SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

100 Day Husband / 100 Days My Prince
(백일의 낭군님 / Baekilui Nanggunnim)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello hello! I’m back with a new review, this time for a historical drama. It’s been a while since my last historical drama and I believe it’s the first one since starting to write reviews, so here goes!
First of all, I’d like to add that I’ve had a bit of a rough week, my contract with my brandnew job was broken before I even finished my trial period, so I’ve been dealing with some things, partially emotional stuff. I need to get my stuff together before I can find something new, and finishing this drama helped me calm down a bit. So that’s it for the background story, on with the review!

This drama was on my list ever since I found out Nam Ji Hyun would appear in a new one – Nam Ji Hyun is bae, I am striving to watch all her dramas because she’s one of my favorite actresses. Also, I hadn’t seen anything from D.O. before but I heard that his acting is very good, so I was curious. And I also like historical dramas, so all in all I was interested.
It turned out to be a nice and enjoyable drama, with all the standard tropes, but still some intense events and surprises.

The story is about a fictional Crown Prince named Lee Yeol (played by EXO’s D.O. /Do Kyung Soo). He is a very cold and apathic, and doesn’t seem to care for anything. This wasn’t always the case. As a child (played by Jung Ji Hoon – who plays almost every male lead’s younger version these days) he would always play with his best friend and pretend to be a general and bully the kids from lower statuses. One day he is scolded by a young girl (played by Heo Jung Eun), a general’s daughter. Although their initial meeting is as enemies, they get closer and Yeol falls in love with her.
One fateful night, his father the King forbids him to leave the palace. Mischievous as he is, he escapes to give this girl a present, only to be disrupted by a sudden ambush of soldiers. The girl and her brother are forced to flee while having to watch their father being stabbed to death by Vice Premier Kim Cha Eon (played by Jo Sung Ha), the King’s trusted advisor. Yeol is shocked to see that this man his father trusted kills the father of the girl he likes and tries to go against him but he’s just a little boy and he’s only scolded for leaving the palace while he was forbidden to do so. Not long after, Yeol’s mother mysteriously passes away and he is forced to marry Kim Cha Uhn’s daughter. Since then, he starts becoming colder and colder until his current state.
The girl he loves and her brother are believed to be dead, however, this is not true. Now 28 years later, Yoon Yi Seo (played by Nam Ji Hyun) is living in a lower village called Songjoo as Yeon Hong Shim. After she escaped when she was little, her brother left her alone in the woods to protect her and she was found by Mr. Yeon (played by Jung Hae Kyun), who raised her as his own daughter. Although she remembers everything of her heritage and previous life, Hong Shim is happy with her life in the village.
The two grow up not knowing what became of the other. Crown Prince Yeol is now married to Kim Cha Eon’s daughter So Hye (played by Han So Hee), but has no love for her at all and refuses to consummate the marriage.
For So Hye, this is a problem since she is secretly pregnant with another man’s baby and needs to consummation as a cover to prove it’s the Crown Prince’s. On the other hand, there’s a serious drought going on in the land and as a means to satisfy the gods, Yeol gives the command for all singles under 20 to get married immediately. This also stretches to Songjoo Village. Hong Shim, being the oldest maiden in the village, is one of the few to be selected for this arrangement, but she holds it off claiming she’s promised herself to a boy from another village, Won Deuk, who is currently fighting in the army. She hopes this story will keep the officials off her back, but they’re not very patient.
While already facing several happenings at once, Yeol still has to deal with facing Kim Cha Eon every day, knowing fully well that he is evil. One time, Yeol is forced to go to a rain ritual and is ambushed on the way by mysterious soldiers dressed in black. He has to flee for his life and agrees with his best friend Dong Joo (played by Do Ji Han – had to mention him despite his minor role) to switch clothes and attempt a diversion. This fails, Dong Joo is killed wearing the Crown Prince’s clothes, and Yeol is injured and left alone hidden in the bushes unconscious.
He is found, what are the odds, by Mr. Yeon, Hong Shim’s father. At that very moment, Hong Shim is being punished by the officials for disobeying the Crown Prince’s orders of getting married. When Yeol comes by, he has no idea who he is or what happened – he has lost his memory. In a moment of desperation, Mr. Yeol convinces him that he is Won Deuk, Hong Shim’s ‘fiance’ who has returned from the army and has him save her from the official’s.
Despite this save, Hong Shim and Won Deuk are still forced to marry and this is how their marriage arrangement starts. They will be married for a 100 days until they both discover who they really are and are faced with the truths of each other’s fates.
One more important detail, even though Yi Seo hasn’t heard from her brother in 10 years, they made a promise to meet every 15th of the month on a bridge in Hanyang. Despite the fact that he has never showed up once, Yi Seo still persistently dresses up and travels to Hanyang once a month for this occasion. It is on one of these nights that she is seen both by Yeol (who is strolling around town with Dong Joo) and by Magistrate Jung Je Yoon (played by Kim Sun Ho). Yeol recognizes her immediately (or believes what he wants to see) as Yi Seo, and Jung Je Yoon is struck by love at first sight.

I have to say, it felt like watching a K-Drama like I used when I just started. There are 16 episodes that each last more than an hour, there are all sorts of plots and events that are somehow all connected to each other, the romance tropes like slowmotion hand-grab-turn-around movements… I’m secretly glad that not all the oldschool style dramas have disappeared yet.
The pace was nice, and the intense events were all postponed to the end of the series, followed still by a happy ending in which everything was (more or less) solved.

I would like to discuss the different storylines first, then give some comments on the casting and then point out some specific points of criticism.
As I said, I liked the story. It was easy to follow, and of course the development of the romantic relationship between Won Deuk and Hong Shim blossomed after taking its sweet time. The last couple of episodes suddenly took a turn for the intense, and for a moment I feared a Scarlet Heart Ryeo like turns of events, but it didn’t take too much time to be fixed, luckily.
The title ‘100 Day Husband’ or ‘100 Days My Prince’ as it is also called, refers to the time period that Hong Shim and Won Deuk are together. The whole story about how they knew each other as kids and all that follows afterwards not included, this is the period in which they literally both have a fake identity and get to know each other from scratch. In some way, you could say it’s the most important phase of a relationship in general. Therefore I think it’s a good name for the series. It’s not that the series is just about the 100 days, but these 100 days are key to their relationship. If it weren’t for these 100 days together, their relationship wouldn’t have developed as it does.

So, to talk about the several storylines this series offered. Apart from the events in Songjoo Village between Hong Shim, Won Deuk and their friends in the village, there’s a lot going on in the palace and around throughout the whole series.
First of all, there’s the story about Vice-Premier Kim. It is revealed that he is a cruel, ambitious man, who grew up in a lower family. His parents were unfairly brought to their ends, and he swore that he would not end up like them. He build his way up to the Royal Court and even got his daughter to become the Crown Princess. He is the evil advisor secretly planning a coup to dethrone (or in extreme case kill) the King and Crown Prince. He incapacitates, in one way or another, everyone posing a possible threat to his plans. He is the one who established the plan to ambush the Prince’s company on their way to the rain ritual, and in continuation to that silences everyone able to prove that Yeol was not killed. While Yeol is alive as Won Deuk in Songjoo Village, he keeps exercising his plans under the grief-striken King.
Then there is Jung Je Yoon, the second male lead of the story. As the son of a concubine, he was denied many privileges but still managed to become a magistrate. He falls in love with Yi Seo/Hong Shim the second he sees her in Hanyang one night and continues to pursue her. At one point he is sent to Songjoo Village as the new official and they meet again. He also meets Won Deuk there, but due to his incapability to recognize people’s faces, he doesn’t recognize him even though he has met the Crown Prince before. Despite his romantic intentions towards Hong Shim, he never crosses the line and remains a loyal friend and ally to the end.
Then, we have the story of the King’s current wife and Queen (played by Oh Yeon Ah) and their son Prince Seo Won (played by Ji Min Hyuk). The Queen is plotting her own strategy against Yeol, since she wants her son on the throne. However, she does not work together with the Vice-Premier, who attempts to silence her as well (no murder, just forcing laws and such).
The King at one point discovers Kim Cha Eon’s true intentions and tries to go against him, even though the whole court of officials is on his side.
Then, we have the Crown Princess and her secret lover. Although married to Yeol, she is secretly in love with one of the assassins working under her father, Moo Yeon. He is also the father of her baby. Moo Yeon later turns out to be Yi Seo’s brother Seok Ha.
Going on to his story, after escaping and leaving his sister behind in the forest, he hid his identity and started working under the man who killed his father in order to protect Yi Seo. He was able to distract the Vice Premier from looking for her, although he did have to cooperate in the ambush and attempted murder of the Crown Prince. Moo Yeon was the one who killed Dong Joo dressed in his royal garments and he also killed other people. Despite making a promise to his sister about meeting every month in Hanyang on the 15th, he never showed up in front of her, only to watch her from a distance. They only meet coincidentally when he is in Songjoo Village to search for the Crown Prince. After this encounter, he promises that soon he will be able to take her with him for good.
However, after Kim Cha Eon finds out he is his daughter’s secret lover, when the two try to run away together at the end of the series, Moo Yeon/Seok Ha is fatally injured and then killed by Kim Cha Eon himself.

I did find this scene to be particularly intense. I had mixed feelings about Seok Ha the whole time because on the one hand you ‘know’ that he’s a good guy, or he’s supposed to be – but I still couldn’t understand why he’d starting working for the man that killed his father and most of all why he’d agree to kill for him. Unless it was some sort of thought-out plan to gain his trust and then stab him in the back, but it didn’t come to that. So on the one hand I was like ‘bro you know you don’t wanna do this’ and on the other I couldn’t believe that he’d still continue to try and kill the Crown Prince, even after discovering his relationship with Yi Seo.
However, I was constantly curious as to how the relationship between him and the Crown Princess came to be. How and where did they meet? When was there an opportunity for them to sneak out together and conceive a child? We only see a couple of short scenes between them in the palace where they either pretend they don’t know each other or have nothing to do with each other or don’t speak to each other at all.
And then, when Yeol finds out the truth, he attempts to help them escape and transports So Hye out of the palace so that Seok Ha can meet her in the woods and for one moment there, when he suddenly appears in front of her and holds her while she cries, I finally felt that love between them.
And then it’s cruelly taken away by her father, who suddenly appears and stabs him in the heart while she’s watching.
I mean, I had mixed feelings but this seemed especially cruel and intense to me. I wasn’t prepared for Seok Ha to die like that. This scene really brought back some Scarlet Heart sentiments for me. I really wanted them to escape together and after this I really felt sorry for the Crown Princess. She wasn’t the standard historical drama second female lead who wanted the Crown Prince for herself even though he didn’t love her, she was actually a victim of her own father as well. I’m just glad she turned out okay and safely gave birth to her baby and named him Seok Ha (sob).

I would like to talk a bit about the casting.
As I said, Nam Ji Hyun is one of my favorite actresses. I really like the energy she always puts into her characters, she always gives this cheerful and hands-on mentality energy (gosh I’m on too many job vacancy sides lol). I’ve only seen Shopping King Louie and Suspicious Partner with her, but I liked them both and Suspicious Partner even made it to my top 3 list. I discovered that she’s starred with a lot more famous actors but it seems like she’s still a little underrated, which makes me appreciate her even more. To be honest, this role wasn’t the most spectacular role I’ve seen her in, but it certainly gave her opportunities to show much emotional variety. Hong Shim/Yi Seo has a lot of confrontations and personal obstacles to overcome. I would also like to simultaneously give a shoutout to Heo Jung Eun, the child actress portraying her younger version: this girl is going places. I’ve yet to see Oh My Geum Bi, but I’ve heard that she stole everyone’s hearts in that show. She’s going to be the next Kim So Hyun, I bet.
Also, as I noted before, Jung Ji Hoon, the younger version of Yeol, he’s going to be evolving as well. I see him now in almost every drama, even in the drama I watched before this one, Clean With Passion For Now, he was also the younger version of the male lead. I hope both kids’ futures are bright and full of opportunities.
I hadn’t seen any acting from D.O. before, but I think he did very well. He always seems like such a boy to me when I see him in EXO-related stuff, I think he has a very ‘young’ smile. But to see him in such an intense, cold figure as Yeol, it definitely changed my view of him a little. I heard from friends who are more familiar with EXO that his fellow members teased him after seeing him in this drama, but I think he did admirably.
There were not a lot of actors I knew, except for some villagers and the King, so in that respect it was very refreshing as well.
Kim Sun Ho made a very sympathetic second male lead. I genuinely liked his character. I saw on Dramawiki that he actually hasn’t done that many dramas yet, so I hope to see more of him in the future. What I liked about Je Yoon was that he always remained nice, even to the bad guys or people he didn’t agree with. So even if Hong Shim would’ve responded to his wooing attempts, I wouldn’t have blamed her, lol. He has a very kind face, I think.
I also didn’t know Han So Hee who played the Crown Princess. When checking Dramawiki I saw she also played in Reunited Worlds, which I saw, but I don’t remember her from that. Anyways, it’s nice to have a second female lead who isn’t a bitch for a change. Even though I didn’t have a strong opinion about her in the beginning, once all became clear about her relationship with Moo Yeon, I started rooting for her independent happiness. I think the actress did well, especially in the scene where Moo Yeon was killed in front of her. In the beginning she seemed to be clenching her jaws the whole time, but that was the one time she really let out all kinds of emotions and it had me teary-eyed in front of my screen.

There was one character that I really liked but who suddenly disappeared. This is Ae Wol, the gisaeng (played by Han Ji Eun) who kept making advances on Je Yoon. I would’ve really liked them to end up together. She was a nice side character and I would’ve liked to see her get a part of the action as well, as she was also helping Je Yoon get information before. But she suddenly wasn’t there anymore and they didn’t show her again in the end as well. I found that a pity, I would’ve liked to see her make a final appearance in Je Yoon’s life before the series was out. She was cool.
Another character that I liked he did make a comeback was Eunuch Yang (played by Jo Hyun Sik). He always plays a eunuch in historical dramas as far as I know, lol. I remember he was a eunuch in Moonlight Drawn By Clouds, too. He had a familiar face and so I expected him to have a more prominent role. He was the eunuch closest to the Crown Prince. His main feature was that he didn’t accompany Yeol to the rain ritual and therefore lived as a liability to mis-identify the prince’s body. He eventually gets suspicious because of a minor detail (he clipped the prince’s toenails not long ago and the corpse’s toenails don’t look the same), and he is foolish enough to entrust Kim Cha Eon with his detail, who then slits his throat and leaves him to die. However, Je Yoon brings his body to a healer outside of the capital and later brings Yeol to him. Eunuch Yang completely recovers from his near-death experience and continues to be a solid figure at the Crown Prince’s side. I liked that at least one person came back from the dead. He was too innocent to die.

Something else that amused me in this drama was the occasional references to modern-day customs. I’m not entirely sure how the people in the Joseon period really spoke to each other, but I often heard them talk in the same way as in regular modern-time dramas. One time there was even an occurance where Je Yoon made the ‘heart’ symbol with his fingers, which is of course really of modern times.
Maybe because of this, it sometimes felt like an extra big contrast when they discussed things such as the position of women in this old time period. I felt like the women in the village were all pretty progressive when it came to expressing their opinions. On the other hand of course women were talked about as the weaker sex, they should get married and have children early in their lives, etcetera. Hong Shim was mocked for being a single virgin lady at age 28, while she kept standing up for herself. As far as I know, women behaving like this in Joseon were being suppressed more. So there was a funny shift between the old-fashioned ways of the Joseon period and yet the progressiveness of women. I’m not sure if that’s what they were going for, but I found it amusing nonetheless.

Overall, the casting was nice and it was a nice story. I don’t have any major criticisms, except for maybe the way they ended it – but this might just be me. The ending felt kind of abrupt to me. After Won Deuk is brought back to the palace and slowly starts to regain his memories and get back into exposing the Vice-Premier, he realizes Kim Cha Eon has already put a trap in motion that causes a war that spreads to smaller villages as well.
After Moo Yeon is killed, Yeol challenges Kim Cha Eon to a duel and when he injures him, he tells him that he’ll be locked up in prison and be punished for all his crimes. However, the archers kill Kim Cha Eon when he makes another move. In his last moments he hands Yeol a letter from which becomes clear that a war is actively going on already and Yeol needs to go there himself to help. Then suddenly we switch to a scene that the series begin with – Yeol going off to war on his own. Until that point, I hadn’t considered that scene at all, I just figured it was a scene to introduce Yeol as the Crown Prince before going back to the flashbacks of when he was a child. Anyways, we see Yeol fight in the war and then suddenly BAM – there is a time jump to 1 year later. So the last thing we see is Yeol fighting and the Crown Princess being caught in an attempt to escape the palace.
1 YEAR LATER
And there we have Hong Shim’s friends from the village laughingly talk about the events after the war as if it is some juicy gossip. This abrupt switch from intense to light comedy was very sudden for me. Also, they said something about the Crown Princess having committed suicide and for a moment there I was like, ‘seriously? they’re just going to mention what happened to her in some light gossipy way? i was actually rooting for that woman’. In the end, fortunately, it turns out that this didn’t happen and she’s living hidden in the forest somewhere with her child and her loyal handmaiden. But still, I was surprised to hear it.
And the last part of the last episode suddenly just went back to that casual, comedy genre and I was still coping with the intense situation from 5 minutes earlier. So that was a bit weird, lol. But anyways, I’m glad that there was still a regular happy ending. I was a bit worried about what Yi Seo would do, because first she rejected Yeol’s offer of regaining her old status and name and live her old life again, but then suddenly she did get reinstated and I was thinking ‘I thought she said she didn’t want to?’ and she still kept Yeol at a distance. In the end it took reading his journals in which he described his love for her to get her to accept she couldn’t be without him, but I didn’t really understand what kind of final impact those journals had because he already told her his feelings for her so many times and she kept saying no. So Yi Seo’s capriciousness in the end confused me a little as well.
But apart from that I enjoyed watching it!

This series really put me back into the historical drama mood so I moved another to-watch historical drama up on my list, lol. I still need to see some more classic ones such as Sungkyungkwan Scandal etc.
Anyways, the next one on my list is another one I’ve been looking forward to a lot, starring another favorite actress of mine. I’m really psyched 🙂
I liked this drama for at the same time it’s refreshing aspects as its familiar aspects. I still can’t let go of the 16 episode series, even though the back-to-back ones are slowly taking over. It was nice to have the predictable tropes, but I still enjoyed waiting for that moment when they’d finally realize who they were and all truths would come out eventually. Korean dramas continue to entertain me, no matter the predictability.

Please bear with me until me next review! Bye-bye!