9 K-dramas about rich-people betrayals to watch before Shin Min-a’s ‘The Remarried Empress’

Before Navier, there was Ji Sun-woo (Kim Hee-ae), a successful doctor with a beautiful home, a respected career and a marriage that appears almost offensively stable.

Then she begins to suspect her husband, Lee Tae-oh (Park Hae-joon), is having an affair.

The other woman is Yeo Da-kyung (Han So-hee), younger and deeply embedded in the same social world Sun-woo thought she understood. What follows is less a clean revenge fantasy than an increasingly vicious battle involving marriage, reputation, family and the people who knew more than they admitted. If you are looking for dignified feminine fury with absolutely no interest in keeping the peace for everyone else's comfort, this is the one.

There are few plot developments more compatible with The Remarried Empress than discovering your husband has chosen someone else and responding by finding a considerably better man.

Han Yi-joo (Jung Yoo-min) learns exactly where she stands within both her marriage and her deeply dysfunctional family. After travelling back in time, she decides not to wait around for the same future to happen again. Instead, she approaches Seo Do-guk (Sung Hoon), a wealthy and formidable man with his own reasons for agreeing to a contract marriage.

The arrangement is supposed to serve both of them. Naturally, feelings complicate matters.

It is unapologetically heightened, extremely satisfying and very aware that sometimes the correct response to a catastrophic marriage is not reflection. Sometimes it is a much better husband.

The Remarried Empress may have dragons, rival empires and a prince with suspiciously good timing. The Last Empress has a modern constitutional monarchy and the sort of palace behaviour that makes ordinary infidelity look positively manageable.

Oh Sunny (Jang Na-ra), a musical actress, marries Emperor Lee Hyuk (Shin Sung-rok), only to discover that life inside the palace bears little resemblance to the romance she imagined. The emperor's relationship with Min Yoo-ra (Lee Elijah), his ambitious secretary, is only one part of a court filled with conspiracies, manipulation and people who should absolutely not be left alone with the royal family jewels.

It is makjang in full imperial regalia. If you're most looking forward to Rashta and Sovieshu’s palace manoeuvring, The Last Empress has plenty to keep you busy.

Not every Remarried Empress parallel requires a cheating husband or an official mistress.

Hong Hae-in (Kim Ji-won), the intimidating heiress of the Queens Group, shares something more fundamental with Navier: she is exceptionally good at remaining composed. At the same time, everyone around her wonders whether she has feelings at all. Her troubled marriage to Baek Hyun-woo (Kim Soo-hyun) places that reserve under pressure, while family politics and an increasingly dangerous rival threaten to turn a private crisis into a corporate one.

Queen of Tears ultimately works toward reconciliation rather than remarriage, but Hae-in belongs to the same distinguished club of women who enter a room already aware that everyone is watching them.

See more: ‘Queen of Tears’ to ‘The Heirs’: 9 most powerful, scene-stealing heiresses in K-drama

Lee Ra-el (Seo Yea-ji) is not Navier. She is significantly less interested in diplomacy.

After powerful figures destroy her family, Ra-el spends years preparing to bring down the people responsible. Her route back into their world takes her through wealth, influence and an affair that becomes part of a much larger plan.

Eve is less interested in the clean moral geometry of Marry My Husband than in seduction, status and revenge played at very close range. But for viewers who enjoy watching a woman enter a room with more information than everyone else, it has its pleasures.

See more: Secrets, betrayal and twists: 15 gripping K-dramas about affairs

Mo Seok-hee (Im Soo-hyang), the only daughter of the MC Group honcho, has spent years away from the family that sent her abroad after her mother's death. When she returns to Korea, she walks straight back into a chaebol household full of old resentments, hidden crimes and people who would very much prefer she remain somewhere else.

Unfortunately for them, Seok-hee is not especially easy to intimidate.

She finds an unlikely ally in lawyer Heo Yoon-do (Lee Jang-woo) and begins pulling apart the machinery protecting her family. There are mistresses, cover-ups and corporate fixers, but the real draw is Seok-hee herself: glamorous, furious and usually several moves ahead of the person trying to stop her.

Navier understands institutions. And so does Hwang Do-hee (Kim Hee-ae).

Do-hee has spent years solving problems for the powerful Eunsung Group, until one particular scandal makes continuing impossible. She leaves and joins forces with Oh Kyung-sook (Moon So-ri), a human-rights lawyer running for mayor of Seoul, bringing her knowledge of media, money and political influence to the other side.

There is no emperor, mistress or remarriage here. What Queenmaker shares with The Remarried Empress is the pleasure of watching a woman who understands the rules of a powerful system decide that she can use them just as effectively as the men who built it.

“Your husband’s woman is in your task force.”

That is the message Na Jung-sun (Jang Na-ra) receives, and VIP has the good sense not to reveal everything at once.

Jung-sun manages VIP clients at a department store and works alongside her husband Park Sung-joon (Lee Sang-yoon). As she tries to determine who he is involved with, the office becomes a minefield of suspicions, secrets and shifting loyalties.

It is perhaps the closest match on this list to the specific agony of watching another woman slowly take up space in a relationship you thought was secure. There is no empire to save, but there are enough immaculate offices, loaded glances and carefully concealed resentments to make it feel like court politics in business attire.

If The Remarried Empress is going to be your November appointment television, these should make the wait easier. And should you find yourself developing a sudden intolerance for arrogant husbands and women who mistake someone else’s marriage for an invitation, well, Navier would probably understand.

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