Hernand’s Heir

Let us call that island “Manahata.” A explorer from the Old Continent named the river Hudson, and the Dutch built a port there and called it New Amsterdam. The English, who took the port by war, renamed the city New York — but we will still call that island by its original name, Manahata.

People fleeing as if escaping from the Old Continent gathered at Manahata, the gateway port of the New World. Manahata was a port city where political exiles and people fleeing poverty and religious persecution mixed together. It was the end of the Age of Discovery, and there were no new continents left to explore.

By day, they were oppressed by the colonial governor and the army; by night, noble families from the Old Continent persecuted Manahata’s poor commoners. There was no paradise in the place they had fled to. It had been 100 years since the city of Manahata was built, and it would be another 200 years before the boy Vito Corleone, who had fled Sicily, would arrive.

To that port city of Manahata came a sixteen-year-old boy, Seojeon. At the time, Joseon was under King Sukjong’s reign, around the time Queen Inhyeon had died of illness and Jang Ok-jeong had been put to death by poison.

Seojeon had originally planned to stay briefly at this port and then return to his hometown, but cruel fate would not send him back home.