“Under the Queen’s Umbrella” (슈룹)

A superb historical K-drama centering on a queen's fight to save her sons

☆☆☆☆

Queen Im Hwa-ryeong (played by Kim Hye-soo)
Queen Dowager (played by Kim Hae-sook)
King Yi-ho (played by Choi Won-young)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“Under the Queen’s Umbrella” was my top pick of 2022. If you’re looking for a fantastic series to watch, this sageuk/사극 (or historical drama) is difficult to beat.

Kim Hye-soo is magnificent as a queen whose sons’ lives (and her own) are in danger if the Crown Prince dies. She is whip smart and almost always one step ahead of her enemies, who want to destroy her family to elevate their own.

The period costumes are gorgeous (as is the entire cast), the cinematography is beautifully filmed and the writing is superb — with plenty of suspense, espionage, backstabbing and even some humor — and showcases a mother’s unconditional love for her children. There are also some controversial topics that are handled with care and mindfulness.

If you’re inadvertently reading this on a content-scraping plagiarism site (e.g. europesays(dot)com etc.), please know that they stole my copyrighted work. These clickbait sites are illegally using my writing to generate traffic to their ads. —Jae-Ha Kim

Ratings don’t really mean much in the big scheme of things, because everyone has their own opinion as to what a good K-drama is. But this was one of two K-dramas from 2022 that I ranked as ☆☆☆☆ out of ☆☆☆☆. (The first was “Our Blues.”)

Life seems idyllic in the beginning. The Queen and King are the proud parents of five sons. The younger four are Grand Princes with little responsibility. Their eldest brother is the Crown Prince — the heir to the throne — who is married and the father of a son, who will inherit the crown from him.

Well, sort of. The King also has a number of concubines, who have given him seven more sons. (Which begs the question … did none of the women give birth to a baby girl? I don’t think there was any mention of the King’s heirs being girls.) The King — who ascended to the throne after his brother died — is himself the child of a concubine, who is now the powerful Queen Dowager. When the Crown Prince falls deathly ill, the royal court councilors and other government officials do everything in their power to place a puppet prince they can control on the throne. The strongest contender is Prince Uiseong (Kang Chan-hee), the son of the favored concubine.

Each episode is a nail-biter with thrilling plot twists. The King tries to be a righteous ruler and atone for his sins from the past. But it’s Queen Hwa-ryeong — the brains and humanity in the family — who tries to restore honor back in the royal family.

In a series full of attractive and skilled actors, Kim Hye-soo still manages to stand out. Hers is a modern queen who delivers on her promises (and threats). Kim is such a skilled veteran actress that with simply a raised eyebrow or a slight flick of her wrist, she gets across the Queen’s intentions without uttering a single word.

Cameo: In Episode seven, Rain makes a cameo appearance as a nobleman briefly flirting with Lady Chung-ha. Oh Ye-ju plays the smitten young woman who is in love with Grand Prince Seongnam. Viewers were curious why Rain would agree to such a short appearance. Oh is one of the celebrities signed to Rain’s talent agency, RAIN Company. So he was supporting his client and helping bolster the series’ ratings.

Airdates: Sixteen 73-minute episodes aired from October 15 to December 5, 2022 on tvN. (I watched this on Netflix.)

Spoiler Alert: One of the things this series touched on was the sexism that women suffered. Grand Prince Muan (Yoon Sang-Hyeon) is quite the playboy, but his heart belongs to Cho-wol (Jeon Hye-won) — a low-birth woman working in a kisaeng establishment. When the Queen forbids him from seeing her again, stating that she in unsuitable for marriage, he tells her that Cho-wol can always be his first concubine. He says this matter-of-factly. The Queen later says that even though Muan is her son and that she loves him, this attitude is what he was born into. He thinks about how she can please him, rather than how being a concubine affects her. When Cho-wol becomes pregnant with Muan’s baby, he chooses to raise the infant with the help of an unseen wet nurse who turns out to be … Cho-wol! The Queen had promised that she would find a way for the three of them to live in the open as a family. And this was a start.

I write more about how women were treated in “Moon Embracing the Sun,” where the competition to become the Crown Princess meant there would be one winner, who would join the royal family. As for all the other girls and women who went through the selection process but weren’t selected to be the Crown Princess? They would not be free to marry. They would spend the rest of their lives as concubines.

Now back to “Under the Queen’s Umbrella” …

Moon Sang-min became a bonafide heartthrob after playing Grand Prince Seongnam. Viewers learned that immediately after his birth, the Queen Dowager spread unsavory rumors that he had been fathered by another man. As such, Seongnam was forced to live outside the palace for years before the Queen could bring him back to the palace. After his elder brother is killed, he steps up to fulfill his mother’s wish that one of her sons becomes the next Crown Prince. If one of them doesn’t ascend, the Queen Dowager will (at best) kick them out of the palace or (at worst) have them all killed and establish one of the concubine’s sons as the next heir. Her preferred choice is the calculating Prince Uiseong (played by Kang Chan-hee). But Grand Prince Seongnam eventually becomes the Crown Prince. As for his Crown Princess? It’s Lady Chung-ha, who fell in love with him prior to knowing he was a prince.

In the most bittersweet subplot, Prince Gyeseong (subtly played by Yoo Seon-ho) was born male but identifies as female. He finds a secret place in the palace where he makes his own cosmetics, applies it and changes into a beautiful woman’s hanbok. Because of who he is, and because he cannot be transgender,¹ gay or queer, this secret is his burden to bear alone. When his Mother finds out, she is shocked. But moreso, she fears for his life. She cannot allow him the freedom to live as his true self. But she takes him — dressed and adorned as how he identifies— to an artist, who paints him in his splendor. This secret scroll gives him some solace. (And I am referring to Gyesong as he, because that is how he addresses himself throughout the series.)

In the series finale, Prince Gyeseong tells his mother that he will leave the palace so that he can live his own life. This means moving far away where no one knows his identity. It was very sad (and depressing) that in order to be who he was, he had to leave his family behind to protect them.

For the past 20 years, Yi-ho lived with the guilt of having witnessed his mother kill his half brother, Tae-in, so that he could become the Crown Prince and eventually King. (And his mother became the Queen Dowager.) Yi-ho allowed Tae-in’s mother (the now deposed Queen Yoon) to leave the palace with her sons. Because any male heir is a threat to the throne, all of Tae-in’s brothers were killed off one by one … except for Ik-hyeon. To save his life, Master Toji (Crown Prince Tae-in’s royal physician) tells the deposed queen he will protect Ik-hyeon by pretending the boy is his son. Meanwhile, Toji’s son will remain with the former queen. Ik-hyeon reinvents himself as Physician Kwon, working at the palace to take vengeance on the Royal Family that had usurped his family’s powers. There, he poisons Yi-ho’s eldest son, which seems like poetic justice to him since that’s how Yi-ho’s mother had killed Tae-in.

Ik-hyeon is ultimately stabbed to death by Prince Uiseong, who didn’t know until it was too late that Ik-hyeon was his father.

The final few seconds of this series are absolutely stunning. The Queen, who has shielded her children with her metaphorical and literal umbrella, is seen walking with Crown Prince Seongnam … who now is the one carrying the umbrella for her.

I know that this can all be a bit confusing, so I’m sharing a character map from kepoper.com:

© 2024 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved

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1. Thanks to andrea hak-kovacs’ comment below, I added queer and transgender to make this review more accurate. I am mindful that today’s terminology didn’t necessarily exist in the Joseon Dynasty. But it is clear that by the end of the series, Prince Gyeseong is coming to terms with living as his true self, which is why he decides to leave the palace, and which is why the Queen allows it.