Summary
My Royal Nemesis seems fairly predictable, at least in “The Vixen and the Beast”, but it does more to justify the attraction between the leads than most shows of a similar ilk.
Reminiscent of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, and a smattering of other “out of time and place” streaming K-Dramas, at first blush, My Royal Nemesis is too familiar to be that engaging. To be honest, it might remain similarly familiar throughout its run. But let’s not be too hasty. Episode 1, “The Vixen and the Beast”, definitely has its upsides, including a nifty pace — despite the typically elongated 71-minute runtime — and some funny sequences here and there. Your enjoyment will likely depend on your tolerance for the recurring gag of a woman from the Joseon period trying to navigate contemporary Seoul, but there’s a fair amount of potential mileage in that idea, depending on where the show goes with it.
Important to note: This isn’t a period drama, or at least not yet. Despite an opening scene set in the Joseon era, it only exists as a setup for the main premise, and we don’t return to it; it’s the exact inverse of how the aforementioned Bon Appetit, Your Majesty worked. This might be a dealbreaker for some, given that even the marketing implies much more of a duality than is present in the actual episode. So, take that as you will.
The Joseon scene is important, though, since it’s our introduction to Kang Dan-sim, a royal consort forcibly executed by poisoning on orders of the king, and whatever semi-supernatural mystery might later explain how Dan-sim ends up being reincarnated in present-day Seoul, in the body of a struggling actress named Shin Seo-Ri. For now, the reason for the temporal shenanigans I’m totally unclear about. There’s an eclipse, falling frost, and what looks like some sort of shamanistic blood ritual, but My Royal Nemesis isn’t massively interested in exposition, at least not at this stage.
We do get a sense of Dan-sim in all this, though. Her refusal to dutifully accept the poison is a bit of a tell, though we don’t see enough of what got her in that position to really understand how she earned her reputation as a ruthless villainess, which she learns in the present day is how she’s remembered. This is what leads me to believe that we’ll get more Joseon-set sequences as things go, but for now, it’s unclear how that’d be worked into the narrative, given Dan-sim seems fairly trapped.
Since she’s trapped, she might as well occupy her time. And thus, we come to Cha Se-gye, the deeply unpleasant heir to a highly successful conglomerate who treats every aspect of his life, up to and including his attempts at dating, as some kind of potentially lucrative business merger. Se-gye is such a ridiculous caricature as to be, at least at this point, kind of unengaging, even though there are hints — a very modest background on one side of the family being the main one — that might help to explain his neuroses. Se-gye and Dan-sim do that K-Drama thing of bumping into each other seemingly at random a couple of times in Episode 1, so it’s obvious that My Royal Nemesis is going to revolve around their rom-com relationship.
But this is where I think “The Vixen and the Beast” does quite well. Shows like this often struggle to justify a meet-cute — how many times do the main characters know each other from childhood, for instance? — and any potential romance suffers on the back of the contrivance. But Dan-sim and Se-gye seem like a sensible match to me, because you can understand why the latter’s extremely unfeeling demeanour would feel right at home for someone used to a ruthless royal court. Dan-sim’s whole deal — explained perhaps a little too much via an internal monologue instead of being displayed overtly — is eviscerating people verbally, and so the initial attraction isn’t so much romantic as it is a worthwhile challenge.
In short, though, it’s too soon to tell. I could feel the premiere getting a bit navel-gazing in the back half, and the smattered supernatural elements — a reincarnation of Dan-sim’s shaman, Hwang, who instantly and conveniently believes her story that she’s “time-wandering”, for instance — may or may not cohere in a satisfying way. But I am engaged by the leads, and in a show like this, that’s what matters predominantly. Either way, given how the success of K-Dramas in this genre seems to be almost random, this is definitely something I’m interested in keeping an eye on to see how it develops.
