This is another use of cinematography to add depth to the characters.

I might be stating the obvious, so please feel free to skip this post. I know my favorite 10 followers and 5 readers ignore me all the time anyway…. 😂

What’s the point of this scene?

To me, it’s this —

Minister Kim presented Lee Yul’s father, Prince Nungseon, a discarded stone, with the word “useless” etched on it. He deemed the stone as valuable because he interpreted the inscription as a divine message to replace the King with a new one, Prince Nungseon. He warned that the lives of the Prince and his son were seen as threat by the King.

Henceforth, Lee Yul became the CORNERSTONE.

One, he was used as the BASIS for the coup d’etat. The Prince condoned the massacre of the King and people loyal to the King so he could ascend to the throne and protect his own son’s life.

Two, he was the FOUNDATION of the new line of kings. In many historic buildings, the cornerstone is a stone with the start date of the construction inscribed on it. (For instance, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has a cornerstone that reads “en l’année 1163”.) In a similar way, as a cornerstone, Lee Yul was a symbolic marker to establish the beginning of Minister Kim’s bloodline in royalty. Minister Kim intended Lee Yul to marry his daughter and all offspring from this royal union would be his progeny.

And three, as son-in-law of the Minister Kim, he was KEY to Minister Kim in his pursuit to amass wealth and power.

In short, Lee Yul was the bedrock of his plan to control the monarchy.

So you see, the “sacred” stone the Minister gave to Lee Yul’s father turned out to be prophetic (or self-fulfilling, if you don’t believe in prophesies — like me.)  The new King was useful to the Minister to the extent that he was “useless” in his capacity and role as King. That was the curse of the stone, really.

Not only was the new King ineffectual as a ruler, he was also ineffective as a father. Both his citizens and son hated him because of his bloody ascension to the throne which Minister Kim masterminded.

That’s why this image of the young Lee Yul is compelling.

Here’s the context, if you’ve forgotten this scene —

Just before the coronation of his father, Lee Yul discovered that his mother died in a suspicious accident. He ran to the courtyard screaming for her and Minister Kim followed him. He sternly told him, “You are a cornerstone who will become the prince of this country. Cornerstones must not shed tears over personal matters.”

Lee Yul cried, “I don’t care about being a cornerstone. I don’t want to do it.”

The Minister then said, “Cry to your heart’s content because today is the last day that you will be given a chance to cry.”  After that he left Lee Yul, and the young boy bellowed, “Mother… I’m going to go home.”

If you look at that screenshot, you’ll see that he was surrounded by stones, arranged in an orderly pattern and cut in uniform sizes. There were no triangles and circles. Everything has to fit in.

Again, in architecture, a cornerstone was important because it served as a template to orient the pattern and size of all these stones. The CP was supposed to be the personification of a cornerstone. But from this screenshot, it was clearly visible that he was nothing at all like a solid piece of foundation. He didn’t fit in with the groundwork.

He simply wasn’t a stone. 🙂

He was a distraught child but the stones were cold, hard, and unyielding. He wailed for his dead mother, but the stones turned deaf ears to his anguish. He wanted to go back home to the rough earth of his childhood home and forest playground. But the boundaries of these stones enclosed his new prison.

See this picture?

To me, this picture looks claustrophobic. Despite the wide space inside the palace walls, it’s still an enclosure. This picture shows us of his confinement. And it’s also a bird’s eye view of his next 16 years of life — 16 years that would pass without him shedding “any more tears for personal matters” to borrow the words of the Minister.

Just as his father discovered too late, it was “useless” for Lee Yul to escape the restrictions of being the Crown Prince. Whether he liked it or not, he was trapped under the unbearable weight of being a cornerstone to somebody else’s ambitions.

🙂

So those are the different nuances of cornerstones in this story — so far.

I’m actually waiting for another meaning of a cornerstone to come up. And this one is more unique to Korean style of cornerstones in houses.

When I was exploring hanoks in one of my visits in Seoul, I was told by my friend that the rough, upper surface of the cornerstone is made to fit with the base of the corner-post of the house. There was no cement or glue or duct tape strong enough to bind the post to the stone. So, instead the builders had to approach the problem using the natural form of the rough stone.

The top of the rough cornerstone MATCHES the bottom of the wooden pillar so when the two are joined together to erect a house, they “lock” into place, like yin and yang, and the pillar won’t fall off the cornerstone, making the whole house tumble down.

lol. Do you see where I’m going with this?

The cornerstone might very well be Lee Yul but the pillar of the building — the one that keeps the whole building upright — would be the girl, Yi-Seo.

Gotta run. Happy Sunday, y’all.