Honeyed Words, Hidden Daggers (1)

Things had gotten seriously out of hand.

Where, exactly, had things gone wrong?

Had that rotten Ming finally gone insane?

It would be maddening enough if they told us to send another collateral member of the royal family... but the Crown Prince?

In other words, they were telling us to accompany young Crown Prince Munjong all the way to Beijing.

Well, when you considered the matter carefully, this was not something that was completely impossible by the standards of the time...

When Yi Seong-gye was king, Yi Bang-won, who was effectively second in line among the princes, had gone to Ming and returned.

Even when Yi Bang-won was king, Grand Prince Yangnyeong, who was Crown Prince at the time, had gone to Ming and returned.

So Crown Prince Munjong being summoned to Ming was neither particularly unprecedented nor something that absolutely could not happen.

The important thing was that the responsibility our diplomatic mission would have to shoulder had grown enormously...