Tbh Like….i Ain’t Mad At Either Soo Or So

tbh like….i ain’t mad at either soo or so

they were always destined to fall apart in this era

soo tried so so hard to make sure that she would help him, so that no one would have to suffer, so that he wouldn’t have the legacy she heard of as a bloody monarch. she wanted him to be remembered as she saw him: a great king, and a good person. but once he became king and she became his “mistress,” as won puts it, she was inadvertently stripped of all the power she had in the palace as a court lady, and she was reduced to “sitting in her room, waiting for him to come home.” the intention was for her to become queen, but without the backing of a powerful family to support her, it became impossible. by the time so told her he would make her the second queen after she had a child, she was already broken. her best friend was killed because she was a traitor, spying on her and lying to her for years. not only that, but the one who ordered her death was the man she loved, and despite the fact that chae ryung was working against her the entire time she was in the palace and helped kill people she loved, soo is incredibly torn because she can still see in her a girl who was trying to help her family. then another friend of hers commits suicide. and then she is told that the reason the man she used to love became such a slimy, homicidal jackass was because of a warning she gave him, reminiscent of the previous king telling her he killed people in order to get the throne because she covered so’s scar. 

at this point, hae soo feels not only like she doesn’t have the power to save anyone, but like her influence on politics has had an active role in killing all the people she’s worked so hard to save, people she loved deeply. no wonder she wants to leave - it’s not that she thinks so is a monster and wants to escape him, but rather she’s gotten to the point where she hinders more than she helps, and her staying is fatal. and she can’t take people she cares about dropping like flies anymore.

meanwhile so. so. so has his hands tied everywhere he turns. someone made this great post about how people have been abandoning him since the start of his reign. the military general. his mother. baek ah. now hae soo wants to leave too, the only person he has left. and to be honest, it would be better for his reign if he let her leave, because every move he makes he thinks of her, and, as we saw with his marriage situation, he would doom himself if it meant staying by her side. but he loves her far too much to ever let her go. the only thing that finally gets him, that really makes him let her leave, is finding out about wook. and i don’t think it’s a jealousy thing - he knew years ago she had loved one of his brothers, and there’s only so many to choose from. but the fact that it’s wook, “of all people why does it have to be him” wook, breaks him. not because it’s his brother. because he’s the man who plotted the death of his oldest brother, who used chae ryung as a spy and made her a traitor (with the assistance of won), who was ready to shoot yo with an arrow like he was hunting something, who threatened him using hae soo and collaborated with his family to make his sister take soo’s place at so’s side, who used his smart brain to rally the noble families, who looked so in the eye and said “nothing is yours, it’s all mine.” it’s not that hae soo loved someone besides him ever in her life, it’s that she was ready to marry someone who at every turn tried to tear him down and their family down, a manipulative murderous snake, and despite that part of her still cared for him enough to beg for his life.

he feels like she never loved him, “wook was always in your heart,” like it was all just some scheme wook was planning or a way to hurt him using what he cared about most. so he lets her go, because he feels like she’s “throwing him away,” or, even worse, that she never cared about him to begin with. at least not as much as the guy who killed his family and hers.

and it’s tragic. and heartbreaking. and i really can’t blame either one of them.