Why does the Queen have to die?

The last episode of "Seo Dong Yo" was aired on Hong Kong's TVB on March 9, 2009.

I've watched this ending so many times before. I knew what to expect. I could even recite the classic lines. And yet I still cried.

Why, oh why, does the Queen have to die?

After moving heaven and earth to be together, after going through thick and thin to arrive at their present status, they've only had 13 years together as husband and wife. No, not so much husband and wife as king and queen.

He spends most of this time on the battlefield, fighting his father-in-law to defend his kingdom. She spends these lonely years wasting away, heart-sick at the prospects of her father and her husband destroying each other.

What exactly is the Queen's illness? Is it heart disease? Is it really incurable?

I could never understand why the Queen has to keep her illness from the King. They pledged always to be true to one another when they were young. Now she thinks she is protecting him in denying him the truth?

"What one cannot avoid is not fate. What one can avoid but still chooses to go down that path, that's fate." The Queen says at the end: "I have no regrets. As a Princess, I chose to take this path." (of throwing in her lot with Seo Dong.) The Queen cannot avoid her fate of an early death. (She is, what, only in her mid-thirties?) Now she chooses her own fate of facing her impending death alone, instead of sharing it with the King, as they have shared everything in life.

The King would have liked to share the Queen's fate with her; he would not want to avoid it. The wedding vows in the Western world apply here: "For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, till death do us part." He loves her to death, literally. Surely he would rather know, so he could share her pain. Whether he knows or not, he has to suffer the agony of her untimely demise.

The last moments they spend together are so romantic and yet so banal. Just an old married couple cooking a meal. Not your usual married couple, though. The wife still does not know how to prepare rice. It's the husband who finishes the job for her. And he does it so tenderly and lovingly.

She wants to try to cook a meal for her husband, just once.
He insists on doing it: "If you prepare everything for me, what am I going to do in the future?" (He knows!)
"But, your Majesty, a wife who has never once cooked rice for her husband -- how could you remember me?"
"How could I ever forget? The sound of your breath, the look in your eyes, the lines on your face when you smile -- I'll remember them all!"

The images of the King squatting down to fan the cooking fire, the King feeding the Queen with the spoonful of rice (and later the wild mushrooms) are so incredibly moving! The way he prepares the herbal medicine is so deft, so careful -- he wants to make sure she takes the medicine, but she knows it is to no avail. He is still hoping against hope, but she realizes the end is near.

She tells him: "Even if I die, you must not cry. We will not cry." and "Smile! You look best when you smile. So smile!"

The last scene of the King (alone with his memories) is heart-rending. "What one cannot avoid is not fate. What one can avoid but still chooses to go down that path, that's fate. But there is one thing I can never avoid, would not wish to avoid, and that is you, my Queen-- thinking about you, my Queen. I cannot avoid our love without end."

The Princess has said many times (in the course of the drama) that the royal court is full of intrigue and treachery. She should know: she grew up in such an environment. But the love between Seo Dong and the Princess transcends all boundaries and barriers of rank, status, race, culture, geography, distance, time, but it cannot overcome death -- the great divide.

This long drama closes with the King forcing a smile as he remembers what the Queen said. And yet this smile is more heartbreaking than the loudest sob.

The King may be smiling (forced or not), but I am crying buckets!