The Weight of an Empty Throne
‘Where on earth did that man go?’
Hong-wi froze in place.
Somewhere in the span of a breath, all trace of Han Ga-ryeong had vanished without a whisper. He could hardly tell whether the meeting itself had been dream or waking life.
Suyang watched his nephew glance about in bewilderment for a long moment, then spoke in a low voice.
"It is time you returned to the palace."
On the ride back, Suyang turned the day's events over in his mind, weighing what had been gained against what had been lost.
When Han Myeong-hoe drew near, Suyang spat the words out as if chewing on gristle.
"I set out to humiliate that boy, and instead it was me who ended up shamed."
"Do not let it trouble you, My Lord."
Han Myeong-hoe parried smoothly. Suyang shot him a sidelong glare.
"Not trouble me? I meant to disgrace a mere child, and the disgrace landed square on my own head, did it not?"
"He is no ordinary child, My Lord. Is he not the King?"
Han Myeong-hoe smiled faintly. Suyang grumbled on.
"What, have you fallen for that boy yourself? That is how it looks to me."
"Heavens, no, My Lord."
Suyang was still muttering to himself when Han Myeong-hoe's next words stopped him mid-breath.
"Besides, My Lord — strip a young king of every hand and foot that serves him, and what is left for him to do alone? You handled today beautifully."
"Hmm...?"
Suyang turned and studied Han Myeong-hoe closely. The older man wore a smile that sent a chill crawling up the spine.
"Thanks to you stepping forward, My Lord, we were able to mark every minister at court whose heart still leans toward the King."
"So... you used me as bait?"
Suyang spat the words with distaste, yet his mood seemed to lighten considerably. Han Myeong-hoe beamed.
"No need for concern, My Lord."
"Good. But lay no hands on them."
"I beg your pardon?"
Han Myeong-hoe's mouth fell open. Suyang gave a contemptuous snort.
"Do you take me for less than a child? You think I cannot bind the ministers of this court to my will myself?"
"My Lord, that is not what I meant—"
Han Myeong-hoe waved his hands in flustered denial. He had pricked Suyang's pride in exactly the wrong place. Suyang fixed him with eyes cold as frost.
"My father, and my elder brother before him — they persuaded the ministers of the court with their hearts, standing before them. That is what royal authority is. That is what royal radiance is. Are you telling me a man could follow that boy with all his heart, yet not follow me? That, I will never tolerate."
"My Lord, truly, that is not what I— I only wished to sift out those who would move against you first—"
"Han Myeong-hoe. Do you believe I am fated to be king of this realm?"
Han Myeong-hoe stopped in his tracks. For an instant, an overwhelming pressure rolled off Suyang — not warmth, not gentleness, but something cold enough to frost the bones. Even a man as weathered as Han Myeong-hoe felt sweat bead along his spine.
"...There can be no doubt of it."
"Then those trifling men are nothing. Watch and see. Every last one of them will have no choice but to bend the knee before me. Say no more."
Suyang drove his heels in and galloped ahead. Han Myeong-hoe lingered behind, watching his retreating back.
Hong Dal-son, Vice Minister of War, drew up beside him and clicked his tongue — he had been witness to the whole exchange.
"Tch. A man's meal is laid out before him, all he need do is eat it — and still he finds something to bristle at. Honestly."
"That was my failing."
"Eh?"
Hong Dal-son shot Han Myeong-hoe a look of disbelief.
"You? A Right Royal Secretary blunder? Now that I'd like to hear."
"A strategist, by his very nature, must serve up his counsel so that it goes down easily with his betters. I committed the folly of failing to read what lay in Your Lordship's heart."
"Hmm."
Hong Dal-son tilted his head, puzzled. Han Myeong-hoe gave a sly grin.
"It happens. But consider, My Lord — what manner of man Suyang is. You know the old saying: there are dogs that can be leashed, and wolves that cannot."
"Well, true enough."
Hong Dal-son shrugged and moved on ahead. Han Myeong-hoe wore an unreadable smile.
How could he ever say it aloud — that Suyang lashed out like that for one reason and one reason alone: inferiority.
Han Myeong-hoe prudently resolved never to speak of it. Should the word reach Suyang's ear, no depth of trusted service would shield him from the royal wrath.
'And yet I am certain of it. Inferiority... so even Grand Prince Suyang cannot escape that shadow.'
Suyang's father, and his eldest brother before him, had both borne the natural majesty and authority of born sovereigns — and for years upon years, Suyang had been forced to watch himself cower in their shadow. Put another way: the thought that he could never wield the authority his father and brother had wielded was one he simply could not accept.
And to lose to that — to lose to a child like Hong-wi — unthinkable.
Just then, Han Ga-ryeong materialized behind Han Myeong-hoe as if from his very shadow.
"Where were you?"
"Getting some air."
The answer was perfectly ordinary. Han Myeong-hoe nodded and issued his orders.
"I need you to watch certain ministers of the court. You must not be discovered by anyone, nor speak of it to anyone — not even to Grand Prince Suyang himself. I know there is no one better suited to the task."
Han Myeong-hoe added the last words hastily. It had occurred to him that such an addendum might sound like an insult to a trusted man like Han Ga-ryeong.
Han Ga-ryeong simply nodded, silent.
The seasons flowed on indifferently after the hunt on Cheonggye Mountain, and the year turned to Byeongja — the year 1456 by the Western calendar.
In the interim, the politics of Joseon had convulsed once more.
It had been the previous year that Hong-wi, ground down by nearly two years of Suyang's faction's relentless pressure, resolved to surrender the throne to his uncle. Two years — an age if it felt long, a blink if it felt short.
Yet measured against the intensity of the pressure Suyang's faction, having seized the entire court, had applied through every means overt and covert, it was never within the boy's power to bear from the start. However precocious he may have been, Hong-wi was still only a child.
Truth be told, with not a single minister to take his side nor a royal elder to shield him, the fact that he had held out for two years at all was remarkable in itself.
The transfer of the crown from Hong-wi to Suyang was accomplished with dispiriting ease.
Now Retired King, Hong-wi had moved from Gyeongbokgung to Suganggung, where he lived in quiet seclusion. Save for an occasional walk along the palace's inner grounds or an hour spent practicing archery in the courtyard with his eunuchs, he passed his days in an exile of utter loneliness.
At fifteen that year, Hong-wi had been blessed with refined, striking features, though his frame was rather slight. His every movement bore the dignity and restraint hammered into him by a rigorous sovereign's education. His eyes — eyes that seldom knew laughter — carried a nameless sorrow that made those who beheld him shy away even as pity stirred in their hearts.
Considering all he had endured at so young an age, that was hardly strange.
At thirteen, the burden placed on his shoulders had been crushing. Had his grandfather, King Sejong the Great — a magnificent ruler who joined brilliance in statecraft to boundless learning — lived but five years longer; had his father, King Munjong, who succeeded him, done the same, things would never have grown so dire.
Or had his mother, Queen Hyeondeok, whom he could not so much as remember, lived on — or even his grandmother, Queen Soheon, alone — she would have been a pillar of strength to him.
That was the loss Hong-wi mourned always.
And yet he had not wholly given up. To be precise — the people around him had not let him give up.
Dusk was falling, the light growing dim, when Hong-wi wandered the grounds of Suganggung in a daze. Today, of all days, the palace seemed to him unbearably bleak and dreary. Absentmindedly, he plucked a single leaf from a tree.
'What is a throne, truly? What is it that makes men covet it so? And why must I be the one to hold it?'
It was a question he had asked himself over and over, in the endless conversation he held with his own soul. From birth, he had been hailed as the rightful eldest grandson of the royal house, destined for kingship. Under the name of a sovereign's education, he had come to regard the duties and authority of a king as simply what was owed to him.
Precisely because he had always assumed the crown was his by right, Hong-wi had never truly felt its allure. And that was what made the sight of his uncle Suyang — willing to kill, willing to slaughter his own brothers, for the sake of that seat — so utterly shattering to him.
'Why did it have to come to that, for the sake of that seat? Why, in heaven's name?'
Hong-wi could not begin to understand. The reason he had striven these two years to keep the throne came down to nothing grander than a feeling that it simply had to be so. It was duty, pure and duty — he had been born to be king, and so it seemed he must defend the seat.
In the end, he had surrendered it under Suyang's tireless coercion. His uncle had whispered ceaselessly that Hong-wi was unprepared for the throne, unequal to the task of guarding the crown in these extraordinary times. Those whispers had eaten away at him like poison mushrooms blooming in the dark.
But in this very moment, a different anguish seized Hong-wi entirely.
He pressed the freshly plucked leaf between thumb and forefinger until it crushed to pulp, and closed his eyes. It felt as though a thousand silent screams were echoing in his ears.
Then — soft footsteps, light as falling snow.
"What thoughts weigh on you so, My Lord?"
Hong-wi answered without turning around.
"I was getting some air. And it seems the Queen has come out for the same."
Song Hyo-bin, the Retired Queen, drew up beside him and inclined her head slightly.
"I spied you walking from far away, Your Highness."
Her lustrous black hair swept up in an elegant chignon, her deep and gleaming eyes full of quiet intelligence, her small frame wrapped in a crimson silk robe embroidered with gold thread — Hong-wi's wife Song Hyo-bin carried a natural grace that flowed from her like water.
She was a year his elder.
Their royal marriage had been hurried through. So hurried, in fact, that it had proceeded during the state mourning for the late King Munjong, drawing objections on grounds of breached protocol. But Suyang, holding power in his grip after the Gyeyu Coup, swept the objections aside with the logic that a nation could not stand motherless a single day longer, and recommended to Hong-wi the hand of Song Hyo-bin, daughter of Song Hyeon-su.
Hong-wi had no choice but to accept.
Suyang's reason for choosing Song Hyo-bin was simple: her family was relatively humble. A man who had already resolved to usurp the throne one day had no intention of summoning a powerful maternal clan into the palace.
For their part, the great families — having seen which way the wind had turned — knew perfectly well that marrying a daughter to Hong-wi was less a splendid match than a beautifully wrapped cup of poison. For this reason, Hong-wi had pinned no hopes on the marriage either.
And yet, in the end, Suyang had given him an unshakable pillar of the spirit.
Song Hyo-bin possessed a brilliant mind, an iron will and resolute judgment — and above all, a warm heart. She was always hungry for someone she could trust and lean on, and as she soothed the heart of the husband who withered a little more each day, she became his steadfast ally.
Of course, even her strength could not turn the tide. She grieved endlessly over his precarious position, lamenting that she could do nothing to strengthen his hand — but to Hong-wi, that alone was cause for gratitude every day.
Even after he became Retired King and withdrew to Suganggung, the two of them clung to each other, bound fast.
"Trouble sits upon your face again today, My Lord."
As she studied his complexion, Song Hyo-bin could not hide her sorrow. What手段 did she have to lift the gloom from him? Her clever mind knew only too well that no such means existed within her power — and that knowledge wounded her too.
"Trouble... yes. You are right. I have trouble enough and to spare."
Hong-wi smiled, but it was a desolate smile.
"Lately I find myself thinking — perhaps I am the very wellspring of this calamity."
"My Lord! How can you say such a thing?"
Song Hyo-bin started in alarm.
"Do not speak so, not even a whisper of it, I beg you."
"Hear me out. A king is the guardian of the ancestral shrines and the altars of state, the shepherd of his hundred thousand people — a burden of crushing weight, never meant for the hands of just any common man. A king must possess the ability and the preparation the seat demands. Those who came before me... their ability was one thing, but they ascended the throne fully prepared."
A thousand feelings warred across Hong-wi's face.
"Look closely: my father had already borne the affairs of state while my grandmother yet lived. So did she, before him. Even King Taejong proved his worth as a founding meritorious subject when my great-grandfather established this dynasty. Every king who came before me inherited the crown prepared and proven."
Hong-wi smiled forlornly.
"And I — I was not."
"My Lord!"
Song Hyo-bin cried out. Hong-wi turned to her slowly.
"Suyang says as much."
"Whatever he says, what of it? It is no truth at all."
"My Lord. Whatever anyone says, you are the rightful King of this realm. You are so at this very moment. That is a fact that cannot change."
Song Hyo-bin's voice was dry, but it carried strength.
"You merely ascended that seat at a time ill-suited to you — nothing more."
Hong-wi looked up at the darkening sky.
"And I am a fool besides — one who spun schemes in vain and shoved the people most precious to me into the pit."
"My Lord..."
"My Queen, do you hear it? The sounds from Uigeumbu."
At those words, Hyo-bin fell silent.
"I hear them. I hear them with terrible clarity. Seong Sam-mun, Park Paeng-nyeon, Yi Gae, Ha Wi-ji, Yu Eung-bu — put to torture within the State Tribunal even now. I hear their screams and their groans. And beyond them, more souls than can be counted... and among them, your own family, my Queen. Are they not there?"
Hong-wi's voice cracked and trembled. He shook his head in anguish.
"Those loyal ministers — even their innocent families, driven to the edge of the sword — and I can do nothing. Nothing at all. I am truly a guilty man."
"My Lord..."
"When Seong Sam-mun came to me, I should have refused him — sternly, without mercy. I should have told him to abandon the plot. I failed to do even that, and so this is what I am. And now..."
Hong-wi turned to Hyo-bin, his face hollowed by grief.