COMPLETE SPOILERS (this will be long)

Ok, so dumping the spoilers here before I move on and forget details.

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So are they blood-related? Yes AND no.

Yes - In the NOVEL.

No - because in the MANHWA, they can’t be. As the poster below said, it is officially illegal to show blood related incest. (Even p*rnhwa is afraid to depict this because there are very very strict laws on it) Scenes like the servants gossiping about Prince’s birth, rumors of the Queen’s pregnancy timeline etc did not happen in the novel - so this may indicate the author wants to change this part.

Use this information to decide if you want to stick around.

AVOID THIS POINT IF YOU DONT WANT TO BE SPOILED FURTHER.

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The basic summary is, Tae Rok the uncle and Nanyoung the nephew were as close as you could clearly see in the manhwa, up until Nanyoung visited Tae Rok and his wife (ch6 in the manhwa) After that, the wife warned Tae Rok that this sweet affection could dangerously grow to something more.

Tae Rok and his wife had a business transaction - the wife wanted to fulfill her duties in religion, which means to be free from constraints and disappear forever from public eye so she asked Tae Rok for help. In doing so, this could cause her family to be indebted to Tae Rok for political reasons. The novel had often said these two had similar personalities and pride, and they mutually disliked each other from their very first meeting. It was a sham of a marriage and didn’t even last long cos she disappeared quite early.

After the wife’s warning, Tae Rok began to completely distance himself from nephew. This went on for about 4-5 years, and of course nephew struggled with this as he grew older. There were times when he would sometimes see Tae Rok in his friend (just a case of him missing uncle a lot so he was projecting big time). Nephew began to ask friend about homosexuality and later kissed the friend because he wanted to know more about his feelings and what’s going on inside himself whenever he thinks about uncle.

So Tae Rok was out hunting, and he saw this. He absolutely lost reason and dragged nephew back to his place. So HERE, this kicks off the scene in the prologue with Tae Rok ***ing nephew and the comment about them being each other’s scandals, meaning both of them will fall into the pits of hell together as he forces them to cross a line that should never be crossed.

The king passed away and some people wanted to commit treason and overthrow the new king, Nanyoung’s older brother. So Taerok was also involved in this, and nephew overheard the treason talks.

So nephew begged Taerok to spare his brother, and Tae Rok calmly gave nephew an ultimatum : he would leave the king brother alone if nephew sleeps with him. Yeah. So I do see a bit of a psychological thing going on here : for nephew, Tae Rok is the ‘evil scheming uncle’, while for uncle, this was the reason provided for the nephew to acknowledge the hidden feelings and fall into sin. This is not just me saying btw, they even had this very conversation about this justification much later on. Nephew was crying away often and hating but not really hating the uncle everytime they ***, but Taerok was fine to play the bad guy and the only one have the confidence to act on it. Only by ‘forcing’ nephew could he have him.

Anyway later on, Tae Rok, after coming to terms with himself, had a proper conversation with nephew about their relationship and their history together. Basically, Tae Rok resolved to give up the uprising and sided with the king brother, because nephew was even more valuable to him than the uprising. Meaning they fucking finally talked, and this is where both of them dropped all pretense and really laid out their feelings out. Nephew was to properly respond to Tae Rok’s feelings once he came back from delegation trip.

But there was news that nephew was in a shipwreck and Tae Rok absolutely LOST IT. Like he went straight to king brother and demanded to be sent to find nephew - so here, the king brother already had an inkling of something not right between them. So he was HORRIFIED that his own brother and nephew were engaged in sin. Tae Rok was urgently requesting the king to send him, preparing to accept any punishment as long as he could find nephew. Now here, Tae Rok chose to submit to king NOT BECAUSE of fear, but it really was all because of nephew. In reality, there is no one who could overthrow Tae Rok as he could very easily
dethrone his other king nephew just like that. Tae Rok gave that up for nephew when he chose to side with king brother and outed all the traitors.

So Taerok went ahead and managed to find nephew, who was thought to be dead. Nephew said he will make a request to his king brother, that he wanted to be declared dead during this moment and surrender his title as grand prince, his entire existence. This is all so he could live contently with Tae Rok. Meaning the whole world will never acknowledge grand prince nephew who will have officially died in that shipwreck. Also meaning, both could finally live together in a happy ending like they wanted, ever if they thought themselves damned in the process. This is a very very summarized version of the story.

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There is also a side story and an AU modern story (probably not as uncle and nephew this time) I don’t feel strongly enough for nephew to read on. /shrug I’ll try to answer any more spoiler questions if you have any but I think I covered mostly the major stuff.