A Frozen Flower — Ending Explained

The King, unable to consummate his marriage with the Yuan Princess Queen due to his homosexuality, orders his personal bodyguard and lover Hong-lim to sleep with the Queen to produce a royal heir. What starts as a forced duty quickly turns into a passionate sexual affair as Hong-lim and the Queen fall genuinely in love, arranging secret nocturnal liaisons in the palace library.

Suspicious of their behavior, the King instructs guard Han-baek to spy on them and catches Hong-lim and the Queen engaging in sex inside the library. Enraged and heartbroken, the King orders Hong-lim castrated and imprisoned. However, the Queen announces she is pregnant with Hong-lim's child, saving her from immediate execution, while loyal members of the guard help the mutilated Hong-lim escape the palace.

To lure Hong-lim back, the King executes everyone who knew the secret father's identity and falsely hangs a severed head outside the palace, making Hong-lim believe the Queen was executed. Driven by rage, Hong-lim storms the palace and engages the King in a brutal duel inside the royal hall, mortally wounding him. As the King lies dying, he asks Hong-lim if he ever considered him a true lover, to which Hong-lim coldly replies, "No."

Moments later, Hong-lim catches sight of the pregnant Queen watching from a window, realizing the King lied to him. Before dying from his own wounds inflicted by the King, Hong-lim turns his head back toward the deceased monarch, leaving his final feelings unresolved as both lie dead together.

There are three primary alternative readings of the film's climax and emotional dynamics:

• The Denial as Spite/Protection: One reading posits that Hong-lim’s cold "No, I never loved you" to the dying King was delivered out of lingering anger over his castration and the murder of his fellow guards. His final turn of his head toward the King as he dies suggests that his love for the monarch was buried, not non-existent.
• True Heterosexual Awakening: Another perspective argues that Hong-lim’s childhood loyalty to the King was socialized indoctrination rather than authentic romantic attraction. His intimate relationship with the Queen marked his first true experience of self-chosen heterosexual love.
• The Failure of Absolute Sovereignty: A political reading views the tragedy as a critique of autocratic power; the King believed he could command human hearts and intimacy like political decrees, inadvertently triggering his own destruction.