He’s definitely a person of interest.

At first I suspected him of working for the Queen. After all, she had raged at the Minister of the Right that she couldn’t wait for the CP to be deposed. She must strike while the iron was hot, and she had already hatched her own scheme. Her hard work, she said, was finally paying off.

Then, a couple of scenes later, we spotted Jung JeYoon casually strolling down to the CP’s pavilion where the ministers were still hard at work deciphering the riddle — in the CP’s absence. He displayed interest in the puzzle. (Ugh! The Dramafever really stinks in its translation of the Chinese characters here. The other streaming sites read them better. Probably because they had Chinese subbers there.)

He was told that the two words meant “To Exist” and “To Desire” and that there was a “special promotion” as a reward to whoever answered it correctly. The SNEAKY thing here was the viewers were meant to interpret his sign of interest as a desire to win that promotion. Because his face perked up as he heard the words “special promotion”, we were MISLED to believe that he wanted that special promotion.

(Sorry. Can’t take pics right now. You’ll have to play that scene, Ep 1 at 58:12.)

No. The reason his face brightened was that he had a great insight. He had his Eureka moment upon hearing the “special promotion”.  You see, the special promotion is the “pregnancy”. If the CPrincess becomes pregnant – or for that matter, if any woman becomes pregnant – she reaches an elevated status because she’s ensuring the lineage of the family.  In a sense, she’s being promoted because she’s become a “fruitful” wife, as opposed to a childless or “barren” wife, because she bears the future descendants.

And as I’ve explained in the other post on Episode 1, the CPrincess needed a pregnancy to maintain her existence as a royal consort. But for her to bear a child, there must be desire for procreation which is nonexistent in the CP.

But to me, the bigger puzzle here is how in the world did he get this idea?

At this point in time, there were only a handful of people who had an inkling that the CPrincess was pregnant, namely, the Queen who pointed out publicly that the CPrincess looked sickly (i.e., hinting at her morning sickness perhaps?) and the medical staff who must have noticed something amiss when the CPrincess kept skipping her monthly inspection on some pretext or another.

However, if he was working for the Queen, why did he risk himself getting noticed (or sticking out) when he bumped the CP to stop him from chasing after Hong Shim that night on the bridge. That was the same night that CP and his guard were looking for the medical nurse involved in his poisoning.

Was it because he fell in love at first sight with Hong Shim or he harbored a secret animosity for the CP or he recognized Hong Shim from some distant past or he wanted to rescue her out of chivalry?

But he definitely recognized who the CP was when he bumped him that time, because when he next encountered the CP in the pavilion, he immediately bowed down and called him, “Your Highness.” He had just written his answer “pregnancy” on the banner when the CP approached him.

The other thing I found interesting about him is that he took the pharmacy journals. Lol. For once, somebody was one step ahead of the quick-thinking CP!

He then shared his discovery with the CP that the missing medical nurse was sent to work for the CPrincess and quickly became the “chief” medical officer at the CPrincess’ residence despite being a junior, entry level staff. Deftly, he insinuated that the medical nurse had a “special promotion” for a nefarious reason and cast suspicion on the CPrincess for scheming to poison the CP. He didn’t know of course that the CPrincess didn’t want her husband killed before their “First Night”.

His thorough and solid investigation led the CP to believe him hook, line, and sinker. Thus, later, when the CP espied the word “Pregnancy” that JeWoon had written on the banner, everything fell into place. Not only was the CPrincess trying to poison him, she was also pregnant with somebody else’s child. She was a very wicked woman! Off with her head!

See that? I thought the story was too conveniently set-up and I wondered whether the CP’s been cleverly manipulated to get rid of CPrincess and the Minister by someone even more treacherous.

He’s indeed a person of interest.

Edited to add this:  He’s this guy who warned the CP not to go into battle.  Too bad he’s not like the loyal bodyguard Dong Joo who’s written off the script in this episode.

credit: kdramafeed’s tumblr

Ciao! On to watch my next kdrama.