As a habit, I'd do research after watching sageuk to check the veracity of the figures who were placed in the narrative. This time, I'd like to check whether there was in fact a love triangle in the Kdrama series Empress Ki.
I will start with things that aren't true.
Nothing was known about Ki's life in Goryo (present day Korea) so basically the first seven episodes were all fiction. What was known was that Ki was sent to Yuan from Goryo as a tribute woman. It is also untrue that she was in love with some Goryo king. This also means that Prince Maha is just fiction. When she was sent to China, she was just a tenager. She worked as a palace maid. It was probably during those tea parties where she served tea when Emperor Huizong (Toghon Tehmur) noticed her. In the Yuan upperclass, Goryo women were in vogue and keeping them as concubines was a trend. Perhaps Ki was an exceptional beauty (in the standard of this era) that the emperor kept her as his concubine.
Before Ki became an empress, the emperor had two primary empresses first. The first one was Tanashiri, daughter of a powerful figure in the dynasty. In the series, Tanashiri was very jealous of Ki. It was also recorded that the empress gave birth to a son, but died later. In other words, she wasn't infertile as the series suggested. Palace intrigues dethroned Tanashiri and caused her death by poison. In the series though, tanashiri was hanged. After the death of Tanashiri, Ki would have been an empress as a favoured concubine by the emperor. But Huizong was forced to marry a Mongol noble woman, Bayan Khutug. Lady Ki was only named secondary empress or Imperial Noble Consort (in the series) when she gave birth to her son, Ayushiridara. In the series, Empress Bayan also got entangled with palace intrigues which caused her death. Historical records did not confirm it. Although she was dethroned as well, she remained as an empress. But since she was sent away from the palace, the management of the inner court was given to Concubine Ki. So basically, she was an empress by duty, not by name.
The series portrayed Emperor Huizong as hedonistic. Though he soaked himself in wine and women, it was not confirmed whether he was a total idiot like what the series suggested. I really hated it that they depicted him as a weak and incompetent leader when he was a descendant of Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan. There might have been truth in the idea that he ruled poorly but it was clear that he also had a very progressive reign. I also hated that he died in the series before they could flee from the rebels who established the Ming dynasty. According to records, he died in Mongolia where they fled and established the Northern Yuan Dynasty with Empress Ki and Ayushiridara as successor.
It is very clear to me that 90% of the narrative was a historical revision. I could not blame the writers for employing too much of their dramatic license. If a love triangle was not present, it would have been a boring story. In fact, the story was more interesting with so many subplots when Tanshiri's brother got interested with Ki as well. For this historical distortion, I could not blame the Koreans as well for giving negative feedback on the series. Empress Ki was portrayed as a Goryo woman who cared for her nation and people. She also brought Korean culture to China. I believe Koreans take much effort in checking their history and they were told otherwise, that Empress Ki was a traitor for being an empress of Yuan dynasty which bullied Goryo. But the series has a deeper meaning than what Koreans believe. They considered her as a traitor without even bothering to question how their country abandoned its citizens who were sold and enslaved in Yuan. As a tribute woman, Ki has no nation to protect her, so she stepped up to protect herself. It must have been a filial duty as an empress to uphold her husband and son who was a crown prince. As she puts it, "a nation that failed to protect its people and those people sent to another nation serves no purpose." In her perspective, Goryo failed to protect her and thousands of tribute women which her country sent to Yuan dynasty. It's like the Philippines in the time of pandemic. It failed to protect its people that sometimes you would ask whether your country really has a purpose for its people. Hehehe.
What brought me to a yearning desire to finish the series in three days was the dramatic tension that the show-runners placed in each episode. It's like a book that forces you to experience a page-turning excitement because the characters are very complex and the plot is carefully woven that it pushes you to thirst for what the next episode brings to the table. I would give this series a 9 out of 10.
