Using my personal rating system of "loved," "liked," "meh," & "nah," this was a “liked”.

Things I liked:
I liked all the characters—I really felt that most were three-dimensional with believable back stories that explained how they had gotten to where they were. The mystery was interesting. I also appreciated (weirdly enough) that there was no “good guy” in the court (apart from the Queen)—neither the Prime Minister nor the Royal Secretary were particularly good people, and both had done a lot of damage to the kingdom. I had a bit of SMLS going there for a bit, but I was happy he got the SFL in the end. I liked the sismance between the SFL and the FL and that there was no silly jealous girl trope going on. I liked that the female characters were strong and rarely needed ‘saving’ by male characters. I liked that the ML proposed to the FL with a comb which is better than the Western convention of the ring that I sometimes see used in Joseon dramas (though he did go down on one knee…). Even though the royal family was involved in the plot, I liked that the two main leads were not royalty in and of themselves.

Things I disliked:
There wasn’t much I disliked beyond minor plot points/inconsistencies (for example, they should have used a young actor to play the Royal Secretary during his flashback scenes--the actual actor was too old to pull that off convincingly; the fact that guns during that era were [a] not accurate no matter how good a shot you were and [b] had to be re-loaded via the muzzle before you could shoot again...). I kind of disliked portraying alcohol consumption as this great thing since (while I get why Prohibition is a waste of government time and money—as we should know in this country from our own experience), there have been legitimate reasons to restrict alcohol consumption, especially in patriarchal societies where women and children depended on a functioning male to work. If he was incapable of work (and/or violent) due to drink, then it was the women and children who suffered.

I felt this was a decent historical drama. It wasn’t grippingly exciting but nor was there anything to make me drop it in disgust. The male leads were nice to look at, the female leads were no wilting flowers. All in all, a worthy watch.