A few days later, the Prince slept for an unusually long time. The ladies who attended him could not rouse him with loud clapping or movements around his body. Of course, no one dared touch him. We could see he still took breath but it was shallow and uneven. Finally, a eunuch was dispatched to bring a physician.
The man was trembling even before he entered the Prince’s quarters and started shaking visibly as he grew close to the Prince’s form. Clumsily, he opened his medical box, filled with small glass bottles and powders wrapped in specially waxed paper. He pulled out a vial and held his hand over the stopper, ready to remove it, but froze. “I cannot,” he said. “I am afraid.”
I grew impatient with this cowardly man and took the vial from him. “What do I do with it?” I asked.
“Hold it under his nose, just briefly,” he said. “And the Prince should wake.”
I did as he told me. The Prince jerked once, turned his head away and then back, before opening his eyes. They were glazed and unfocused.
“Good morning, Your Majesty,” I said as cheerfully as I could while pressing back the fear everybody felt in that moment. “How do you feel?”
“How do you expect me to feel waking up with the lot of you staring into my face? Out! Out!” He shooed everyone out except the ladies assigned to help him relieve himself and me.
“How are you feeling?” I asked again, keeping my head bowed low so nothing could upset him.
“How do you expect me to feel when the palace is against me?” he asked.
“I do not think the palace is against you,” I said timidly. “There are many here who love you and want only the best for you.”
He snorted, taking off all his clothes, holding on to his manhood, while the ladies tried mightily to avert their eyes. I might have laughed at another time.
“How would you know anything?” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like to be the son of the King. You don’t know what it is to be hated and scorned by your own father.”
“If I may, Your Majesty, the King wants you to be at peace.”
The Prince stormed up close to me, grabbed my face in both hands, and stared at me directly in the eyes. They glittered with a terrifying menace and he smiled in a way that made my body go cold and blank. It took the greatest effort of my life not to quiver, but I knew without a doubt that if I did, he would kill me.
“You dare to tell me what the King thinks? What the King wants? You presume to know more about him than I do?”
Never breaking off his staring, he reached down for the dagger he kept always in his robes, then realized he was naked. For a second, uncertainty loomed large. Suddenly, he pushed me away and laughed. “Fool,” he said. “You know nothing.”
Catching myself before I fell down, I righted myself and bent over at the waist, bowing and saying, “I know nothing. I know nothing.”
Once out of the room, I held my chest, trying to hold down the galloping legs of my heart. I wanted to run out of the palace, but caught in misfortune after misfortune, I could not.
In one of his lucid conversations with Lady Hong, Prince Sado terrified her by saying about their son, “Now that the King has a grandson with whom he feels great affinity, he no longer needs me and will kill me off soon. When that happens, please remember me fondly.”
Indeed, it was true that young Prince Chongjo was a great favorite of his grandfather’s. A bright, confident child, he shared many traits with the King. When the boy was only seven, the King invested him as a Royal Grandson, and a little later on, as Grand Heir. Even though a child, he was invited by the King to attend the Morning Audience of the Ministers, where the King’s many praises were recorded by the court annalist.“The Royal Grandson is smart and dutiful,” it was written the King had said. “I will entrust my kingdom to him.”
Now, the Crown Prince loved his son and was never less than kind to him when they were together, exhibiting no signs of jealousy or anger. However, since he did not have a natural father-son relationship with his own father, how could he be expected to know how to behave with his son?
Knowing that his son was greatly favored by the King, Prince Sado asked the court annalist to send him the speeches that were made in the morning audiences. When he read how the King had extolled the many virtues of the Royal Grandson, his face would turn red and he would shout for wine to be brought to him. “He loves and praises the Royal Grandson,” the Prince would say, “when he never showed any affection for me. Why? Why?” It was a certainty on those days that one or more would be killed.
Lady Hong rightly grew fearful that the Prince might attack his son if he continued thinking in this manner and entreated her father to have those passages cut out of the court recordings. Everyone participated in keeping hidden the King’s true feelings toward his grandson so that Prince Chongjo would be kept safe. What a situation this was! Between these three generations there was only strife and misunderstandings. Indeed it was most tragic for Prince Chongjo, who truly loved his father and grandfather, and wished for them to be at peace. Alas, it was impossible.
When Prince Chongjo turned ten, the proceedings to find a wife for him commenced. There were several important rituals that were to take place surrounding this royal event, and to our surprise Prince Sado conducted himself in a worthy manner. Though he was pale and sweaty, he managed to dress appropriately and sat quietly while the selection
