This drama will leave you laughing, infuriate you, and totally KO you emotionally.

It started very strong. ML and FL met when they were both young, had quirky and funny interactions and a quick romantic development. Unfortunately, the romance plot, while having a fun beginning, started going in circles to the point of frustration. San chased after Deok Im (DI) begging for her to love him when he was the crown prince and he continued pursuing her and begging her to love him after he became the king.

At some point, I wanted to see DI get a promotion, an upgrade, to move up in life which would've also given a chance for San/DI to develop further aside from just being a king and his maid. But, she did the same things for the entirety of the show and had awkward interactions with San about their relationship, which made the pace and story development a bit stale. Her consistently rejecting him, because she wanted to lead her own life, would've made sense if DI actually had plans to leave and move on after he found a concubine, but she kept coming back to be his maid, which went against the entire premise of her wanting to lead her own life. This plotline needed to either wrap up a lot sooner or the writers should've written more story to avoid the round-about "love me!!!" by San. And, frankly, them always having the same conversation became really boring.

The other plot lines with San living in the shadow of his "traitor" father and having a love/hate relationship with his abusive tyrant grandfather was very well written and made San an extremely sympathetic character. The transition between him being a crown prince and a king was also very well done showing him transforming from a scared little prince to a decisive king who wasn't afraid to get rid of anyone who opposed him, including family members.

I was going to write about the treatment of women, but it would be redundant considering that this is a period peace. It doesn't matter which period and which country. It always sucked for women everywhere until 100 years ago. Enough said.

The ending broke me until it didn't. After DI accepted San and became his concubine, the story quickly switched gears and showed that their love wasn't happy at all. For the majority of show, San was broken-hearted from being continuously rejected by DI, and DI wasn't very happy being San's concubine because she was forced to wait for him, was at the mercy or his schedule, and had to share him with other women. The scene of DI telling San on her deathbed that she didn't want to meet him in the next life really drove the tragedy home and showed the awful predicament women back then. Even a woman who was well loved and lived in privilege had nothing of her own and was just another thing a man owned.

Just as I thought that my depression couldn't get any worse, it turned out that the ending was San's dream. Waking up in cold sweat and realizing that DI was alive was a second chance of sorts for San to appreciate what was truly important to him. I wasn't particularly thrilled with that twist because it messed up the chronology and made the story more complicated than it should've have been. And, it felt emotionally draining after having to witness DI's death and San's loneliness and longing for years to come after he lost the one woman he ever loved. Nevertheless, this was a beautiful love story.