beesknees

Character whiplash: Seong family hates each other. No, she’s a princess now so they all love each other. Prime minister both their friends. No, actually power hungry obsessive jerk who doesn’t know how to lose. Queen evil bitch. No, it was mostly her dad. Heroine opportunistic B, then loving partner.

Plot holes: Make a secret pact and write it down for others to find. Make sure to tell a few others, too. Not looking up basic protocols on digoxcin or how fire and explosions work. Also, he had a job but she seemed to just swan around looking pretty and b&tching to her aid that they had to keep everyone on their toes.

It was kind of predictable that the Queen’s dad would be the problem and that the love triangle would include a nasty jerk. I appreciated how that tied in with so many historical dramas.

6/7 for swoon worthy hero (aside from the abolishing the crown), OST, and the adorable couple of her brother/sil, unique premise.

I think he's done a fantastic job. His understated elegance and refined manners really suit the role of prince. And I like that he doesn't bring a lot of drama to his actions - he's strong without being ostentatious about it (car accident to save her and the king) and clever (proposal to outwit the queen). You can tell he knows more about Her Majesty's antics than he's let on and is playing his cards carefully so as not to give away the game. I can't believe people are criticizing his acting and not hers. Several times I've almost quit the drama because of her childishness. Am I really to believe she somehow earned the position of a CEO when she's spent 90% of her time on her clothes (her makeup would have at least made sense!) ? I love strong female characters (Secret Royal Inspector and Joy, Bon Apetite, Your Majesty, The Glory, Love Like the Galaxy, Sh**ting Stars), but the cutesy , over the top girl? Not so much.

you can typically play it into another device.

I don't get him not making an immediate backup of the recording right when he finds it. Or taking it directly to the nearest police station, or straight to the prosecutor Na Hyun was talking to. Literally my only complaint with this drama was the decision-making, designed for dramatic effect rather than working the drama around what should happen.

It's funny, but the thing that stuck out to me in the last episode was that Im Jae I, young, tall, and strong, was carrying a tiny backpack while the elderly steward carried the giant one. All I could think was that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Easily one of the dumbest female leads EVER.

Fair. They wer innocent.

He is, if for nothing else how he treated the innocent but especially for how he treated his so-called love. He threw her into a wolf's den when she clearly didn't want to go, and then acts like it's a shock that they tore her to shreds. I just disagreed with your point that he "drags the whole royal family’s lives through hell, though they have nothing to do with the incident." The Queen Dowager caused the whole darn thing. The current king did nothing to fight for justice. Both are complicit in what happened.

In fairness, he was right to tell the Dowager Queen this all happened because of her. So not just the former king was at fault. I also feel little empathy for the present King. He was completely ineffective in protecting his kingdom and simply took the position without making any effort to curtail the villain.

I hated the Zhen Bird incident, too. It was so cruel to kill her for responding exactly as they needed her too, using a mother's love for her child to lure her to her death. And honestly, she was the best parent on that show. We should all have a Zhen Bird Mama.

I can appreciate you feel that way but I disagree. Inviting him into her home, lying about her fan girling (episode 6/7) and constantly crossing the line by being friends with him mark her as strictly unprofessional in my book.

I'm only half way through but I've gotten a real sense that this show is in some ways a mild rebuke of the craziness idols have to deal with. It has shown fans behaving in very innappropriate ways and how difficult and emotionally damaging that is for the artists. It has also very gently examined how painful it is for the people the artists are dating to be perpetually denied and in the shadows (the whole thing made me think of Jimin/Song Da-eun and all the stuff surrounding that back in Aug. 2025). So I get all the Kpop stuff and what the program is trying to say. What I don't get is how the lawyer is herself written as an "appropriate" fan girl. It just feels creepy juxtaposed with the other message because of their current, real world (in the show)relationship where his life is literally in her hands.

I agree that it is nice to see the more recent artists and the big groups gently pushing back on some of the weirdness. I like that Jin of BTS responds to proposals with "Please don't talk nonsense." I watched a couple of older V-lives where he did that and it was refreshing.

I'm on episode four, but getting a bit creeped out by the fan girling being done by the lawyer/FL. It's weird how she's all hurt that a grown man had a girlfriend. I mean, he clearly has bad taste, but how is that her business? She seems more concerned that her darling murder suspect had a romance than that the guy keeps lying to her. Not impressed by the prosecutor at this point either. Everything he told that girl was essentially public knowledge. He should have laughed in her face and done more than just threaten her regarding her being a suspect.

Also on VIki.

I do try to judge all shows by the same standards, and frankly, I wouldn't have finished this one if I wasn't invested in it. But it wound up with a five from me. It wasn't that the show was trope laden that was the problem, it was that characterization was sacrificed to make those tropes work. There was also a tendency to trot out certain characters only when the plot needed them (Jun, Da-rim's sister) and not fully incorporating them into the story line. Add in the sheer unbelievability of a woman under guardianship for mental health issues being able to take over a ompany, a cliched amnesia plot and conclusion to said plot, underused secondary characters (the whole mother TF team but especially Go Eun and Gyeong Min ) and underdevelopment of the villains and the story just didn't gel well enough for me to give it anything but a score that equals "it was okay."

Makes sense. As people continue to reach the end, I expect it to drop further.

yes

This thing went from a ten to a five for me over the course of just 14 episodes. The last episode lost a point all on its own. The mom was in a psychiatric hospital and would have a long way to go to prove that she didn't belong there, given that she tried to kill herself. NO WAY she is getting control of that company that easily. I could see ousting father and daughter on criminal charges, but it would have been a years-long fight. This started strong, but the plot was so messy and trope-ridden by the end.

I expect a certain amount of dragging things out, but it is like they could only come up with enough plot for five episodes and are just trotting out the same storylines with new characters to add filler. The orchard scene was the same as the park scene/game between Ji Hyeok and Seon U , just with a new guy. You could fast-forward through half this episode and not miss a thing.