Cinderella, Her Two Suitors, and Her Two New Brothers
I absolutely love like 95% of Cinderella and the Four Knights. The titular Cinderella is Eun Ha-won, a recent high school graduate who has too many jobs and zero experience with romance (and is also a tae-kwon-do badass, but that aspect of her personality is dropped pretty quickly). Her step-mom and step-sister abuse and neglect her, and after a fight with her family, she is encouraged to work for the Chairman of the Haneul Group to get his three grandsons to stop being assholes. The only rule he has for her is that Ha-won absolutely, positively can not date any of his grandsons. I literally laughed about this plot point for days because of how ridiculous it was.
I really like Ha-won’s relationships with each of the boys, as they are unique and allow the watcher to easily imagine her falling in love with any one of them. The first one Ha-won is introduced to is Hyun-min, the oldest and cockiest. He flirts easily and exudes confidence. I really enjoyed the playful dynamic between him and Ha Won, and if this had been any other drama, they probably would have had a romance. As it is, the rhythm of their relationship feels more like a brother and sister who get along pretty well: protective yet antagonistic.
Keeping in the brother camp, the Chairman’s secretary Yoon-sung. He is the serious, no nonsense, married to his job type, but he is very sympathetic to Ha-won and regularly helps her out. For her part, Ha-won always treats him like an equal and encourages Yoon-sung to call her by her name instead of an honorific. Toward the end of the series he gets a little nerfed — in terms of interacting with Ha-won, but he had other problems to worry about — and I wish that he could have gotten a better ending.
Ha-won has two main love interests in this series, Ji-woon and Seo-woo. While Ji-woon presents himself as an absolute asshole to most of the world, he has a tender side that is shown to the audience pretty early on. So he’s almost an asshole-turned-adorable, but not quite. His dynamic with Ha-won is interesting in that they are very similar people. I mentioned earlier that Ha-won is a tae-kwon-do badass, but it’s rarely brought up the first few episodes. I am pretty sure this is because if she were actually allowed to use her skills, she and Ji-woon may have gotten into a fist fight (and I would have loved every second of it).
While Ha-won and Ji-woon took a while to warm up to each other, Ha-won immediately got along with Seo-woo and became pretty good friends. He is a sensitive-artist type and an all around good boi. It’s honestly adorable how much they just clicked, which made it even more heart-breaking when Seo-woo sorted out his feelings and got his heart subtly crushed a few episodes later. I really liked Seo-woo and every time I see a decent guy get nerfed in one of these shows I am reminded of how much I hate it. You will find love, my boi, the ending saw to that.
When all is said and done, Cinderella and the Four Knights was a really cute story with engaging characters and an interesting story (even if it wasn’t super complicated). All of the story threads that get brought up are figured out, and all of the characters get a happily ever after. If you haven’t seen it yet, I would definitely recommend it.
P.S. I love love love Ha-won’s hairstyle~ And pretty much all of her outfits were super cute.
