The Prince Who Loved Books
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Yi Bang-won, fifth son of King Taejo, Yi Seong-gye — who had toppled Goryeo and founded Joseon — cut down his brothers and the dynasty’s founding ministers in two “Princes’ Revolts,” and in 1400 he became Taejong, the third king of Joseon. Taejong spared no one who reached for royal power, whether a meritorious minister or his own wife’s family. All four younger brothers of his wife, Queen Wongyeong, died at his hands. This same Taejong had four sons by his queen — Yangnyeong, Hyoryeong, Chungnyeong and Seongnyeong. The throne belonged to the eldest, Grand Prince Yangnyeong.
Characters
The future Sejong
Two years older · the future Queen Soheon
Gave up the throne but kept the army
Chungnyeong’s eldest brother
Chief State Councillor in 1418
Though he was ill, the prince would not put down his books. When his father heard of it, he sent eunuchs to take every book out of the room.
Your Highness.
leave me just one.
The eunuchs left not a single book behind.
An empty room. But wedged between the folding screen and the wall was one book they had failed to take.
still left.
The book was called Guso sugan.
It was a collection of short letters that Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi, masters of prose in Song-dynasty China, had written to their friends.
The prince read it, and read it again.
While the snow fell, the flowers bloomed, the monsoon rains ended and the leaves came down —
One thousand one hundred times.
Until the corners of its pages were worn round.
That prince’s name was Yi Do.
He was born in the fourth month of 1397 in Junsu-bang, Hanyang, the third son of Yi Bang-won. His father was not yet king.
A third son could not become king. The throne was meant for his eldest brother, Grand Prince Yangnyeong.
All that was allowed a third son
was to read his books in quiet.
In the spring of 1408, twelve-year-old Prince Chungnyeong married Lady Sim, two years his senior. She was the daughter of Sim On, who served as the king’s secretary.
like books?
a little.
On bitter winter nights and sweltering summer nights alike, Chungnyeong read until daybreak.
more page.
Without a word, his wife turned up the lamp’s wick for him.
His eldest brother, Grand Prince Yangnyeong, preferred hunting and merrymaking to books. The more often their father scolded him, the further the brothers drifted apart.
Again and again, the younger brother urged the elder to mend his conduct. The elder had little patience for such a brother.
In 1418, everything changed.
Crown Prince Yangnyeong misbehaved again and again, and even sent a resentful letter to the father who scolded him.
On the third day of the sixth month,
Taejong deposed his eldest son as crown prince.
Most of the officials wanted Yangnyeong’s young son named instead. But Taejong decided to choose “the worthy one.”
and he loves learning dearly.
so, fearing he would fall ill, I told him not to read at night —
yet he took all my great volumes and read them.
and when I ask him about great matters, he offers ideas I had not thought of.
On the eighth day of the eighth month of 1418, Taejong summoned the crown prince and held out to him the king’s seal, the “Great Seal.”
Take it.
Now it is enough.
The crown prince stayed prostrate and would not rise. Taejong took him by the sleeve, pulled him up and handed him the Great Seal.
10th day of the 8th month, 1418.
Just two months after becoming crown prince, Chungnyeong ascended the throne in Geunjeongjeon Hall at Gyeongbokgung Palace.
The fourth king of Joseon. He was twenty-two.
His wife, Lady Sim, became queen. She was twenty-four.
But Taejong, now the Retired King, would not let go of one thing: his command of the military.
The new king’s time had not yet come.
What the Retired King Taejong guarded against above all was power growing at the king’s side — the queen’s family, the royal in-laws.
He was the man who had killed all four of his own wife’s younger brothers.
Now those eyes
turned to the new queen’s father.
9th month, 1418.
The queen’s father, Sim On, was made Chief State Councillor and set out for Ming China as an envoy.
So many came out to see off the new king’s father-in-law that the capital was all but empty.
While he was away, officials who had reported military matters to the king ahead of the Retired King were arrested. Under torture, Sim On’s name came from their lips.
In the twelfth month, on his way back from Ming, Sim On was arrested before he even reached the capital.
In the end, he received the Retired King’s order to take his own life.
His daughter had been queen for just four months.
The queen’s mother and her family were reduced to lowborn status.
Before his father, the king could do nothing. The army, the trials — all of it was in the Retired King’s hands.
All the king could do was send a coffin, paper and lime for his father-in-law’s funeral, and dispatch a eunuch to see to the rites.
The twenty-two-year-old king
could not protect his wife’s father.
At court, voices rose calling for the queen to be deposed: how could a criminal’s daughter be left in the place of the nation’s mother?
is not caught up in her own family’s crimes.
The Retired King who had killed the queen’s father protected her place as queen.
That night, a light burned late in the queen’s room.
Deep in the night, the king stood at the queen’s door.
Sejong…I am the king, yet I could not protect even one man — your father.
Instead of answering, the queen brought out an old book.
It was the Guso sugan.
Queen SoheonThe day they took all your books from you — who left this one behind the screen… you still don’t know, do you?
Sejong…It was you, my queen?
Queen SoheonFrom that day on, I have been on your side, Your Majesty. Today, and always.
Until the lamp burned out, the king did not leave her side.
No record tells what the two of them said to each other that night.
The records tell only this.
For twenty-eight years after that,
the queen stayed by the king’s side.
In 1422, the Retired King Taejong died. Then, in the fifth month of 1426, the king freed the queen’s mother, Lady An, from the bonds of lowborn status.
each other in many years —
how their hearts must ache.
Then, choosing an auspicious day early in the sixth month, he let the queen visit her mother’s house. It was the first time she had seen her mother since the winter she lost her father.
The Guso sugan was a book of letters.
The prince who had read other people’s letters one thousand one hundred times,
in the winter of the twenty-fifth year of his reign —
makes the letters with which anyone
can write a letter in their own hand.
