ItsAMe

The first 3-4 episodes are fairly silly. I did not enjoy them much but I think this drama needs them because they form a contrast between the "simple life" and what is coming next. This drama is based on historical facts. The war plays a big role in the story. Keep watching! The following episodes might not be as predictable as the first ones. It's definitely not some light-hearted romcom.

This drama is based on historical facts, not Netflix "history". Gay people were not allowed to exist back then. They had to hide. Ryang-eum and Jang-hyun were together for a long time, and Ryang-eum was happy to be the only one in his life. In his eyes, they were basically like a couple even though there was no romance between them. Then Gil-chae popped up, and Ryang-eum lost his place as the most important person in Jang-hyun's life.

He is as selfish as Jang-hyun and Gil-chae but unlike them, he is not able/allowed to openly express his feelings.

Personally, I found it interesting that the princess became obsessed with him. He is not just good looking but represents everything she is not and cannot get anywhere else. Despite his "humble" language, he treats her as an equal and is not afraid of her. He is also willing to give everything up for his love/woman whilst she was used by her husband and thrown away. In a later episode (15 or 16?), it is mentioned that she probably will get married off (once again), so she is not as powerful as she pretends to be. She knows that, and she also knows that Jang-hyun knows that, yet he does not treat her in a different way despite knowing that she lost her power. In my opinion, that's great material for an interesting story.

However, instead of exploring her desperation and her role after her father, who had protected her, died, the writers decided to reduce her to her horniess.

Gu-jam and Jong-jong are my favourite couple in this drama. They are so sweet together. And I loved that he went looking for her, and when he finally found her, he did not love her less just because she became a slave to a barbarian. They are what Gil-chae and Jang-hyun should be. :)

You're not the only one feeling this way. Part 2 is getting draggy, which is the reason why I was not that excited when I read that the producers wanted to extend this drama after they basically dropped the stories of certain characters in part 1 to make half-hearted room for new characters such as the princess, which seems to have got dropped too for the sake of some other draggy scenes.

Anyways, if you want to see Gil-chae and Jang-hyun happy together, keep watching. There will be a few sweet and happy scenes in the next episodes. :)

You seem to know her very well. Are you her best friend or a creepy stalker?

No worries, I have not forgotten that. However, the gay guy in Love in Contract wasn't even the main but the main's best friend. It is not uncommon in K-dramas to also explore the lives of the main's best friends. LiC did a good job in not making it US-American woke propaganda but portraying him as a normal, relatively boring, sweet guy who didn't steal the main leads's show with any pushy behaviour. Him being gay also wasn't the focus of the drama. There was just another guy in the background who seemed to be his boyfriend, and his family suddenly started to hate him because he was gay, and suddenly they pretended to like him again when they figured out that he would become a successful singer. I think many people can relate to the latter even if they cannot relate to gay people.

BL does not mean that something needs to be gay-gay in the sense of Western self-centrism and dogmatism. I'm not fond of that either.

However, many women enjoy gay romance, especially if it's ambiguous. It's sexy, intriguing and entertaining. At some point, people don't want to watch Hallmark movies anymore if everything is like a Hallmark movie. New ideas need to get explored. That does not always equal propaganda and activism. Most normal people have a common ground and are relatively open-minded when it comes to new ideas whilst the dogmatists on both sides try to gatekeep and to silence the masses.

Personally, I don't enjoy the gay gayness, thus I don't watch BL. However, I do like a bit of BL as long as the gay characters are normal. I also loooooove bromance. If I wanted more, I would read yaoi like I did in the past but I read so much of it, that I lost my interest in it.

Yeah, the last two episodes felt like filler episodes when it came to Lee Jang-hyun's and Gil-chea's story apart from the ending of the previous episode. The princess was seen for a couple of seconds only. No progress anymore. I cannot see that she'll be involved in the plot of the remaiing two episodes, at least not in a meaningful way and not just for another iteration of why ML and FL need to be separated. I'm glad that there are only 2 episodes left.

I'm afraid you'll have to wait a couple of years. There was a little attempt in Love in Contract but then the writers forgot about the gay guy and gave him a rather sloppy "Happy ending", which was rather ridiculous. However, he was a really sweet guy. Well, Love in Contract wasn't particularily good with the heterosexual characters either.

The Devil Judge had also very obvious BL characters in the beginning but the gayness was removed in later episodes. Once it gets interesting, Korea gets afraid. :(

This drama is based on historical facts. According to Wikipedia, Crown Prince Sohyeon was the first son of King Injo. It would not have made any sense if the Crown Prince were some adopted child because Injo had other male children such as his second son who, instead of Sohyeon's son, became Crown Prince after Sohyeon's death.

Regarding the queen, I don't think that she appeared in this drama. She's irrelevant to the story. From what I read, she died in 1636 whilst Sohyeon died in 1645. King Injo got a new queen in 1638. The actual "queen" seems to have been concubine Cho/Jo, though.

Just a little info: That wasn't the queen but the concubine. The crown prince isn't her son.

If they still have good ideas, another episode would be nice. However, as an avid watcher of K-dramas, I fear that the last episodes would just become (more) draggy as it is the case with almost all K-dramas I watched.

It was implied in the latest episode that she's going to get married off. She just refuses to believe it even though she know it's very likely going to happen. Lee Jang-hyun knows that. At least, he looked as if he knew.

I'm so glad that Gil-chae was apparently defilated by the barbarians. It makes this drama special because, in other dramas, the FL always keeps her chastity and remains "pure", so ML and viewers don't have any problem with her. In this drama, we learnt what it meant for women back then when they returned from the barbarians. Not caring about other people's opinions and staying with the woman one loves or one had married required a strong character.

I agree. How could he promise that when he knows that he needs to go back to his princess? I doubt that he'll abandon those people he left behind. And if he did, I doubt Gil-chae would be happy if he knew that he did that for her.

Well, the male boss let his hot male employee sleep in his villa, and he enters his guest's room in a sexy bathrobe FOR WHATEVER REASON. If I remember correctly, he did something similar in multiple scenes. The original must have had some BL/gayness going on because those scenes definitely were not inserted by accident. Multiple people gave their ok for those scenes including Ji Sung who's not some newcomer. He knows well how to portray different types of character and how th result will look on screen. It's unlikely that asll those people watched the scenes and thought: Yes, that's how totally straight males become familiar with each other, no homo, of course.

While the rest of the story was without any obvious inconsistencies, Kang Yo-han suddenly stopped wearing hot bathrobes in front of his male employee, and they suddenly acted as if those scenes in earlier episodes had never happened. No explanation for anything. To me, that felt as if somebody told the creators to remove the gayness, not as if this obvious inconsistency had been part of the original script.

The purpose of marriage, especially in historical/period dramas, is producing a male heir and more offspring, preferably male. Captain Gu was quite busy while Gil-chae was away.

You are partly right. Nowadays, they are able to talk about what happened to them but most victims are already dead. At least, that's the case in Germany. I don't know about the victims in other countries.

Here is an example. The interesting part is the reaction of the German readers in 1959 compared to 2003. Just a few decades ago, "we" were just like those people in the K-drama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marta_Hillers

The French movie is titled "Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément". The English title is "Blind Date". This one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Date_(2015_film)

So true. I'm disappointed in Captain Gu. It is as if the writers felt he became too much of a character and decided to make him one-dimensional, so ML can easily outshine him. Personally, I enjoyed the contrast between Captain Gu and Lee Jang Hyun in part 1 because Gu was the "reliable/boring man" in Gil-chae's life while Lee was the "hot but unreliable/mysterious one". Now Gu is just like the rest.

Regarding Ryang Eum, I feel the same. His motivation is clear, and his reaction makes perfect sense to me. He want's ML for himself and the old life back. Of course, he tries to get rid of FL but he cannot kill her because of ML. I hope his character will get developed further.

In my opinion, this drama has got a pretty good rating. Also, this website is full of people who rather enjoy romcoms (see all popular shows) or "famous person looking good on screen". And let's not forget the armies of fans of certain actors who watch and upvote literally everything in which their respective favourite actor got a role.

This drama is is fairly brutal and sad, which is not as popular on this website as cute romcoms.

Don't pay too much attention to the exact rating. If you enjoy this drama, enjoy it, and don't make your opinion and personal taste depend on numbers on some website. :)