Emperor Il

Template:Character InfoboxKing Il (イル Iru) is the late king of the Kouka Kingdom. He is the father of Yona, the second-born son of Emperor Joo-Nam and the younger brother of Yu-Hon. On the night of his daughter’s birthday, he was murdered by his nephew Soo-Won.

Appearance

Il is a chubby man who has a gentle appearance. He has a pair of black eyes and short black hair covered by a black headgear with red and yellow design pattern, and two extending cords that has yellow tassels hanging on each of them. He also has a short black mustache.

He dons a maroon overcoat with violet hemlines atop a dark purple robe. This robe has red hemlines and covers his white innerwear. He also puts on a necklace with beads in various colors and a gold circular pendant.

Personality

Il is a bubbly person who governs his people with kindness and idealism. He dislikes violence and settles conflicts in a peaceful manner. Because of this, he banned wars and forbids Yona from taking up a weapon. Although he may appear cowardly and weak from this, he can be brave and stop a fight by his own bare hands when it’s necessary.

Background

He was inaugurated as the King of Kouka Kingdom ten years prior to the beginning of the story. It made no sense to most since he was the second-born and weaker than the first-born son, Yu-Hon. In his reign, he was known to hate weapons and war, and took the passive approach when he dealt with such matters. In efforts to avoid war with the neighboring countries, he offered them the small boundaries of the kingdom. He also did poorly at ruling over the authorities of the other four tribes, so corruption within the system was able to flourish. These factors contributed to extreme poverty and foul trading, especially in the Fire Tribe.

After he assumed the throne, his wife was killed by insurgents and since then he didn't bother to marry again as the same fate may happen on his new spouse. Yu-Hon was also killed, though it was covered up as an accident as Il himself murdered him for unknown reasons.

Synopsis

Fugitive Arc

Il watches Yona and Hak fight

Il visits Yona in her room and he answers her question about her unruly red hair. He tells her how it’s not weird and asks Hak for the assurance of his statement, but the two youngsters engages in a playful fight because of the latter’s unpleasant answer. Yona soon leaves to meet Soo-Won outside after Hak tells her of his arrival. Il realizes why Yona is frantic about her hair, but is still confused about it as he thinks that Soo-Won will not mind the matter. Hak tells him bluntly how oblivious he is on her daughter’s feelings.

The next day, he and Yona goes to the training grounds to watch Hak and Soo-Won’s match in archery. During the game, Yona says that she wants to learn archery, on which he greatly opposes to. After the duel, Soo-Won invites Yona down for horseback riding and Il gets worried. Later that time, Il learns of his daughter’s conversation with Soo-Won about their own engagements. He tells her that her engagement will soon be tackled in the future, but Yona is opposing the idea as she wants Soo-Won to be her husband. Il disagrees to her because he doesn’t want his nephew to suffer the burden of being a king, and also the fact his wife was killed by traitors which made him didn't want to remarry, and this what made Yona run out of her room in disbelief.

Soo-Won kills Emperor Il

Five days later, Yona celebrates her 16th birthday and Il cries tears of joy. However, she is still preoccupied on her messy hair, much to his dismay. Later that night, Soo-Won meets him at his room and kills him for revenge.

Even after his death King Il continues to influence the plot, both directly and indirectly due to his extreme pacifist nature that caused a lot of trouble for both his family and his kingdom.

Relationships

Yona

As Yona is his only child, he loved her more than anything. Because of this, he was very protective of her; he forbidden her to hold a weapon and going outside the castle out of fear. However, despite complying with her wishes all the time, he was unable to give Soo-Won to her as he didn't want the two to get married. Yona was absolutely devastated by his death at the hands of Soo-Won and grieved greatly to the point that she didn't want to live anymore. King Il's death made her realized how selfless she was because he spend all that time making her happy for her birthday and even regretted not being able to say thank you to him for that. Even though he had the right ideal of achieving peace but not going into war through any means necessarily it caused a lot of troubles for Yona as she quickly realized that the citizens of Kouka actually hated him and thought that he was a coward and weak to begin with. Then she learned that the citizens and generals themselves wanted his older brother Yu-Hon to be king in the first since Il despised war, weapons and fighting of any kind. This series of revelations made Yona realized that while not condone it, she comes to understand why he was murdered in the first place. However, once Yona found out how ruthless her uncle Yu-hon was to his enemies especially to the people of the Xing Kingdom she started to wonder was that the reason her grandfather chose her father over his own brother to be king.

Hak

Even though Hak considers him as a bubbly king and even tells him plainly one event, Il doesn't care about it as he admires Hak's honesty. Because of Hak’s prowess, Il personally asks him to be Yona’s bodyguard but is turned down. However, when he saved him from Kan Tae-Jun, he earns his loyalty and has him stay by Yona’s side.

Soo-Won

Soo-Won and II were shown to have a neutral relationship in the beginning of the series. II loved Soo -won as his own child but When Soo-Won was nine, his father was murdered by Emperor Il, though the murder was covered up as an accident. Since then, Soo-won harbored a secret hatred of the emperor and plotted his revenge in order to fulfill his father’s dying wish to become the king.