#yuu-hon

That's kind of interesting. I ctually think Hak is right. I think king Il didn't physically kill his brother. like for one thing Il isn't a war general. imaging Il killing his brother or fighting him and WINNING with a sword is really hard to imagine. His brother is a BEAST. We definitely find out relationships between the two brothers weren't completely loving...there was some complicated stuff in there. but we know for a fact king Il was king and his brother apparently expressing to soowon that he just wanted to support his bro. I think there could have been a fight if yu-hon decided to go wage war after his brother told him no or something. but unless yu-hon was found to be involved with killing the mom its hard to imagine king Il even raising the blade to his brother and not being wracked by guilt all the time if he did kill his bro. but yu-hon was litlerally oe of the strongest in the kingdom and king il was already getting fluffy/bubbly.

love your reacting to Hak calling out joo-dou. Joudou was making a big deal about how he KNOWS Hak hates and wants to kill soowon so why would they let hak into the army that directly protects the king. trying to get Hak to swear loyalty to soowon or fail to o so and get kicked out of the sky army.

but what really hit me hard with Hak asking why did the king have to die and both him and yona get betrayed like that ws h was calling out Joudous loyaty and what do oaths mean. after all even if Il wasn't a good king Jou- Dou and the sky army SWORE a oath of loyalty to protect the king and royal family. Jou-dou even knew yona on a personal level and was one of the to people.

yet jou-dou here is trying to get Hak to swear loyalty and lecture hak?

Jou-dou and others in the skytribe army who own loyaly guards that hawk probably even trained with snuck in during Yonas party celebration and planned to cver up the tre prgins of king Il's death. they DIRECTLY betrayed the king.

forget soo-won. that burn where hak basically threw in his face that joodou is a oath breaker and that empty vows or loyalty don't mean anything. Hak could sweat that oath and sneak in a kill soo-won because in the end unlike joudou and many in sky tribe army....hak was ACTUALLY loyal to the king. hak didn't just see the king as cowardly. he knew there were lots of issues with the king and his methods and ideals. but the king won haks respect and loyaty and  hak found him worthy for a reason. He ws able to see why the grandpa king(king il's dad) chose king Il.

and what even more interesting is Hak was soo-won's best friend. his right hand. he also wanted soo-won be be king just traitors they fought for. honestly probably even more than them. he was willing t happily put aside his feelings for yona to encourage them both to marry an be together so he could serve the two people he loved th most. the traitor and Joodou use the excuse it was to save the kingdom an we could be fooled since we know he wasn't a good king... but unlike them he knew a peaceful solution had just been in reach. hak knew yona was in love with soo-won at the time and that she fought with the king because she wanted to be allowed the option to marry soo-won. and there even seemed to be slight progress at least on soo-won finding out her feelings. 

Hak has even more trust in soo-won's skills. I like hak thinking soo-won could have talked with king Il and they then used the death of th brother as a reason talks couldnt happen. but he knows if yona is willing to care about soo-won and suck up that he killed her dad in front of her to work o the good f th kingdom than soo-won definitely ould be able to. that could be naïve. maybe king Il DID kill the dad and Il would refuse any talks with soo-won. but that's excuses. soo-wo could have kept trying to talk to king ill and negotiate. but I like Joo-dou trying to hide behind that as a excuse for their behavior because even if joudou chose to swear loyaty to the idea of soo-won as king. It doesn't excuse he swore a actual oath of loyaty to the actual king and they broke it and deliberately caused his death right under haks nose. 

and Hak is STILL loyal to Yona his princess and given her support. I also like you bringing up that hak brought up yona in the discussion because even if Il killed soo-wons dad. yona was innocent and it was still betraying her. though my guess was th plan was to kill king Il while yona was innocently asleep in her quarters and that she'd be obvious to the true culprits who killed her dad and she'd see soowon as innocent. maybe the plan was to use her as a figure head or for soo-won to rule in her stead while she grieved but they hadn't actually planned to kill her until she had appeared unexpectedly and witnessed the murder. which then they had to silence her. I like how you phased hak saying 'I don't believe you' and why should I believe you' XD after all we know that shady advisor is the WORST...he tried to get zeno and jaeha shot with arrws. encouraged soowon to kill yona after she witnessed the murder. dude gives ALL the disrespect to yona with the seating arrangement. and I can't help by wonder since the dude is so a yuuhon fan...that maybe that advisor dude got disappointed yuhon didn't want to take over the kingdom from his king Il. so killed yuuhon himself and then puts all his eggs into the basket of into making soowon king and planned on killing king Il, who he saw as having stolen the rightful place of yuhon even though it was decided by the grandpa king and king Il didn't deliberately steal anything. like the adviser I could see having a grudge against King Il on his own on prince/general yuu-hon's behalf. trying to recreate the dream he thinks the ideal yuu-hon would have actually wanted if yuhon didn't hold back on his brother. he tried to stall on a peaceful solution in discussing stuff between the tao and kouren and soowons people. the advisor tried to stop that. 

I also like hak seing it more of a surface excuse. in th end everyone else betrayed king il because they wanted sowon on the thrown and didn't approve on how Il handled the country. but they are still in the wrong for breaking that loyaty and betraying them. 

and jodouh cant argue that hak isn't loyal to yona if he gave up his place in the wondtribe general to care for his tribe and her. 

I like your excitement over soo-won's hawk visiting hak XD I also wonder if haks jab at jou-dous loyalty might also imply king Il was right to choose hak over joudoh as Yonas boyguard and being in charge of the guards at the castle. 

I feel great anger at prince Il who isnt really nice to soo-won. calling him unpleasant and not wanting to take soo-won’s advice to let people near yona to have fun.....after all Soo-won is a innocent and its not his fault thee are family issues. Sure yu-hon set fire to priests, yon-hi didn’t stop it and one of those priests was his wife who could have died and we have no idea how yu-hon would react to finding out her identity but it doesn’t mean to take it out on the kid. Its like prince Il ended up seeing the blessing of the blood as a curse since his bro murdered a bunch of people to keep it secert.

of course the dad protected his son from the damage he would have gotten for the real reasons he killed the priests most likely by spreading rumours that the priests were meddling politically and it was the prince everyone already favored anyway so yoohon basically went unpunished. by showing the implications the priests were innocents who hadn't done anything worthy of those deaths except be excited and show kindness to her family it reminds us they are HUMANS and really lets us feel what yoohon did upfront and personal. even our kid priest who we love went through hardship due to this situation and yna wouldn't have been born if soowons dad had succeeded in killing that priestess which feels different that seeing the heads of srtangers who were important to kouren's people. which was sad and motivated her but her people had been a dick to our heros at the time as well. this was up close and personal. we got to see the humanized parts and extra motivations about soowon's dad so if she says he did something we can guess he did do it. and then we see with the priests being innocent just WHY Il might hate aggression war and death so much he'd avoid it at all costs. and we've got some of the reasons for why king Il might not want soowon to marry yona or go into the mini temple. soowons dad killed the priests and burned down temples so that's a disrespect to the gods and more importantly the innocent priests that were killed. soo-won had the blood of hiryuu which you'd think would cause favor but consider the last time someone with the blood went to the temple many were then killed. like does Il ever think maybe if he hadn't brought the yon-hi to the temple genuinely wanting them to get the blessing to marry properly that the death wouldn't have happened. it also means yoo-hon could have caused the deaths of many people Il found precious and more important was still thought of as  a threat to Yonas mom by Il because yoo-hon hated the priests and its not like Il knows if it was just a excuse or like how yon-hi thought it was to protect her and her family and the promise yoohon made. 

plus soowon could potentially have that sickness that causes short life    

we see the human emotions from prince Il. the hurt/bitterness he'd feel from the big brother insulting him unwittingly(not realizing how much his big brother does love him and sees value in him because his brother is bad at communication), the anger, confusion and horror and betrayal at his brother hiding something and then destroying the priests and killing innocent people who are kouka residents, the fear and paranoia from hiding a priest under his big brothers nose and the want to protect his wife from harm, and we know he is a kind person cuz he treated yon-hi with kindness and was her friend for a while and the loss of that relationship. and we see the negatives from his overly religious side a bit as well. but its not like Il didn't anything to yon-hi after finding out that makes him evil. and it makes us know that prince Il probably didn't have much love for his brother and honestly if he does its understandable even if it seems the older brother still loved his younger brother very much to some degree. It helps set up why king Il might have been able to kill his brother. something we still don't know for SURE that king Il did. and yoohon in his bid to protect his wife ended up causing his precious brother much pain and in a roundabout way was the reason her mother killed herself. getting rid of the priests he never liked hurt the people he loved in unexpected ways. just as him protecting his country and striking fear using the heads tactic almost gave kouka and stubborn enemy with a grudge that was valid/in the right to exist. it makes me wonder if soowon outed the wifes identity to yoohon at somepoint or if Il is still under the wrong impression his brother was at all interested in the religious power or something. So I really didn't see that as backtracking us in anyway because we got the possible motives for why Il might kill yoo-hon. where soo-won got his focus on using people and not relying on gods. we see more proof of why soowon might love his dad so much and that the dads love for the younger brother was real. that yoo-hon had good intentions biu often did really cruel things without asking others and didn't listen to people thinking it was nessacary when it wasn't. why king Il might not be a fan of soowon due to what his dad did and the wife didn't stop it(though honestly we know hr husband was terrible at listening even to her so it probably couldn't have stopped anything). and it keeps us from getting too ahead of ourselves assuming people are bad from the get go like what most readers assumed of the priest despite how everyone is nuanced. like her uncle bringing up that the priests didn't hurt, swindle anyone and were kind and were even able to tell at first glance so they probably could talk to the gods(irony that zeno made the priest hood lying he could still talk to the gods and ended up scamming the country by fighting armys by himself to keep them safe rather than it actually being the gods....just for it to turn out the priest hood legit could talk to the gods or at least sense stuff). and extra things that we could think were reasons for the grandpa king to choose il over the clear favorite yoohon. 

plus in a way we get to see from soo-wons moms perspective its like how we've seen the predecessors of the white, blue green dragons. technically soowon has the red dragons blood so seeing the moms perspective makes me think of that parallel. also we are seeing one of the people that raised and influenced soo-won (the mom) which could give us a little extra something to try to figure out soowon who can be a bit hard to read at times. 

I think the twist that the priests weren't evil gives a extra layer to things. we definitely can see the bad and good sides of religion in the series. its very easy to focus on the bad but its interesting because people bonding over religion at the firetribe brought them to appreciate Yonas group and actually stopped them from killing innocent civilians in the city. they stalled and just wanted yona back but tey weren't cruel or did anything that would make enemys in the city like we had seen happened when yoohon threw the heads in lady kourens country. or how people who lost even a mini battle could hold grudges from their dead and injured. 

I actually LOVE this chapter. I was definitely conflicted on my first read through but I think the point is we ended up feeling what yon-hi was feeling. We just got done with a arc using Gobi and we've seen the negatives the most about how people react to the gods or the dragons. We've had ages to slowly warm up to soo-won being a complex character that's hard to hate just because be betrayed his friends and killed yona's dad. most modern people already see religion as really shady anyways. and specifically the diary has been used to humanize soo-won's dad. sure we heard about yu-hon driving out the priests and even what he did with chopping up heads of prisoners he as supposed to release safely just for a intimidation tactic but that was also a while ago and we didn't FEEL it. 

and a trend keeps being we keep hearing about the failing of King Il as a king and how no one wanted him. and him being weak caused all these issues. while simultaneous we keep hearing about how everyone wanted yu-hon to be king. everyone expected yu-hon to be the king. heck soo-won almost feels like people support him not just because he is soowon and brilliant but BECAUSE he is yu-hons son and they see that as a positive. and we spent the last two chapters seeing yu-hon humanized. That he  cares about his brother, and he cares about yon-hi and is dedicated. that hegoes out of the castle and fights for the kingdom and EVERYONE praises him all the time. his strength, his will ect. He even agrees with OUR kindof cultivated view that religion stuff is bad.

and we've been stuck in yon-hi's head. we know he was a pretty interesting dad with soowon saying things like he just wants to protect his brother and the kingdom and the way he was rough but cared about his son when he was sick. this is the first time we've REALLY gotten to see the dad in much depth getting to see the love story. not to mention yon-hi has her own biases about getting found out because she spent years seeing that being found out must be a bad thing. and considering her short life and how she lost her dad she doesn't see the priests as a blessing either. we ALL saw the priests as negative and assumed they were shady and bad from the get go in the last chapter and immediately saw prince Il as in the wrong for how he reacted in the last chapter. the impression the last chapter gave was the priests were powerful and would be dangerous and bad because the narrative from yon-hi's perspective was yu-hon was good. even the vibe she got from the kings having to bow to the priests had a sinister vibe to it.

so what makes me love this chapter is the whiplash of us having those expectations of the priests being bad and negative and maybe almost relieved they were gone cuz we saw them as a threat to our couple. but then we get confronted with yon-hi that the priests are suddenly all exicuted. the temple is burned. Yon-hi asks about the two kids who we knew would be the good legit priest yona would meet later and what we all guessed was yona's mom. the fact was it was easy for us to forget the yoo-hon had done a lot of scary aggressive stuff because we had seen the kinder side and this brings to light even if he was kind and hood to yon-hi and cared about his loved ones he was still capable of doing those bad stuff. 

and lik yon-hi we had still justified to ourselves a little that the priests must have been shady so maybe it wasn't THAT bad. but I LOVE the reveal that the head priest had just gone to see yon-hi's family to pay his respects, to grieve with them, honer then and tell them he is happy they exist.

we forget that yon-hi's family had been living in exile more or less for a while due to trying to over take the palace and wanted to live on the down low...but they still had to deal with a lot of them living short lives and not having any reason why cuz bad luck. and sure...maybe the 'its the dragons call the children to them sooner' thing was the comfort and the mom didn't want mixing of the blood or something. but we end up finding out the priests had been amazingly kind to her family and was able to give them the peace and comfort all of them had been waiting forever ..the acknowledgment. but even if she really didn't give a hoot about the fact they lead short lives and she didn't see themselves as special because after all they are just normal humans. this priest gave her family a validation they couldn't have gotten anywhere else. 

you understandably suspect that yoohon wouldn't have done this unless the priests had some shady plan to use them to gain more power or something that he knew about. that the priests MUST be shady. but the fact is yoo-hon wasn't very complicated. he was relatively strait forward even if he couldn't communicate his meaning very well. dude kindnapped yonhi just to fix her leg and took a liking to her after she defended his bro and he was strait forward about his opinion of who he would marry and going to see her.