My Royal Nemesis: Episodes 13-14 (Final)
by Unit
Our transmigrated heroine has finally found her place in the timeline she truly belongs in. But she’s going to have to fight to keep her spot beside our losery hero, no thanks to the teamwork of fate and our resident villain.
EPISODES 13-14
Our final week begins where everything began for our heroine: the body swap! When Seo-ri was 12, her parents forced her to drown alongside them in a family suicide. At the same time in Joseon, young Dan-shim threw herself into a river — most likely to avoid getting sold into slavery. The river served as a portal connecting past and present, and both girls met in the water and swapped bodies. Dan-shim woke up in Seo-ri’s body in modern times, and Seo-ri woke up in Dan-shim’s body in Joseon. Seo-ri grew up in Joseon as a slave, then she became a palace maid, a court lady, and eventually a royal consort until she was poisoned.
Back to where we left off last week, Seo-ri has realized she’s not Dan-shim. She truly is Shin Seo-ri, and she’s exactly where she should be. As for the demolition of Halmoni’s restaurant, Se-gye puts a stop to it with the help of the police. We get some Cha family drama as Se-gye and Mun-do begin an all-out media campaign against each other. Se-gye is on the offensive, and Mun-do faces the heat from investors and the public. It helps that Tae-hee has chosen to side with Se-gye in a strictly business capacity, and it’s good to see her display her business savvy side instead of begging for crumbs of romantic affection. Grandpa Cha also gives up on his Se-gye × Tae-hee ship after Seo-ri respectfully but firmly informs him that she won’t leave Se-gye, and she will make him happy in line with Grandpa’s wish for his grandson.
Moving on, Seo-ri and Se-gye go from stargazing on her rooftop to kissing. They take their business inside and I’m expecting some ~action.~ But we cut to an irrelevant Mun-do scene that has me rolling my eyes at the show’s commitment to trolling its audience. Okay, the scene isn’t that irrelevant because it’s Mun-do putting his assistant on a countdown to getting fired. But couldn’t we have gotten this earlier? Now our OTP doesn’t have any more time to be all loved-up because next thing you know, Halmoni is on her deathbed. Seo-ri weeps as Halmoni passes, and it’s extra sad because she just regained childhood memories with her grandmother. But I promise you, Show, we did not need that extended Halmoni–Seo-ri dream sequence.
Speaking of grandparents, Grandpa Cha drops his amnesia pretense and makes Mun-do’s assistant bring Mun-do’s son to him. Pfft. Not the assistant switching allegiance. Mun-do doesn’t find this threat with his son funny, but it’s funny how he’s all up in arms about his son while he’s busy harassing another person’s grandson. Mun-do shoves Grandpa’s hypocrisy back in his face, stating that he should have taken better care of Se-gye from the start. Exactly! Mun-do tells Grandpa he crossed the line by taking his son. And in retaliation, Se-gye gets stabbed on Christmas Eve! Sigh. Not Se-gye’s last thoughts being all about Seo-ri instead of his bleeding-out self. *sniff*
While Se-gye is in surgery, the Joseon shaman possesses Geum-ae and drops by the hospital to tell Seo-ri that her lover is destined to die whether in Joseon or in modern times. Exactly what a woman needs to hear when her boyfriend is fighting for his life. We learn the king threatened the exiled grand prince with Dan-shim (our Seo-ri’s) life in order to make him drink poisoned soup. And as if the poison wasn’t enough, he ordered a soldier to stab the grand prince to death. Smh. The shaman tells Seo-ri the only way for Se-gye to live is if she returns to Joseon to break the cycle of fate and to save the grand prince. The price of salvation is Seo-ri’s inability to ever return to modern times, but she agrees to go save the grand prince in order to save Se-gye.
Seo-ri returns to Joseon and time resets to when she was still a court lady. The crown prince has just ascended the throne, and he orders her to deliver the poisoned soup to the exiled grand prince. The prince attempts to drive Dan-shim (Seo-ri) away with cruel words so she can hate him and move on instead of longing for him. But Seo-ri ain’t got time for all that melo, and she flips the soup table and encourages him to escape. Seo-ri and the grand prince end up at the cliff of doom — but of course — and his mask comes off in a fight with the pursuing soldier. Not gonna lie, his scar reveal is a little disappointing because I expected worse. Seo-ri Dumpty eventually takes an arrow meant for the grand prince, and both of them have a great fall off the cliff.
Back in modern times, Se-gye wakes up and the first thing on his mind is Seo-ri. He learns she has disappeared and he loses his mind in search of her. Poor guy. Seo-ri is eventually found, but she’s in a coma — or more accurately, trapped in a subconscious state of sorts. The shaman explains that Seo-ri is in a temporary place for reprieve until she passes on to the afterlife — what? — then she congratulates Seo-ri on the end of her punishment. *blinks in confusion* Do I have temporary amnesia or I wasn’t paying attention and somehow missed a punishment plotline in this story? Anyway, Seo-ri assumes she wasn’t able to save the grand prince — and Se-gye by extension — after they fell down the cliff, so she accepts her fate. And as time passes in the subconscious (and in real life), Seo-ri’s memory slowly fades…
Meanwhile, Se-gye has become a shadow of himself. And there was almost no point in Seo-ri’s return to save him because the man will legit die without her in his life. At Tae-hee’s prompting, Se-gye visits the museum to see the portrait of the woman who supposedly resembles Seo-ri. The sight of the portrait and a passage from the recently repatriated grand prince’s diary jogs his memories of his past life — the changed version where Seo-ri saved him from drinking the poisoned soup. “I can’t breathe, Shin Seo-ri,” Se-gye whispers as he doubles over and clutches his chest in pain. He bids Seo-ri to come back to him, and his voice echoes in her subconscious. Seo-ri’s memories begin to return, and she realizes the grand prince didn’t die from the fall after all. The shaman gives her a chance to go anywhere she wants, and she chooses to return to Se-gye. Our OTP reunite outside the museum, and they pledge to remain at each other’s side forever. Aww.
It’s time to wrap up a few loose ends as our show winds to a close. Seo-ri channels her inner reporter to crash Mun-do’s press conference and he’s exposed for his role in the bribed nurse’s death. The board dismisses him from Chail Group, and he’s arrested after his assistant testifies to all his evil deeds. Mun-do will rot in prison. But for his status as the show’s ultimate villain, his takedown was a little too cartoonish for me. Grandpa Cha takes custody of Mun-do’s son — who seems quite happy and blissfully unaware of his father’s situation — and I hope he does a better job of raising the kid than he did with Se-gye. We don’t get a resolution on the Chail Group succession, but at least Biojei is getting back on its feet. But forget running the company, Se-gye is busy being a house boyfriend to his actress girlfriend. Lol. If their relationship can survive reincarnation and time travels, they can overcome any challenge that comes their way.
As for our Joseon folks, Dan-shim is back in her body and she’s headed to Qing with the grand prince. I’m guessing the soul swap happened when Seo-ri and the grand prince fell into the water. The grand prince notes Dan-shim seems like a different person due to her modern-day speech and vibes, and she explains that she made a comeback to her own body. I doubt the grand prince knows what a “comeback” is, but he accepts this version of her without fuss. I’m not sure how I feel about this ship because the grand prince fell for Seo-ri, not Dan-shim. But Seo-ri did tell him on the cliff that she found someone precious to her (Se-gye), so maybe he knows it’s a different person in her body and he’s willing to go along with it. Yeah, I’m just going to stick to this theory. Dan-shim and the grand prince get a happy ending in the past, and Seo-ri and Se-gye get their happy ending in the present. And with this, our show comes to an end.
My Royal Nemesis will shuffle to the front if there’s ever a roll call for dramas with happy endings. But it better not get on the queue for dramas with satisfying endings, because this was quite an underwhelming finale. I have so many questions, starting from: why Seo-ri? What did she do to deserve such a topsy-turvy fate? What did the shaman mean by punishment? Who punished Seo-ri, and why was she being punished? For not dying with her family in the joint suicide? For being the main character? For stealing the writer’s man? For why? Okay, maybe it’s because she was a “villainous” consort. But how did she even become a consort in the first place, let alone a villainous one? I was waiting for the drama to at least give an answer to the consort question, but alas…
This could have been a simple reincarnation story with Seo-ri having a sudden recollection of her past life. But the show had to blend transmigration, body swaps, time travel, and a random punishment into a smoothie of confusion. The whole point of making up rules for a story world is to bend them to the story’s advantage, not to twist them into a pretzel of illogicalities. It’s like the writer was throwing darts at a mood board of ideas and making things up as the story progressed. Oh, and ermm…since everyone and their mothers had a Joseon doppelganger, why did we never see Tae-hee in the past? I was expecting her to be the queen or something. But that’s beside the point.
Did this drama really need 14 episodes? Absolutely not. Not if this was the entirety of the story it was going to tell. This last set of episodes had a number of filler scenes, Mun-do and Seo-ri rehashing their back and forths, and bla bla bleh. Don’t even get me started on the show’s inclusion of pointless side characters like Se-gye’s aunts and Unfriendly Extra (I don’t even have any words for this particular character). If all their scenes from episode 1-14 were deleted, it would have zero impact on the drama. At least Ji-hyo and Gwang-nam had an actual storyline from beginning to end. And to conclude their journey, he became her manager after they cleared up the department store heir misunderstanding, and there’s hints of a potential romance for them down the line.
All my disappointment with the show aside, I had a great time with it. I liked the humor, I loved the OTP and their romance, and I especially liked that Tae-hee was never a source of conflict in their relationship. Their major huddle was Seo-ri letting down her guard to fall in love, building trust, and of course, fate — which is one of the show’s villains alongside the writer, Mun-do, Grandpa Cha, the shaman, and that darn comet. But I’m glad our OTP’s problems were resolved in time for their happily ever after. I’m still miffed they didn’t have a more intimate scene because they’re adults in a rom-com for goodness sake! *consoles myself in wrist kiss* Overall, my absolute favorite thing about My Royal Nemesis will always the iconic Cha Se-gye. I loooved him, I loved how he loved Seo-ri, and I enjoyed his banter with Jae-han. My royal loser, long may you reign.
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