Chapter Text
Jang Bong Hwan,
If you’re listening: our king was interred today, after months and months of meticulous preparation.
For over a hundred and fifty days, our son stays by his side in a thatched hut next to the Royal Coffin Hall where our king lay, rising each morning to mourn the loss of his beloved father. The envoy we send returns from Qing with his posthumous title as expected: Cheoljong the Great.
“Yes,” the new King agrees dolorously when the name is presented to him, “His Late Majesty was indeed great.”
Our poor Yung Jun—the precious life we made together with our king, born years earlier than the history books say, who felicitously survives past six months—only to lose his father at the tender age of twelve.
Perhaps I am at fault; perhaps I should have done something more; perhaps after everything—I was naïf to think that enough had changed.
Just like you had always known: the man born as Yi Won Beom, the king we had both loved so ardently—dies at the end of the year of the Black Water Pig—on January 16, 1864.
He is poisoned, and even though the culprit is never officially declared or discovered, I know without a doubt that it is our uncle, the former State Councillor Kim Jwa Geun.
In a twist of bitter irony it is his adopted son, our orabeoni, who bears the awful news. Once His Late Majesty’s most eager enemy, when Byeong In comes to me he is devastated—distress seizing his features—but he will not allow himself to display it plainly. He keeps his eyes lowered, hands dropped stiffly at his sides as I dig my fingernails into the delicate skin of his wrist.
“Your Royal Highness,” his voice is almost a whisper, “I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
That night, I can only feel fury—flames of uncontrollable rage enveloping my heart so fiercely I want to scream.
I do not—and as I am obliged to do for so much of my life—I stay silent.
I lean my forehead against orabeoni’s shoulder, and hang on to him so hard that the next day, he tucks his arm behind his back to hide the bruise that has blossomed over his hand.
My daughter Eun Sol notices immediately, and demands to know who has dared to harm her dear uncle.
Even though she is only ten—even though she has just lost her father—still, she only thinks of others. She brushes soft, tiny fingertips over Byeong In’s knuckles, and he flinches—not because it hurts, but because he thinks that he does not deserve her kindness.
He blames himself for the late King’s death: he does not say so, but I can see from the way he will not meet our Yung Jun’s eyes.
For five days we wait for His Late Majesty’s soul to return to his body.
It does not, and Yi Yung Jun becomes the 26th King of Joseon, and I, now the Queen Dowager, his regent.
For five months we weep for Cheoljong the Great. For five months I wonder if the choices we make matter much at all. For five months the days continue, one after the other, as if nothing were any different—
As if the man who was our sun has not vanished forever from the sky.
How cruel it is, that tomorrow always comes; that no matter how we love—carelessly, or with all our heart—all that begins will someday end, without fail. There are no nights not followed by a dawn, but sometimes we find that the reality that awaits us after we wake is more harrowing than the most horrid of nightmares.
How futile it is, to want and wish, when our Fate has long been ordained.
His Late Majesty once said to us that this life felt like a strange dream he was having in the final moments before his death, a desperate wish to return to a time when things might still be changed—
We did not know what he meant then—but I do now.
——
When you leave us the day before His Late Majesty begins his direct rule in earnest, I already start to forget all that you know.
That afternoon, we race through the forest with orabeoni, the assassin sent by his father hot on our heels. Wounded by the arrow we shot through his leg, Byeong In eventually lags behind. He insists that we save ourselves—but we cannot bear to leave him, even after everything.
The assassin catches up to us, and we lose consciousness from the prick of the blade that just barely misses our heart. We slip away as orabeoni kneels on the ground, the colour of cinnabar gushing from his palm and down his arm, from grasping the sword meant for us.
Soon after, I open my eyes again in Byeong In’s arms and you are gone—and with you your wisdom. With orabeoni is our king, safe and sound; we discover too, that Hong Yeon and Court Lady Choi are unharmed.
The months I spent with you feel distant, like a dream quickly fading from memory as day dawns. I am disorientated, disappointed—frustrated that I feel again as if I cannot be of use.
I stay behind in the encampment maintained by Dam Hyang’s father with Hong Yeon and Court Lady Choi, as the babe in our womb, though barely a month old, is too precious to put at risk. At this point our Yung Jun is nothing more than a hope—but still, his life is worth more than any of his mother’s wishes.
Byeong In accompanies our king back to the capital, and one and a half days later Prince Yeongpyeong arrives to take us home to the palace by palanquin.
By then all that is left in my mind is your name, and in my soul a sense of profound loss that cannot be explained.
——
From time to time it is as if you are still here with me—your words escape past my mouth, and your knowledge sits heavy in my heart—but it is only ever for an instant before the future is shrouded again behind a fog.
Only when that which is meant to be comes to pass do I remember; five months ago on that damned day that I will regret for the rest of this life, I again understood that which should remain unknown.
When you opened your eyes as me on the day before we became Queen of all Joseon, I glimpsed an infinite eternity—
Two hundred years ago we were a mad sultan forced to take the throne after a lifetime locked in a cage like a songbird with its wings clipped; in the golden age of Ilium we were a priestess whose desperate prophecies fell on deaf ears; five thousand years from now we father an empire in the far reaches of the galaxy whose glory lasts until the heat death of the universe.
In a different life, both born as lowly commoners with nothing to lose, we come to call orabeoni our husband—with him we have twins, a boy and a girl, neither of whom make it past childhood. In another time just like this one, we are born looking like you—heir to the corrupt legacy of the Andong Kims, whose many vices mar his handsome countenance, whose few virtues are drowned by drink and debauchery.
In this life, through you I saw it all: the choices that were stolen from us; the paths we were forbidden to take; the feelings we were forced to secrete away—
Before you, I did not even know that there was a distinction between Fate and Destiny: the former, that which is written in the stars; the latter, that which is designed by men.
We were fated to come into this world in the month of the Dragon, in the year of the White Metal Rabbit, as the daughter of an ambitious minister. Mother exchanges her life for ours; we spend our childhood acutely aware of her sacrifice. All we want for almost two decades is to be of worth to Father.
We become destined to be Queen; the Joseon that the Andong Kims have conquered requires an heir with their blood so that they can continue to run the country into ruin without being reprimanded. The day before our union with His Late Majesty, we realize that we have never truly lived, and that we are so very afraid of the future that is yet to come.
It does not matter—Kim So Yong is not a person—she is a pawn. In this life she has no say.
In this life, I am angry.
In this life, I am now left alone.