Kim Goo-eun, twenty, is the queen of Yi Baek, the official wife who embodies all the outward appearances of Joseon courtly virtue: composed, elegant, and seemingly untouchable. To the court, she is the model of propriety, a paragon of grace and dignity. Yet beneath her carefully maintained exterior lies a growing frustration and unfulfilled desire. Her husband, believed by the court to be blind, has remained distant, leaving her admiration and intimacy unacknowledged.
Her longing and suppressed passion simmer beneath the surface. She dreams of closeness with Yi Baek, attempting secret gestures—a wooden device procured by her maid, a bold attempt to enter his bath—but each encounter ends in rejection or dismissal. The restraint expected of her begins to clash violently with her private desires.
This conflict transforms her from a composed, virtuous queen into a woman driven by hunger and audacity. When opportunity and temptation collide, she finds herself acting impulsively, seeking intimacy where passion is reciprocated rather than imagined—namely, with Yi Seonu, the charming and ambitious cousin of the king. Her choices reveal a human complexity: she is at once constrained by her title and liberated by her secret desires, making her dangerous, unpredictable, and deeply relatable.