[R:MotM] EPS 33~34 - The Thorn Bird Sings But Once
In under ten minutes, Hwa-Gun manages to steal the show one last time.
As I expected last week, Hwa-Gun knew she was a goner once she took out the poppy field. In keeping with the tradition of sympathetic second leads, the writers take her out before she becomes corrupted like the false crown prince. A light has gone out from Ruler and I for one certainly find the story dimmer without her presence. But her death brings new changes, and I thought I’d explore her courageous last stand and the results within the men she left behind.
The Courage to Face Death with Dignity
There’s a story I heard in a song once (by F.I.R.) about a thorn bird who sings but once in her life. The song is of such quality and sweetness that the whole world stops to listen, and it reaches the heavens. In order to sing this song, she must willingly pierce her heart with a thorn, resulting in her own demise. But there’s no way the thorn bird wouldn’t have sung--her fate was to sing that last song, and that last song she was willing to die to sing.
When I saw Hwa-Gun in this episode, I immediately thought about that thorn bird. Hwa-Gun stands at her most courageous once she makes her decision to burn the poppy field. No longer torn between love and familial loyalty, she’s free at last to be the woman whose been buried deep within her--a woman who might very well have won the prince’s love, had she been free to express herself.
Hwa-Gun takes full responsibility for what she’s done even when her father begs her not to and tries to come up with ways to keep her alive. She’s decided to offer all of herself in service to her prince, and protecting him remains her first priority even as she faces her end alone.
When her grandfather accuses her father of negligence, she moves to protect him, refusing to hide behind him any longer. Even slimy Jo Tae-Ho tries to save her by deflecting responsibility onto the crown prince, informing Dae Mok that not only is the crown prince still alive, but he’s the one who burned the field down. Hwa-Gun, enraged that her grandfather now knows about the crown prince’s survival, draws Dae Mok’s ire back to her by claiming responsibility for the burning.
At any point, she could have hidden behind her father or her men or even run away, but she didn’t. She held firm, and she accepted the consequences of her actions. She clearly knows her grandfather well enough to know that he’ll never let her live after this, but it no longer matters--she’s struck him to the heart, and both she and he know it.
The Thorn Bird Defeats The Dragon
Dae Mok and Hwa-Gun remove themselves to the watchtower, away from Hwa-Gun’s hovering father, with Jo Tae-Ho in tow as witness. It is here that they have their final stand off, and it becomes clear the world could not bear two of them at one time--they’re too alike as people and as such one had to go.
What’s interesting about this scene is that Hwa-Gun clearly doesn’t regret a thing she did. She struck her blow, and she struck it with the full knowledge of what was the inevitable result.
It’s actually Dae Mok who’s the most affected, the most distraught, over the situation. He clearly cares about his granddaughter, and he’s conflicted over what he has to do. He tries one last time to reach her, in a grandfatherly way--did she know what the Pyunsoo Group meant to him?
Hwa-Gun, with cool grace, replies that it meant to him what the crown prince means to her--something more precious than life itself. Had she answered in any other way, she might have lived. He might have been able to spare her. But she answered in this manner, and after such an answer, there was only one solution--she had to be destroyed. The two of them will never see eye to eye, and Dae Mok has sacrificed too much to keep the Pyunsoo Group in power. Not even his granddaughter is worth more to him at this point.
Dae Mok asks Hwa-Gun if she has anything she wants to say, and she asks him to tell her father that she’s sorry. It’s not that she’s actually sorry about what she’s done; she’s sorry about the effects she knows it will have on her father. Throughout this entire story, she’s been torn between her loyalties to her beloved father and the crown prince. In burning the poppy field, she’s turned her back on her father despite still loving him with all her heart.
Dae Mok orders Jo Tae-Ho to stab Hwa-Gun. She closes her eyes with quiet acceptance, a woman who has faced her demise with courage and is at peace with her decision. Jo Tae-Ho is incapable of stabbing her--for a slimy weasel, he has some morals when he actually has a relationship with someone. Dae Mok is left to kill her himself, and the killing of her strengthens her and those she loves, and weakens Dae Mok.
With the final blow, the first chink in Dae Mok’s armor appears, setting the stage for the crown prince to rend him to pieces before the end of the story. With Hwa-Gun’s sacrifice, the stage is now set for Dae Mok’s fall. He sacrificed the last remnant of his humanity when he killed his own future--without Hwa-Gun, there is no future for the Pyunsoo Group. The legacy will die with Dae Mok, an old man with no heirs other than his useless son. By choosing to destroy Hwa-Gun, Dae Mok has destroyed himself--but the death will be a slow one, eating him from the inside out, until the crown prince taking him down will come as a relief.
Dae Mok begins to walk around like a man in a daze. He can barely function, he can barely plan. He gets a bit of light back into him with the hit list proposal, but for the most part he’s now a ghost of a person. He may have killed Hwa-Gun for the sake of the Pyunsoo Group and his own ego, but her death haunts him permanently. He will probably not shake it until his own death.
In the end, Hwa-Gun wins in the game against her grandfather. The aftershocks of her actions in the three men she loves best will be the first stepping stones toward her dream--that her crown prince take his rightful place, free of the Pyunsoo Group--being fulfilled.
The Strength of a Father’s Love
I never had the opportunity to say it, but Hwa-Gun’s father, Woo-Jae, is my second favorite character in the show. He’s a complete mess of a person--a miserable excuse of a coward who failed to actualize himself and free himself from the shadow of a controlling and overbearing father. He never ventured out into the world to make a life for himself, nor did he ever find his own path. Instead, he clung to his father’s coattails, despite the fact that leading the Pyunsoo Group was never something that would come naturally to him.
For all his many faults, he has one virtue that has shone brightly throughout the story--his love for his daughter. She is his number one priority, and while he may dote on her and spoil her, he is always true and devoted and loving and supportive of her. He has defended her at every turn in the story, even though he is not a brave man.
That’s why it was so heart breaking to see him tonight. Instead of attacking his daughter for what she’s done to their enterprise, he begins planning ways to save her. Maybe they can talk to her grandfather, or better, she can run away. Or he’ll take responsibility and she’ll say nothing. His whole heart is bent on saving her from what he feels is a terrible mistake she’s made, not understanding the sacrifice she’s willingly chosen to make.
When Dae Mok comes upon them and starts berating him, Woo-Jae never once tells the truth, despite shaking in his boots and falling to his knees. He does hide behind Hwa-Gun after she interjects between him and Dae Mok, but that has more to do with his inability to stand up to more forceful personalities than any lack of love for his daughter. He hovers anxiously below the watch tower while she speaks with Dae Mok, clearly hoping they can work something out, wanting to interfere.
Though Hwa-Gun dies thinking of her prince, it’s her daddy’s arms which cradle her in her final moments. Her death effects a change within her father, a change which will likely have longterm ramifications for the Pyunsoo Group and her grandfather--her father at last grows a spine.
When Dae Mok walks by, for the first time (probably in his life), Woo-Jae calls him a monster. With the last of his connections taken from him, Woo-Jae now has nothing to lose, and it is here at the end that he finally sees what’s important and what he should have stood up to protect long ago.
After taking his leave of Hwa-Gun’s body, Woo-Jae faces down Dae Mok, probably also for the first time in his life. Dae Mok tries to justify his actions, but Woo-Jae won’t hear anything of it--he admits his intense disappointment in Dae Mok’s choice, that he’d hoped Dae Mok would prioritize family over the Pyunsoo Group just once. Then he cuts Dae Mok to the quick with a scathing remark about how Dae Mok always talked big about needing the Pyunsoo Group to protect the family, but that now he has nothing to protect, highlighting how far Dae Mok has fallen from his goal--he now serves the power for the sake of power, not his former goal.
Woo-Jae prophetically says Dae Mok will lose everything he treasures and will die lonely and tragically. And then, for the first time in his life, he walks away, leaving Dae Mok speechless. (The music in this scene is perfectly timed too, fufu.)
Ironically, with her death, Hwa-Gun at last freed her father from the underworld he’d been trapped within. She freed him to see the world for what it is and to finally take steps toward living the truth within himself, whatever that truth is. Her father at last grows a spine, and says the things he should have said long before. Another chink in Dae Mok’s armer appears, leaving him bereft of all of the people he had been supposedly fighting for.
Passing the Torch
In the last episode, Hwa-Gun said a few interesting things to Gon which I thought at the time were prophetic (and ultimately were). She told him to protect the crown prince, because protecting the crown prince is the same as protecting herself. She also told him to see the crown prince to safety, and then to return to her.
Gon, ever faithful, fulfills her requests. He sees the crown prince and his posse to safety then hightails it back to Hwa-Gun’s side. Unfortunately, as Hwa-Gun surely knew when she dispatched him on his quest, he returns to find she is dead.
It’s here that we see Gon probably loved her, which many viewers suspected and secretly shipped I’m sure. As her servant, he couldn’t do anything about his feelings, of course, but that doesn’t make them any less real.
He finds her laid out on a pallet, and her father sitting with her. Her father acknowledges Gon’s pain, and comments that it seems he doesn’t know how to cry. This isn’t true, of course--Gon’s just a very private man, and holds his pain within himself until he is alone.
He can’t even bring himself to touch her, even though this is his last opportunity and she’s not even in her body anymore. This is how much he values her and respects her. As he gazes upon her, he remembers what she’s said to him and the directive she gave him--a directive that likely temporarily stops him from revenge killing Dae Mok (as she may have suspected) by placing a superior directive to live and defend her love. If the crown prince lives, she also will metaphorically live on, because the crown prince is the man she died to protect.
He accepts her directive, and declares that until the end of his days, he will protect the crown prince as she requested. Death flags raised for this poor guy, but hopefully he’ll get to help take down Dae Mok for her in the end. ;)
The Queen’s Command
Though the crown prince doesn’t have much of a connection to Hwa-Gun here at the end of her life, her death still has incredible ramifications for him as well.
Gon reports back to the crown prince that Hwa-Gun is dead, which distresses him greatly, because he’s a good man and he appreciated Hwa-Gun as an ally. At the time, he’s been struggling with whether or not he has a right to challenge the false crown prince and regain the throne--as the son of a traitor, that makes him illegitimate in his own eyes.
Despite all the other voices being raised up, calling him to take on the challenge--even his beloved Ga-Eun, he’s still hesitant to take the plunge. After hearing that Hwa-Gun died at the hands of Dae Mok, the crown prince asks her metaphorically what he should do to repay her kindness.
It is here that Gon gives the crown prince her directive--regain the throne. She sacrificed herself to enable him to return to the throne. It’s his duty to see this through to the end, because if not, her sacrifice will be wasted. (And probably Gon would kill him, but shhh.)
And so Hwa-Gun’s last blow to her grandfather is in strengthening the crown prince’s resolve and providing him the last push forward to take back the throne for himself. Though she will never be his queen, she still gave him a queen’s directive, and he is duty bound to follow it, for she paid for it in blood.
Some final thoughts, since this’ll probably be my last post on Ruler unless a surprise happens at this point.
Hwa-Gun will be sorely missed--she’s the light of the show, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve enjoyed her plotline immensely, and I’m sad to see it’s over so close to the end. I’m glad she got to go with dignity, though. I’m equally glad to see her death has so many ramifications for her grandfather’s downfall and the crown prince’s rise.
The acting in this episode was superb. Dae Mok’s actor nailed his character’s inner conflict and the haggard expression from being haunted by his actions. Gon’s actor, too, did such a fantastic job--in the final scene with the crown prince, he looks so defeated and exhausted, while in the scene with Hwa-Gun’s body, he perfectly captures the sorrow and the love and the loyalty the character has. Hwa-Gun’s father also is a huge highlight this episode. I hope we haven’t seen the last of him; I’d be sad to not be able to see him find at least some happiness. I know he is a horribly compromised person, but even so, I’d like him to learn from his mistakes and learn how to live forthrightly.
It is a shame that the crown prince had so little reaction to Hwa-Gun’s death, but he never was invested in her and that was quite clear from the beginning. It was all her one-sided love, which is what ultimately makes her end so tragic. Still, I love that it’s her sacrifice that propels his goal forward, despite the pep talk from Ga-Eun. It’s a fitting resolution to a love that could never bloom.
(Speaking of Ga-Eun, her character really stepped up the game this episode. Maybe she’ll get to shine finally now that her rival is gone. ;p)
When all’s said and done, I truly enjoyed Hwa-Gun’s character, and she’s one of the things I love about Ruler. She’s set the ending up to be a wild ride, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of her sacrifice reverberating throughout the cast as they push forward. Who’s ultimately going to get to kill Dae Mok, it’ll be fun to see. I’m betting on Gon right now; our goodie two shoes crown prince doesn’t have enough invested to do the dirty work. ;) His opponent is the false crown prince anyway. He’s got to take down what he put up, after all. He needs to take responsibility for leaving Lee Sun alone for as long as he did, and allowing him to become corrupt while he ran around freely.
I probably won’t touch Ruler again unless something really significant happens. Hwa-Gun was really the only thing I wanted to write about, fufu. Still, it’s been a great ride, and I’m looking forward to enjoying it to the end. =)











