Hmm if I'm not mistaken back then, way earlier before there was an emperorship, China was not a united nation with monarchs/feudal lords ruling their own territories which made up the whole land/country. These monarchs were referred to as "kings" (at least in this story, idk). But then the country was united as one and one of these monarchs rose in power and became highest in position than the rest, and was in charge of all the territories, and became known as the "emperor". The other monarchs got to keep their titles and I suppose their authority over their lands as well though now limited but they were all now subservient to the emperor, who ruled all. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Oh wait I just remembered this was set in ancient Korea? Is that right? If that so then idk how the governing body was back then either
Well I don't think I can give a proper answer but I can clear the confusion. The emperor is the supreme ruler and under him are the Kings. And basically they are family related. Say there are 3 province under a nation. The emperor is the ruler of the nation and he appoints his sons as Kings of each province. And then later the most competent one of the sons becomes future emperor
For me I understood it like this: You have a manager(king) running one branch of a store in location 1 and a manger(king) running the same brand store in location 2, and so on. But all of those are under the owner/ceo (emperor) of the whole company. While, yes, the manager(king) runs the store, the ceo(emperor)has more authority over him. Hopefully this helps?
I still dont get how there are both kings and emperor
Like why there is two sets of royal and they seemed to be completely unrelated to each other ? Who does that even work