I’m not a character basher, though if a character gets bashed whether I like him or her or not, I want to defend that character. (And so many characters are receiving hate lately.)
On King Il, he loved his wife, because he clearly wrote in the bookmark that he felt awful, because he believes his wife never knew that her husband loved her. He loved her, but has really poor communication skills. He sought vengeance, because his brother had Il’s wife killed. So, if you want to justify vengeance, start there. Because there’s a whole vengeance cycle, and justifying Soo-Won killing Il, because of vengeance, probably should start with the first vengeance. (And Yuhon had Kashi killed in order to ‘protect’ Yonghi, even though Kashi would never hurt her.)
Yonghi had met Il back before she and Yuhon were married, and had become friends with Il. It’s one of the reasons, her husband fell in love with her, because she was actually not an instant Il hater, like a lot of women in the series that favored Yuhon. So, she knew that Il was not normally the sort to resort to violence and was usually more peace minding; she just wanted to stop the violence and vengeance cycle before their kids got involved. (Which sadly did not work out in her favor, because Soo-Won continued the vengeance cycle, which Yona chose to end.)
Soo-Won thinks things through logically rather than resorting to emotions, so though he was presented with the idea of taking vengeance, he figured he would wait things out. When he noticed that his uncle was still not doing a good job as a king, he continued in his plans to have him killed, waiting until he was old enough to take the throne and had the knowledge and ability to do so. (He even told Yona that he’d been waiting ten years for the day that he could finally kill Il. So, he wasn’t really planning on being that merciful towards his uncle regardless.)
I think Il’s plan to just wait for his death essentially was an act of mercy however, because he could have killed his nephew or got him killed off somehow. I think he felt so much guilt for killing his brother and so much grief, that he finally decided to just let the vengeance cycle end. (He did put down in the bookmark after all, that he felt he wasn’t allowed to grieve his brother, because he was the one who killed him, which shows both guilt and grief.)
(I do think sadly enough that if Yuhon had lived that he would have killed Yona eventually, just because of her connection to Hiryuu, which was one of the reasons why Il had forbidden Soo-Won, Yuhon, and Yonghi from meeting Yona when she was a baby; a way of trying to protect her, not merely because she’s Hiryuu’s reincarnation, but because she’s his daughter, and he loves her.)
King Il was wary of Soo-Won, because he knew that his nephew would one day kill him, which is why he refused Yona the option of marrying Soo-Won.
I feel like the whole vengeance cycle should have just been avoided from the start. That Kashi didn’t need to be killed, that Il shouldn’t have retaliated and so on. I understand why all of them did what they did, just I think it was awful of them to do these things to each other. Family after all wasn’t meant to be a vengeance cycle.
