If I were Mongrying, seeing that cute beat up face of our seme, you bet your ass I’d carefully and thoroughly nurse his wounds ⁄(⁄ ⁄·⁄ω⁄·⁄ ⁄)⁄
Mr. Shin says the coldest no-attachments words but his actions... HIS ACTIONS! How he cares for the uke or bends for him coz he cant resist Yoon... ugh
The ML is too lukewarm with his feelings. I dont care if his sense of duty is so strong to take in 3 concubines just to produce an heir or just a coward not to confess and lose Pauliana as an indispensable friend. FOR GODSAKE HE IS KING ALREADY. What rule is he trying so hard to preserve that he didn’t even try to break through Pauliana’s “denseness” towards his feelings... UGH I JUST FEEL LIKE IT’S THE MOST UNNATURAL DRAMA. THERE ARE ZERO OBSTACLES YET HERE WE ARE.
He is respecting her honer as a knight.. he doesn’t want to force his feelings onto her because he knows that if he really wished for it or if paulina knows that if this caused him pain he will rather marry him basically she lives breathes and dies for him she will do anything to make him happy
He may be emperor but he's not an absolute monarch. The time period of the story seems to be based on times before absolute monarchy. In normal monarchy, the king/emperor does not hold all the power. Meaning the nobility (all of them together) have almost as much and sometimes even more power than the king/emperor. When he came back from war he had to struggle to solidify his position and he got married to the concubines due to pressure from the nobles. Even now his position is not stable since he doesn't have an heir. They only mentioned him once but the ML is supposed to have a brother which the nobles wanted to crown emperor while the ML was away on the war. This is still a reality.
I personally think that in the western and new world, when we think of rulers we think of them as absolute rulers. However, Asia didn't have an era of absolute monarchy. I find that stories centered around royalty from Chinese/Korean/Japanese authors usually depict the struggle of power existent in constitutional (non absolute) monarchies where the sovereign has limited power.
And there’s o b v i o u s l y more honor and sense in taking in as an empress for the sake of and raising a child in a loveless marriage?
Marrying for love is a modern concept. In older times, people married out of necessity and duty. Even a hundred years ago, people got married without love. Also has nothing to do with honor. How do you think nobles came into existence? They were fully concerned with obtaining and maintaining power. That's how the monarchy power structure functioned and how it lasted for so long. Marrying out of love wasn't what put nobles above the rest. Marrying a commoner out of love goes against the idea of what a noble is in the first place. Furthermore, historically, empires are very quick to fall as conquered nations tend to not assimilate into the empire. ML married the concubines from the nations he conquered to stabilize the empire (no revolts from the new conquered nations in the empire, less racism, etc). He married them all to give all groups a fair chance at the throne so no nation can complain.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that there is a lot of power play involved. It's not a simple "love conquers all" fantasy with happy endings and whatnot. It's also not a simple unrealistic "he's king. he can do whatever he wants" story. If you don't understand what the wall between them is, I don't think you really understand this genre. There's a lot of context and subtleties involved.
(From the novel) Spoilers to cool off your annoyance with Trashta and Sovieshit cuz i know for a fact these things are sooooo far in the webtoon chapters to be yet created and released...
Ch80 is when they divorce and the high priest immediately officiates the marriage of Heinley and Navier. After that, at Ch81, Heinley gets close with Navier’s parents and discusses the moving to the Western Kingdom.
Many things happen, at Ch82, Sovieshit surrounds with soldiers the Troby mansion where Navier and Heinley are residing with her parents. Sovieshit calls Heinley a wife stealer to which Heinley states the obvious that HE is the one who divorced Navier. Sovieshit asks if Navier married an idiot to spite him and Navier responds that SHE is the one who proposed to Heinley (take that haha).
Trashta is beginning to worry about the emperor’s affection because he keeps chasing Navier and not taking her side now. Navier’s interview in the Western Kingdom showed in papers where she revealed that she had actually known about the plan to divorce her. Sovieshit is shocked and writes to her to clarify things but got no response.
Sovieshit decides to have their wedding earlier so he can invite Heinley and Navier to which they accepted. (He like wanted to show off but it backfires because he only saw how close and trusting Navier is to the ever supportive Heinley. Btw, Navier now knows about Heinly being Queen (the bird) when she saw him transform from a bird into a naked man on a fountain in their Western Palace.)
Trashta angered Sovieshit even more when she wore an embarrasing wedding dress which she thought was grand because she was trying so hard to surpass or match the “empress-ness” of Navier. So it failed. During the 3 days of celebration, Navier acted indifferent all through out, but on the last day, was asked by Sovieshit to dance. He kept asking her to reconsider but Navier is cold. However, Navier asks Trashta for a dance so she can give some advice on how to conduct herself as the new empress(cuz for Navier, the Eastern empire is still her homeland). Navier was being sincere but then Trashta acts up and says her stomach is in pain. Sovieshit carries her out of the celebration and checks up on her. Trashta claims being provoked by the empress and Sovieshit asks what the empress did.. after not being able to answer, they both realized they were still referring to Navier as the Empress.
Because they were invited, Navier and Heinley also decides to invite them to their own wedding. Before their wedding, Heinley invites Sovieshit to drink and thanks him for divorcing Navier so he could now marry her. This fanned the frustration already there in Sovieshit’s heart so he tried to poison Heinley’s confidence saying that if Navier found out about Heinley being this “cheap”, he was not far from also making a mistake like he did so he can steal Navier back.
Their wedding was magnificent while Sovieshit groveled and drunk himself to stupor. On the wedding night, Navier and Heinley did “it” ⁄(⁄ ⁄·⁄ω⁄·⁄ ⁄)⁄ .
Meanwhile, Sovieshit, being realllyy drunk, was kinda delirious and kept crying out for Navier. His secretary heard this trying to aid him to rest. Rashta heard this too so on the next day, she surrounded herself with men guests. On the day before Sovieshit was to return to the Eastern, he sought Navier again and kept saying “i love you” and along the lines of “please return to me”
This made Navier cry.
Many events happen, long story short, Sovieshit and Trashta have fallen out (Trashta is now in love with Duke Elgy and Sovieshit doesnt even give a fuck as until she’s given birth). One day, when Sovieshit was touring the village, he sees a superb elegant painting of him and Navier on a shop. He gets taken aback and threatens the owner to sell the painting to him (cuz the painting was not actually on sale). He buys it and gets it to his bedchambers where he stared at it while crying. The painting was of Navier sitting on the throne while he was sitting on the ground, looking up to her, his head laying on Navier’s knees but Navier had a faraway look. He begged the Navier in the painting not to leave him and to look his way. The next day, his summoned the court painter to have the painting changed so that Navier is looking down back at him at the picture. (Eww)
I have read up to the chapter where Trashta has now given birth to a girl, and it seems Sovieshit, thinking the child is his own, plans to throw away Trashta and make the child the first female emperor (bitch is just desperate for an heir now)
Navier and Heinley is having similar dreams of a bird and egg. Heinley says that according to some beliefs, couples having similar dreams was a sign that they may be “expecting” now.(yall know what that means... babiesssss)
The seme’s dick is the same size as the uke’s forearm (⊙…⊙ )
Who else forgot that Jooin is an architecture student cuz of how D U M B he is? Sure, author, very convincing.