While starting this show i did not have high expectations since the cast was quite unfamiliar for me (i have only seen one of shin se-kyung's drama's "Run On") but i was utterly mesmerized in the first few episodes.

Pros:
1) The biggest pro for me is the ml's acting skills, his eyes are so expressive and his line delivery is impressive, i found myself rewatching his dialogues because they were so powerful
2) The struggles of being the king was described really well and the king's predicament was also well written
3) Wave by Taeil which is one of the main osts of this show was soo good, its very melancholic and the tune was stuck in my head for days
4) I also really liked the fact that court lady dong was not a one dimensional villainess who always conspired to do evil but rather had feelings of her own
5) The queen's story was quite tragic and im glad that they didnt portray her as an obstacle to the main couples relationship but rather as a noble girl that got unlucky and her relationship with the grand prince was also really cute

Cons:
1) The ending didnt really feel like a proper ending, after seeing it i felt like i was seeing the second last episode rather than the last episode, i had certain hopes for what their relationship would end up as and i was sad that none of it came true
2) It got very fast paced towards the end and very draggy in certain parts as well
3) I remember being so annoyed when the fl kept having the deer in front of headlights look for every scene and the fact that she kept going back to revenge when the ml was baring his his heart out to her
4) I still dont see why myung-ha's character was necessary to the plot
5) I dont know if its the bad/biased writing but the fl's scenes were so unmemorable, on one hand you had the ml's POWERFUL line delivery and emotions and the fl consistently had the deer in headlights look and her lines were just not IMPACTFUL enough

Overall i would say that its a pretty good show, the first few episode were easily a 10/10 but the later episodes changed my mind. All in all if you like angsty romances with very less skinship but a lot of meaningful looks then this show is definitely for you. I do think that i liked this show more due to the fact that i waited every week rather than binge watching the whole thing since the wait at the end of every cliffhanger and the numerous predictions i cooked up were definitley a huge part of the experience