wondered for a while, though, if this depiction of Prince Milpoong might be a reference to Crown Prince Sado, and perhaps making an argument for a thread of hereditary insanity.  Prince Sado was the heir to King Yeongjo , aka, Haechi’s Prince Yeoning.  King Yeongjo is generally regarded as an excellent king, despite all the “ick, commoner” controversies that plagued his early years.  The one actual blight on his record is Prince Sado.  According to the memoirs of his wife, Lady Hyegyeong, Sado became very ill and, when he recovered, he became extremely anxious, especially when it came to his father, and later became paranoid and had hallucinations,  When Queen Inwon and Queen Jeongseong (currently the Dowager Queen and Crown Princess respectively in Haechi) he took it badly and his conditioned worsened.  He began beating eunichs in the palace, and soon escalated to killing palace staff, as well as assaulting and raping court ladies. There were also repeated private and public “scenes” with his parents, and abuses of his wife.  Eventually, King Seongjo and Royal Noble Consort Yeong, Sado’s biological mother, had o make the choice to execute him.  Since normal forms of execution couldn’t be used on the crown prince, the decision was made to lock him in a rice chest and let him starve to death, which took seven days.  After this, King Seongjo wmade Sado’s son, Lee San, his heir, and Lee San became King Jeongjo, regarded as one of Joseon’s best kings, right up there with King Sejong.

 Like Prince Sohyeon, Prince Sado was a prince who died young at his father’s hand, and so pretty quickly theories that he was totally innocent and it was all a conspiracy popped up, and eventually became VERY popular in the 19th century.  However, while Prince Sohyeon probably deserves most of the romanticization, Prince Sado…most likely doesn’t. His wife documented his descent pretty thoroughly, and court records of the time are pretty consistent on this matter.  Regardless, this incident is what popular fiction (at least in movies and TV shows I know of from the last 15 years) focuses on in King Seongjo’s reign,  and the bulk of them take the “Prince Sado was wronged” stance.

 While Prince Milpoong’s actions aren’t wholly in line with Prince Sado’s, it’s easy to see how Kim Yi Young might have used Sado for inspiration. KYY also wrote Hwajung, which chronicled the reigns of Gwanghae and Injo, and in later episodes, iirc, there was heavy implication that Injo was also mad, or at least dangerously paranoid. Whether this is deliberate or coincidence, I don’t know, but it does seem to create a thread n the writer’s works. Conversely, she also wrote Dong Yi and Yi San, two of the most popular sageuks of the later 2000s (sadly, I haven’t watched either yet, but hope to one day.)  Dong Yi is about Prince Yeoning’s mother, while Yi San, as you might guess from the title, is about King Jeongjo.  In that regard, KYY can be seen as coming back to complete the middle part of her trilogy almost a decade after the second installment, which actually takes place first.  Anyway, I said “conversely” because, from what I’m, told, Yi San, despite killing Prince Sado at the very being, goes out of its way to completely exonerate Prince Sado and make him the victim of a conspiracy.  So maybe KYY changed her mind abou Sado in the 12 years since Yi San, or maybe that’s all in my head.