Aramintai

You forgot to mention he didn't visit her once during a 1+ year time skip. That's real love for ya.

Yea, she's literally an orphan. By their own rules she should be forbidden as a candidate.
But then again, nobody properly vetted the queen either. She too can enter the palace under some other family's name.
Whatever, this fantastical ending is less concerning than an immortal fish whose eggs drive people crazy and hyponotizing incense that turns hair white.

I left a review on this as well, for more visibility.

The king was conviniently swept under the rug along with the queen and her son. With CP so suddenly becoming king and so much upheaval in the palace I'd be questioning whether he staged a coup and quitely poisoned the king and killed the queen&her son 😂

Mediocre.
-Nonsensical title and kinda misleading poster.
-The plot was too dragged out, I'd say about 6 episodes too many.
-The plot was mostly about politics and full of beaten to death cliche tropes seen in practically every saeguk out there, nothing fresh. If you can't write a captivating period drama story then go fantasy, or at least throw some zombies into the mix to spice things up! 🙄🥱
-A very slow burn romance and lack of romantic chemistry between the main leads.
-Misrepresentation of FL's character. She was presented as a fighter and genius detective in the beginning, but then was degraded into a passive sidekick to ML, who along with another male detective character basically solved all the mysteries. They took inspiration from the og novel, but def no wheels were reinvented here.
-SML was so boring and lacking presence compared to ML, FL didn't even give him a good second look after meeting ML. I guess no one was having second lead syndromes here 🤣
-Some ridiculous bs about the immortal fish and queen's rise to power, don't even want to go there further.
-Obligatory and as always unnecessary time skip and rushed ending! This just triggers me all the time in kdramas 😡 Person below wrote it perfectly - ML wasted 10 minutes of the last episode literally digging holes. Should have showed more scenes about what happened to everybody in the end, most of the stuff was just alluded to or announced and then it was the end.

Secondary couple was the only highlight, they were funny and cute together all the time. So i guess 6.5 overall from me.

She is evil minister's niece. I think it still holds true unless proven otherwise. She could have been from some poor family offshoot and nobody cared what she was doing until the minister decided to use her for his nefarious plans.

Killing innocents for revenge was nothing to her already. But why the ef she aggroed solely on poor CP, who had nothing to do with what happened to her hometown and was all round nice person? She even genuinely seemed to like him. She already knew the culprits, she should have targeted her uncle and the king instead.
Also, she was a courtesan back in the day? Was it even allowed for women of such professions to marry kings?

Well, the queen finally leveled up from a sympathetic villain to an utter biatch.
Looking forward to her bad ending.

His bride, the relative of the good minister. They were already calling her Crown Princess since he's a Crown Prince. The other alive princess is his sister.

If you're in it for the romance then don't bother, it's mostly about politics. It has a veeeeeery slow burn romance. And there's definitely not enough main plot for dragging it out to 20 episodes.

FL be like: You must abandon me. But also, the person I love is you.
CP: FFFFFFF
Yea, like hell he'll abandon her now 😂 She clearly didn’t think this through 😆

Says a person who mostly watches rom-com dramas. There are stats on this site, you know.
And my view on romance here would have been better if the main couple wasn't so boring, they have failed to deliver what you described above. I think it's because they don't have much chemistry together, unlike the second couple, and the script leaves much to be desired.
And dramas are not books, everything should be shown on screen visually or verbally. The audience can't see what's in characters heads, what their thoughts are if they are not shown.

I'm talking about showing clear signs of affection. Here ML can't even muster to give a bracelet as a gift to FL or go on a secret date with her. There's no liftoff to their relationship at all. You can say his position as CP doesn't allow for any of this, but then you can go watch a very similar The Forbidden Marriage that aired just before this drama and you'll see that ML, as a king even, does all these things and even gets help from his servants.
Romance here clearly is just an afterthought and that misleading poster isn't making it any clearer for new viewers. And that could have been fine if the overall plot had any grip, but it doesn't either. Just lots of cliches, seen in other saeguks dozens of times already, dragged out into whooping 20 episodes...

Try kisskh.me if you can't find where to watch it legally.

I've seen lots of anime with romance in it as well and this ain't it. In romantic anime, more often than not, one or both characters secretly fall for one another from the start and their struggle for reciprocation and to become a couple often is the main point of conflict. Also in anime, even if one of the characters is a cliche oblivious character, romantic scenes are still happening on a very regular basis. Here we don't see much progress in neither of them working on becoming a couple, nor arranging any romantic situations. This drama has too much focus on boring cliche politics. My bet is that they'll focus on the politics until the last 20 minutes of the last episode and then rush the heck out of that pale shadow of a romance. Tbh, I don't really care either way, main couple is boring me to sleep. I somehow care more about the second couple, at least they're funny and playful together.

Also, I'm baffled why some people have the need to fervently defend mediocre dramas as if it's the best thing on TV. Some dramas are simply flawed, writing walls of text in their defense is not gonna change anybody's opinion about them.

Hwang Chan Sung wasn't the stalker in Touch Your Heart. He played a minor role as a delivery man and was one of the crushes of an emophiliac female attorney side character.
The stalker was played by Jay Kim.

I do like fantasy shows, it's just that cdramas in general are not my cup of tea.
I guess Alchemy of Souls was one a kind kdrama, will have to wait a long time for something like that to come out again. Can't find it in the typical low budget saeguks.

No, I'm not a fan of cdramas.

Yea, was there any saeguk out there where the king was powerful right off the bat and the villain wasn't a cliche plotting minister? 🤔

Considering that most of the target audience are women why are you so surprised?

And also on MDL:
Commenter #1: I don't like this character/plot/etc. for such and such reasons.
Commenter #2-5: You're so wrong! This character is character/plot/etc. is superawesome and I'm enjoying it so much, it's the best drama on earth since sliced bread and the actor just ate the role and left no crumbs!

Nothing new here in the comment section, people are entitled to their opinions 🥱🙄