After I watched the last episode, this line from Bidam suddenly struck to my mind from episode 28.
Bidam: My life’s expectancy is fated…. To be three days shorter than the King of this heavenly Kingdom. You will know what I mean…
Characters:
Deokman9/10-As stated above, both young and adult Deokman did a really good job as Queen Seon Duk. At first I’m not fascinated to her acting maybe because of her facial expression but as the story goes by I get used to it and in the end she really stood out as a queen.
Bidam10+/10 – What can I say. He’s the only one I know that surely looks dashing while covered with blood. That very first scene my heart throb so much. I read many comments and 90 percent of the commentators really praise him and what will be his fate in the end. So I tried not to get attached to his character. But damn, he shows in episode 21 and he really drives to my heart with a bang! A very complex character that was Bidam is. And also a very pitiful one. He’s a cunning, kinda psychopath, but if you watch the whole show you will understand and love him deeply. For me he is kind, sweet, has a very cute and childish smile with a serious fighting skill. Chincha! I was mesmerized how he used sword and that awesome fighting technique. Until now I keep replying his entire fighting scene.I wonder what will be the best adjective that I can give to him. At first it was “innocent” but the writer was right, a term ‘sincere’ will fit him. And so in the end I cried soooo much.. jeeezzzz.. Having attached to his character I just want him to be happy together with Deokman. Bidam of the nameless guild. I am very proud and magnanimously rooting for him when he doesn’t have any allies. He’s not your typical hero like Yushin. But how he thinks, calculate situation, act, everything that he do and sometimes being a villain made him an unforgettable person and a worthy partner for Deokman.
PS. I love the promise ring of Bidam and Seon Duk?
Yushin7/10- The righteous man from start to the end. Don’t get me wrong I think he did a good job being yushin but he didn’t get to me until the end. What I love about Yushin is he’s really honest and devoted to his nation especially Gaya people.
Mishil10/10- A very good artist indeed. Even though she just sit there, gave Cheshire smile, instruct her supporter ,not that much fighting scene(but she’s badass in the first episode) She really shows the other ways on how to be an effective villain. I didn’t hate her coz there’s a feeling that she wanted to protect Shilla and she really is concern to her siblings and clan members. She died as a very dignified woman and Deokman learned a lot from her. That’s why our queen admires her in the end.
All the characters from Alcheon, Bojong, Muno, Chulsuk, Seolwan and others did a very magnificent acting. I hate them when they do bad things especially to my Bidam and love how devoted the other characters to the queen like Alcheon, Gubang and the others.
Overall I think I will watch it again if I have time because of Bidam. In my opinion it was more enjoyable watching QSD than Empress Ki. It’s just my opinion. So try it guys. Don’t be intimidated with the number of episode because it will entertain you until the end. ?
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The show is exciting from the very beginning till the end.
The fact that I can watch 10 episodes continuously WITHOUT feeling the need or being able to skip is itself saying a lot. And I think I can do it again. (Even though when I finished it, I said to myself "If I've ever gone crazy and thought of rewatching it,...")At some point came one of my favourite actors of all time on screen, and this guy’s stance is no joke. From that point on the show cruelly stole my heart.
I couldn’t stop watching because of my hopeful pipe dreams. And the great drama threw my heart back and forth.
Strangely, I didn’t hate the villains, they were understandable. But I sometimes hated the main characters. They were the ones causing each other pain!
The confrontations between the characters were daunting. My emotions were overflowing when truths came out
I was engrossed in every part of it. It was full of ups and downs. It was breathtaking.
I thought that I’ve been there several times and that I can handle it and stand strong…
And I cannot say enough about the state the drama left me in…(writing it down took 2,189 words)
The OST’s amazingness goes without saying
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The best Kdrama of all time <3
QUEEN SEON DEOK still my favorite drama series ever!. <3 It has been 10 yrs since the first time I saw it from the TV, I got hooked right away! What a great drama series.. I can still remember the whole story. The humble beginning of Deokman as Hwarang until she became Queen Seon Deok. I'll never forget the story how she met the Princess when they are young, the story of their friendship. What a great plot twist! watch it.. The writer of series did really great job. The casts portrayed their roles really good.QUEEN SEON DEOK will always have a special place in my heart.
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The Lame Queen Seondeok
It would have been such a good show if they packaged it into 30 episodes. They had two subplots about Hwarang side quests that were a total waste of time, they paused the main story for them. While they might have served a small tiny purpose but the drama could've accomplished that without these easily. I read somewhere that the drama was extended from 50 to 62 episodes and I can't help but wonder if there was a direct correlation between extending the drama and introducing the character Kim Chun Chu at episode 36. Because both decisions were worse than one another. What made me more suspicious that this was the case was because it felt like someone has pushed the soft reset button on the story as a whole around episode 36 and everything took a big step backward. At this exact point I was about to mentally check out. Prior to episode 36, they had this Hwarang competition which was already the weakest checkpoint at this point so what came after only made things worse. Fast forward to the last chunk of episodes, all events post Lady Mi Shil involvement were clearly an unplanned afterthought which led to an underwhelming final climax. The is exactly at the extension gap between 50-62. Away from the poor pacing, the characters showed promise until they stopped. Guess what? It happened also after episode 36, the female lead who used to be a character full of characterization became a soulless blank of wood, boring, bland and dumb. There were many other examples of characters who went through the same downgraded transformation around the cursed episode 36.The story had one major point of disconnect that the writer blatantly swept under the rug, it single-handedly broke the story apart. The female lead came from a hermit living in the woods into her position of power immediately without any regard to any other factors concerning anything. The only justification we were given is that she read books while growing up and was raised in the streets. Her parents had no role in the process despite being the king and queen, not even for emotional support. All I see is just poor storytelling. The background music mixing was trash. Every scene started with low-ish background music, got progressively louder and became unbearably loud and intense until the scene is cut. Repeat this 20 times every episode and endure the nausea. Around midway through I was thinking this is a good 7/10 drama despite the Hwarang nonsense but it turns out that this drama was the perfect example of a drama having a good 1st half and fumbling the 2nd half so hard. I wouldn't give it more than a pitiful 5.5/10.
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This review may contain spoilers
THE GOLDEN AGE OF BLOODSHED
The epic, troubled and adventurous story of Kim Deokman (Lee Yo-won), daughter of Jinpyeong (Jo Min-Ki), 26th King of Silla; Twin sister of Princess Cheonmyeong (Park Ye Jin), abandoned at birth to avoid a nefarious prophecy about the kingdom, raised by her servant/putative mother Sohwa (Seo Young-Hee), pursued by guardian/concubine Lady Mishil (Go Hyun-jung) and her hitman ChilSuk (Ahn Kil-Kang); From her disguised return to Seorabeol, to the war against the Baekje kingdom, to the recovery of her royal status, torn between her repressed love for Lord Kim Yushin (Uhm Tae-woong), valiant leader of the Hwarang militia, and Bidan (Kim Nam Gil), repudiated son of noble origin, through the complicated mission of reunifying the three kingdoms of Silla, Baekje and Goguryeo...Fluvial, titanic, grandiose and impressive storytelling, decidedly exciting, at times even quite confusing, especially for a westerner like myself, unfamiliar with such particular events in Korean history due to the paucity of available sources, ‘Queen SeonDeok’ inevitably has all the merits, but also several defects of a truly impressive production for the material represented.
A mixture of the most disparate genres, Sageuk, Wuxiapian, Chamber drama, War movie, Comedy, Historical melodrama, Coming-of-age story, Family drama (it should not be forgotten how it is already, from the very beginning, the story of a family abandonment), Spy story, Study of Astrology and Astronomy, Treatise on Science and Popular Traditions, Politics and Agriculture, Military strategy, a sprinkling of Fantasy that never hurts, a combination of genres miraculously in balance, at least for most of the tale, thanks to an exciting story, never banal and always capable of relaunching the action, keeping the spectator's attention.
Very difficult to describe, it would be unfair and reductive to try to bring order to the river of events that manages to effectively romanticise historical veracity with legends and traditions, real characters with others of dubious correspondence, as well as genealogical timings adapted to narrative consequentiality and fluidity...
Perhaps the most fascinating and engaging aspect of the drama, in my opinion, is this multifaceted storytelling, whirlwind of events, with multiple subplots and jumps between genres, put in place precisely to involve every type of viewer as much as possible, given that in the 62 episodes everything and the very opposite of everything happens repeatedly;
Mind you, this is a great and adventurous epopee, inside there are whole episodes with extraordinary battle scenes employing hundreds of perfectly coordinated characters, blood flows like a Sam Peckinpah movie, and chaos -well organised- reigns supreme;
But the violence is never an end in itself, aesthetised or magnified, but sublimated by military sagacity, as for example in the siege of fortresses, in the reciprocal ambushes or in the use of the formidable archers, absolutely astonishing for their dynamism and thrilling involvement, even with night scenes of extraordinary filmic rendering; or through a sort of chivalrous code, as in the endless duels with swords, undoubtedly indebted to the universe of Kurosawa's cinema...
This alternation of action with only apparently more reflective moments, such as the repeated meetings of the opposing clans -the ‘official’ one of the King and the would-be usurper one of Lady Mishil- is decidedly fascinating, where strategies, betrayals, subtexts, countermoves and even murders dictate the political agenda of the troubled Kingdom of Silla, and where Go Hyun Jung's extraordinary charisma reigns supreme, portraying a Lady Mishil capable of subduing anyone with the sole force of her gaze (which is otherwise beautiful! ).
Then everything inevitably begins to get tighter and tighter, between the growing role of the people of Gaya, infighting that generates palace intrigues, betrayals, escapes and imprisonments, a resounding coup, as well as determining the prodromes of a civil war with the Custodian Mishil who, by now, no longer even hides her royal aims; it is a rather interesting moment in the drama that finds vigour and narrative thrust thanks to greater dynamism and repeated twists and turns, some absolutely implausible, but forcibly necessary for narrative continuity...
But ‘Queen SeonDeok’ is above all an articulate inner journey into the soul of Deokman, a complex character with many facets, tormented, marked by an inevitable fate made up of family losses and forced renunciations, also rich in contradictions and choices imposed by the role assigned to her; the beautiful portrayal of Queen SeonDeok of Silla, magnificently rendered by a Lee Yo-won perfectly suited to the part, restores to us all the pathos of a woman always poised between reason of state and emotions, determined, erudite and open to novelties in the most disparate fields of human knowledge;
Undoubtedly proto-feminist in her iron independence, fighting against the prejudices that would have her unsuitable for the role, she emerged as an ‘’illuminated‘’ sovereign with a ‘’modernist‘’ spirit, even of a ‘’socialist‘’ kind, in certain respects, thanks to certain decisions that were perhaps unpopular with the noble court, but openly favourable to the common people of the kingdom...
His sentimental torment, however, reveals an ill-concealed inner affliction, when the two male main characters, Yushin and Bidan, alternately, cause his soul to waver continuously, in what can be considered to all intents and purposes the most classic of tormented love triangles, where the two leads, the more intense Kim Nam-Gil and the (all too) compassionate Uhm Tae-woong will also see all their certainties redefined...
As they say, ‘Behind a great woman there is always a great man’ and it is interesting, in this case, how these two characterisations flourish directly under the cone of shadow of the two prima donnas, where Hwarang Yushin's total devotion to Deokman will be so unwavering that it will allow him to face and overcome the most daring missions and vicissitudes, while Bidan, excellently characterised by Kim Nam-Gil, progressively emerges as an absolutely tormented and contradictory character, in a multi-faceted love-hate relationship with Lady Mishil and, ironically, with an existence decidedly specular to Deokman's - both were abandoned at birth - and linked to her by an inevitable fate that will result in the most sheer melodrama of the last beautiful episodes...
As an extraordinary counterpart to Deokman's role we find, for a large part of the drama, Lady Mishil, concubine and custodian of the kingdom, a sort of uncrowned Queen, played by an extraordinary Go Hyun Jung; weaver of complex palace plots, a sort of priestess, sorceress, witch, manipulator, almost a female mafia chief in her determination and ruthlessness, Mishil more than once finds herself confronted and clashing with Deokman;
This is an extremely complex ethical-moral vision that is only partially divergent, since, through dialectic, repeated justifications for unlawful actions carried out for the survival and security of the kingdom, the two women, of clear cultural stature (Deokman, in one passage even goes so far as to quote Plutarch and his ‘Parallel Lives’) engage in a metaphorical chess game that in the course of the episodes will often overturn the dynamics and narrative junctures, leading to more than one doubt in the mind of the Queen-designate...
Besides Yushin and Bidan, mentioned above, some nodal figures emerge in the storytelling, such as ChilSuk, faithful servant of Lady Mishil, unstoppable assassin, for years in pursuit of Deokman, excellently rendered by the imperturbable Ahn Kil-Kang, his character has more than one point of contact with certain characterisations of Toshiro Mifune in the movies of Master Kurosawa...
The Princess Cheonmyeong, perfectly portrayed by a beautiful Park Ye Jin, absolutely perfect in the role and decidedly regal in her bearing, is a particular case in point. She is afflicted, along with her twin sister, by a destiny of mourning - the ‘curses’ thrown at her by Mishil are unbelievable! - and abandonment, because it must be reiterated, this is a story of loss and family betrayal that spares no one, where resentment between parents and children emerges repeatedly and dramatically, directly or indirectly, as in the specific case of Prince Kim ChunChu, son of Cheonmyeong, well portrayed by the young but already charismatic Yoo Seung-Ho...
Obviously, this is not a perfect drama, considering its massive length, the narrative fluidity is frayed at several points, there are various moments of tiredness, even tedious and repetitive, an off-screen voice of the simple narrator -maybe a character from the drama itself- could have streamlined and clarified the tortuous narrative better or added the right emphasis to the story, considering that more than once it is Mishil's brother, Mi Saeng (Jung Woong In, with a constantly querulous voice all the time, moreover) who reiterates what we have just seen;
We get embroiled in abstruse astrological theories or very long (and frankly tedious) fights between the Hwarangs that add little or nothing to the pathos so far determined; Incredible but true, there is even a certain superficiality in the close personal relationships: The family dynamics should definitely have been deepened with a more extensive use of flashback, absolutely effective for example on a highly dramatic episode of Bidan's youth, especially the relationship between the two twin princesses deserved more depth and more minute-length, in addition to the mother/son relationship between Cheonmyeong and Kim ChunChu, hastily resolved with a handful of letters, nothing more...
It is also quite evident the narrative forcing after the fiftieth episode; Logically, if the story were to end here, there would be nothing to object to, we have a Queen, defeated villains (or not!?), everyone happy and an ideal framework which, however, given the success of the series, was evidently not the intentions of the creators, who pack a new shuffle of the story, where the glorious people of Gaya (a sort of partisan rebellion towards Silla) and its most important representative return to the forefront, with a reversal of roles in which, however, everything seems sincerely forced, with even the Queen herself who does not seem to understand anything anymore, amidst malicious double-dealing councillors, Hamletic doubts, wrong governmental choices and even an exasperated irritation of Deokman herself...
Personally, the perceptive confusion grows as well, the years pass, but there is no visual evidence (probably, some dates or temporal ellipsis would have helped), certain characters grow old, others miraculously remain young, one guesses that about 10 years passed between the two wars against Baekje, all the main characters are invested with the highest offices, grow big beards and adopt the same hairstyle, as well as wearing the same armour;
But at least in the first period, a bit like football teams, the Hwarang wore different colours that made them immediately recognisable, good and bad, as Bidam also reminded us in his initial entries; but here, at a certain point, it looks like a Fukasaku yakuza movie, there is some confusion, which is the team of Mishil's family and which is the Queen's?
It shifts decisively towards the more intense romance, but there is no lack of countless battles, with decidedly clever tactical and ‘military technology’ gimmicks, the show regains its original vigour and moves towards a truly excellent ending;
The final balance is decidedly brilliant, but the feeling remains that, with a shorter length and less scattershot and repetitive lengthiness, it would have been an absolute masterpiece.
Truly many and beautiful unforgettable moments, amplified by an extraordinary variety of locations exploited:
The desert escape and chase, almost a western movie in terms of visual narrative, the endless battles between the Kingdoms of Silla and Baekje with excellent mass scenes, but also episodes of deep intimacy -which often determine the calm before the storm- such as the encounter between the two twins, their identical clothes and the comb, the cave and a diptych of intensely beautiful and tragic episodes...
The embrace with Sohwa, the summit between Mishil and Deokman in the open air, among the hills of the kingdom, the absolutely regal departure of one of the pivotal characters of the story (which, inevitably, loses much in the continuation), the last intense episode, with an almost Shakespearian breath and the beautiful finale - ‘I want to see the land, the sky and everything in between"- are just a few moments of an undoubtedly dense drama, at times truly unforgettable, supported by a magnificent cast at the service of a story that justifies -imho- the excellent overall rating expressed here on MDL, a wonderful experience, perhaps not easily revisable (but you never know! ) but certainly recommended to all!
8/10
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tramatizing
I watched this when I was a literal child. I do not remember much but the fact that it was so heartbreaking. One day, when I am bored, I will rewatch it and give a solid review. But for now, I like anything that is gut-wrenching as long as there is a happy ending, which I hear this show does not have.Was this review helpful to you?
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true enemy of nation was royal family not Mishil
whole drama was good to get 9/10and i write it only to tell you one spoiler that real enemy and villain of this drama wasn't Mishil
but Vile Kim Chanchu, he was a real MF of that time, if his mother would not have died then he would have killed and eaten her raw , that kind of demon Chanchu was ,
Mishil had morals but Chanchu was worst kind of human, he was disgrace to human race
his lust for throne and his aunt Queen Seon Duk was so big that it can swallow whole Korean peninsula itself
Bidam man that try his everything to save his mother Princess was killed by Chunchu who wasn't even a man
how deokman uses son against his own mother, and then kill that son merciless
just like her great grandfather jinhaung uses mishil and then order to kill her after her use
Royal family did all sins to keep throne because that belong to them,
Grandfather was evil his son was evil, his granddaughter great seonduk was evil and the most evil Bitch CHUNCHU
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I have mixed feelings!
Honestly, I started watching this drama because of Park Eun Bin, who has like 30 minute screen time overall?🤣 But I have to be honest. The first couple of episodes were hard to watch, also the makeup for the hair and beards were terrible most of the time and I couldn't focus on the story because of that. I don't know why no one cared about the fake hair and beard on the male characters, but maybe there's a reason for that. After like 30 episode or so, these fantastic actors made me forget every bad thing about this show. It's far from perfect, but overall I think I will watch it again one day when I want to be sad again. I really don't know what the hell is wrong with me, why I love so much shows with sad endings.😂I don't really know how to describe what Lee Yo Won, Go Hyun Jung, Kim Nam Gil and Uhm Tae Woong did on this show! All of them are exceptional actors. Also, the music, Jesus Christ! Every time I heard: "Step by step" and "Come people of God" just made me cry, honestly.
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