Honestly, Netflix got me by consistently recommending it to me with dramatic thumbnails of Ae-sin and Hina -- I was like "I'm a thousand percent here for the outfits, we'll see how the rest of it goes!" AND HERE WE ARE. I think the only other KES show I've seen is Descendants of the Sun and it did have a lot of the same strengths -- primarily the handling of a very large cast in a way that made it clear that there were other stories going on beyond those of the leads, and those stories were also worth telling.

I definitely want to see Gunner Jang be a revolutionary in other things! He charmed me so much (one of my favorite scenes is when Eugene is like "yes, Gunner Jang, you should be a bodyguard to the king!" and Jang is like "....you think? WELL OKAY" and Eugene then remembers that Jang actually wants to kill the king and you can see the "....whoops" cross his face).