scenophile

I thought the highs in this one weren’t very high, but the lows also weren’t very low. It’s a fun rom-com but pretty thin on the plot and the character development.

The plot is just not quite there and for me, having seen multiple historical dramas and corporate dramas, I expected there to be much more to the power struggle in the palace and in the business world. Instead, it feels like things are resolved quite randomly and the antagonists never do anything that really feel like a threat. I’m ultimately not sure what the FL was trying to get out of the marriage and how it would help her business, and on the royalty side it feels like the villains just mush together a few assassination attempts and call it a day.

I was expecting there to be more scheming and back-and-forth, but the protagonists seem to solve everything without much pushback. They make one move and 5 minutes later the villain is in jail. This is especially notable in the final two episodes; I-an introduces the EXTREME concept of abolishing the monarchy and there’s not only no build-up to it, but it seems like the advisors just go “darn :(“ and the next thing we know we’re cutting to the reveal that the people have voted on it and have agreed to it. I know people are saying that it’s because 12 episodes aren’t enough, but I felt like that wasn’t the issue here. The plot stagnated and I actually do think we had enough time to delve into deeper topics if the writing wanted it. If abolishing the monarchy was the big conflict, we should’ve seen much more to explain why it was necessary and why it was difficult to accomplish.

It all just feels a little too easy and shallow, which is a shame because I feel like there’s so much you could do with a modern day monarchy plot around corruption, historical precedence, class, etc. It’s hinted to at the start with a contrast between our leads, but we never really confront it beyond the court of public opinion.

Character-wise, we start off with a really strong cast of characters but I don’t think the writing allowed any of them to have complete arcs.

The antagonists ultimately feel pretty underutilized — the Queen Dowager’s father goes to prison extremely easily, and the Prime Minister’s arc honestly doesn’t feel thought out considering how big of a turn he made. Did he do it all because of the FL? If he did, it’s much too shallow of a motivation. If there was more to it, it didn’t come across fully. I think our leads were fun and the romance was sweet, but they also both don’t develop very much. Same with the second couple, who are typical ”sidekick” characters, lovable but with no real arc of their own.

The best arc out of all of them is probably the Queen Dowager. She probably turned out to be my favorite character, even if I found her final switch a bit sudden.

Part of that is her acting, which I think was the best out of the entire cast; she especially killed it with intense moments and facial expressions. As for the rest of the cast, I think it was pretty good but they didn’t have much to work with. I know this has been discussed to death on the internet so I don’t want to harp on it, but I did find the ML to be a bit stiff; he was good in emotional moments but not as much in the subtle ones where we needed more micro-expressions. I don’t want to be too harsh but I’m not sure I completely bought into the main romance, or that the ML supposed to be older.

I know this is a lot of criticism but I actually still found the show to be quite fun to watch. The cinematography was really good and it’s clear that this was a high-budget production. The story isn’t quite as epic as I wish it was, but if you go into it with the understanding that it’s a rom-com and you don’t think too hard about it, I think it was enjoyable.