Perhaps the most famous scene of Episode 1 occurs when Lady Sohwa, exhausted and starving, arrives at a monastery in the middle of nowhere. The monk asks her the child’s name. She has no name. The monk looks at a blooming yellow chrysanthemum.
The Hwarang (warrior elite) are rising in power, and the noble clans—specifically the prestigious Park and Kim clans—are locked in a silent civil war. At the center of this storm is Queen Maya, who is pregnant with twins. However, a chilling prophecy circulates the court: "If the queen gives birth to twins, the one born second will be a woman who will devour the kingdom." the great queen seondeok ep 1
Episode 1 cleverly establishes the contrasting personalities of the twin sisters: Perhaps the most famous scene of Episode 1
Episode 1 opens with a chilling shamanistic prophecy: "The comet that brings a new king will appear, but the king will be a woman." In 7th-century Silla, this is treason. The kingdom is fiercely patriarchal and ruled by the sacred bone-rank system (the Golpum system). A female ruler threatens not just tradition but the divine right of the male line. The monk looks at a blooming yellow chrysanthemum
When King Jinji refuses, Mishil ruthlessly abandons her own child and orchestrates the King's removal from the throne, finally installing the original successor, King Jinpyeong . The Ominous Warning
With these chilling words, The Great Queen Seondeok —one of the most revered and highest-rated dramas in Korean television history—begins its epic 62-episode journey. Premiering in 2009 on MBC, the drama tells the semi-fictionalized story of Queen Seondeok, the first reigning female monarch in the history of the Silla Kingdom (57 BC – AD 935).