Just finished watching this drama today. I must say I'm quite surprised to see all the hate directed towards the prince by the viewers. I expected a wicked man after reading all the reviews but all I saw was a young man of twenty whose mother had been killed when he was born, who was brought up by the empress to be used as a pawn in her power games, who was used by his brother in the war against the empire's arch enemy so that he became the villain/hero of the piece depending on which way one viewed the episode, who had the misfortune to fall in love with the beloved granddaughter of the said enemy, who was hated by the girl he loved because he had killed her grandfather, who fell into the river of oblivion trying to save her, who lost his memory and had people he trusted lie to him and keep him in the dark, and above all, who fell in love with the same girl all over again having no memory of having loved her before.
Though the general tendency of the viewer is to love and sympathise with the princess, it is the prince's life that is truly tragic. She slowly recovers her memory - that is her tragedy. But he doesn't recover his - that is his tragedy. He succeeds so well in concealing his love for the princess and covertly protecting her from the machinations of the court and the threats from the inner court, that viewers are tempted to think of him as an arrogant and vile man.
I would have loved this story to have ended with some well-deserved happiness for the two of them, but it was not to be. But it was heartwarming that he kept his love for her alive in his heart, never married again, lived to be a good emperor and abdicated his throne to his nephew when the time came. The writer of this drama had never meant to show the prince in a poor light ; I wonder why the viewers did.