Heiress to the Queens Group, Hae-in runs the Queens Department store, while Hyun-woo works as head counsel for the corporation.

Hyun-woo’s protective instincts took over and, as the pair secretly navigated her complicated malady – a rare brain tumour that would sometimes cause her to black out and hallucinate – they began to fall in love all over again.

Following the standard romcom format, Hae-in and Hyun-woo fall out a few times throughout their romantic rapprochement, including when Hae-in learns that Hyun-woo had been planning to serve with her divorce papers.

There was also the obstacle posed by Hae-in’s smug childhood friend Yoon Eun-sung (Park Sung-hoon), who attempts to insert himself back into her life.

But the series did not stop at that, instead doubling down on formula by employing classic melodramatic devices to reset the on-screen couple’s romantic journey.

This began with Hae-in’s illness, but the grandest gestures were reserved for later on, when a treatment was found that could cure Hae-in but which would probably cost her her long-term memory.

Hae-in eventually goes through with the procedure and she does lose her memory, prompting Hyun-woo to get her to fall in love with him once more.

Although it is not clear to what degree Hae-in retrieves her memories, love does blossom between them again – thanks in part to his taking a bullet for her – but the show did not stop there.

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This was the point where viewers expected the story to end on its true happily-ever-after note, but once again the show skips right past that, jumping at least 50 years into the future, as an elderly Hyun-woo visits Hae-in’s grave in Potsdam, Germany, which tells us that she died in 2074.

After that, finally we reach the show’s endgame, as it delivers the purest expression of a happily-ever-after it could conjure up. Hyun-woo and Hae-in, both once again their youthful and beautiful selves, meet one final time in their beloved lavender fields in Germany, joining hands in the afterlife to be together forever more.

The series also gave us a classic tale of chaebol (a Korean family-run corporation) infighting.

Stalling Hyun-woo and Hae-in’s love story is Eun-sung and his mother, who is revealed to be Moh Seul-hee (Lee Mi-sook), the girlfriend of the Queens Group chairman who poisons him after he grants her power of attorney and orchestrates a takeover of the company.

She goes so far as to kick all of Hae-in’s family out of their sweeping compound, and they wind up staying with Hyun-woo’s family in the countryside.

Seul-hee gets her comeuppance when Hyun-woo triumphs over her in the courtroom, in an abrupt sequence that loses some of its power thanks to its slapdash structure.

Hyun-woo’s side appears to be losing the case to Seul-hee’s counsel until Hyun-woo conjures up a smoking gun in the form of a recording of her he had all along.

More exciting was the grand end reserved for her son Eun-sung. He kidnaps Hae-in and, after Hyun-woo frees her, chases them through the snowy woods at night in a helicopter, armed with a shotgun. This is when Hyun-woo takes a bullet for Hae-in, following which Eun-sung is gunned down by the police.

The corporate shenanigans were familiar but for the most part entertainingly staged, giving the story somewhere to go in the show’s long episodes.

Still, Queen of Tears was all about the romance. Whether you agree with the endpoint it chose for the lovestruck leads, there is no denying it is the most purely romantic K-drama to hit our screens in quite some time.

Queen of Tears is streaming on Netflix.