#yi suen

[palaceoftears]

Approaching your hot rival be like...

[palaceoftears]

Honestly I really liked the ending for my favourite characters, I love how it ties On Sin's original ambitions with Yi Suen, the only girlie that gets to escape the palace and start a new life, an amazing final for someone that never lived for herself. I also liked the contrast between Hung Mo not wanting to save the concubines-to-be on the first ep and then saving my girlies in the last one (was it needed for On Sin to die tho? Nope, but at least it gave us her brilliant words to Yi Suen on the road, truly my favourite scene of the show). For the rest, it was really meh, I never got the yuk ying x suen bak yeung thingie so seeing them burn didn't really impact me sorry gcssr. Same with the empress surviving, she was such an one dimensional villain that it didn't bring me any of the anger I saw in the comments. Then Yue Yuet staying because living in the palace is all she's known to do it's really sad but I totally get it, she's been there for +10 years and lost two babies so she's way too consumed by her grief to "start a new life", as On Sin puts it:

(also loling to the fact that Yi Suen is going to rebuild her life at On Sin's village and raise the emperor's son as a villager?? Jsjajq this show never cared for that guy)

[palaceoftears]

I still sostain Yi Suen is very Mahi-coded, but her ending is soo similar to Nergissah's!! Both of them end up symbolizing the ultimate hope of a new beginning while carrying their protectors' lost dreams of peace. Yi Suen being pregnant and returning to a hometown that isn't hers but that she must claim as such to build her new identity and family while honoring On Sin's memory and then Nergissah having to go to a new home that isn't her choice but that could save her from the doom of her original family by possibiliting the start of another one in which she could still honor her grandma's and father's memory by living the life Mahidevran dreamed of and then maybe naming a son after Mustafa.... Just two perfect bittersweet endings where both moving on and remembering can finally coexist in the members of a new generation that gets to live outside of the oppressive walls of the palace and the generational trauma can at least start healing through them!!