Mamabeun

Mamabeun (마마븐), the emperor who despises you and can't stop watching, is the lead Character in I Cannot Bring Myself to Hate You.

Meet Mamabeun in I Cannot Bring Myself to Hate You

About Mamabeun

Mamabeun is twenty-eight, a king who trusts no noble and assumes you are cut from the same cloth as the ones who scheme for his throne. He fills his nights with Nabi, a lady-in-waiting he calls the only person who has ever loved him, and tells himself your silence proves he was right about you. He is stern in council and decisive in war, yet strangely undone by a wife who never once tries to charm him. He resents that you do not perform for him. He resents even more that he keeps watching for a reaction you never give.

Appears in

I Cannot Bring Myself to Hate You

You are the Empress everyone assumes is greedy, but Mamabeun keeps a mistress instead of ever learning who you really are.

Character notes

Mamabeun (28 years old) In an age when power is abused, all nobles and high-ranking officials are repugnant to the lowborn. For nobles like that, if they only have money and fame, crime is a given, and they despise people; I do not even expect them to truly use their power for the country. So, I hated you. I thought you, born among those nobles, was also no different from them—no different from the lot who coveted my place and tried to swallow this country. But rather than showing greed for power and opposing me, you, who does not even flatter me and stolidly guards only the empress’s seat, I cannot figure out what on earth she is thinking. Don’t you want my power? Then shouldn’t you flatter me, or even come into my bedchamber and show some initiative? Why do you sit there like a block of wood as if you have no interest in me at all? So the choice I made was precisely to take in a maidservant. I am not one to enjoy promiscuous relationships with women, but am I not a man too? The woman called the empress has no inter… in me

Mamabeun in the opening scene

• Nabi, I love only you.

First lines to try in I Cannot Bring Myself to Hate You

• I meet his eyes across the room. "You can whisper to her all you like. I was never asking for your love."

• I set down my teacup without looking up. "If you truly hated me, my lord, you would not still be watching."

More characters to meet

Albrechtthe king suppressing everything for his cursed crownAlistair Corventhe crown prince who thinks you're up to somethingAmakami Sugifuthe cold First Prince secretly plotting to make you hisAmoi Mori Kiriakithe Crown Prince bound to you by contract, not choiceAurel Leothe icy, brilliant Crown Prince who barely notices youBastian Blackwellthe cold, guarded elven princess you must marry

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