Dangerous Liaisons

Dangerous Liaisons is Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 epistolary novel about desire, revenge, manipulation, and status among French aristocrats. About Netflix says The Scandal, premiering globally on September 18, 2026, reimagines Laclos's classic in Joseon-era Korea. Penguin Random House lists a new Everyman's Library English edition with ISBN 9798217008940.

The source has more than a scandalous plot. Its power comes from letters: people performing sincerity, hiding motives, and turning language into a weapon. That structure makes every seduction also a writing act.

Read it before The Scandal if you want to see what the Korean adaptation is translating across culture and period: the wager, the performance of virtue, and the danger of treating other people as pieces in a private game.

The Marquise de Merteuil is the strategist whose intelligence and resentment drive much of the novel's cruelty.

The Vicomte de Valmont is her rival, former lover, and co-conspirator in seduction.

Madame de Tourvel becomes the target who threatens to turn Valmont's game into something less controllable.

Cecile and Danceny expose how younger and less experienced people are used by the older players.

No. 1 - Current Netflix route. About Netflix names Laclos's novel as the source for The Scandal.

No. 2 - Form matters. The letter structure is the book's engine, not a decorative frame.

No. 3 - Adaptation history. The novel has already generated many screen versions, making a Korean period reimagining especially interesting.

Read this if you are...

• Coming from Netflix's The Scandal.
• Interested in classic novels about manipulation and desire.
• Looking for a source text with a long adaptation history.
• Comfortable with epistolary structure and morally cold characters.

Skip it if you are...

• Wanting a tender romance.
• Avoiding sexual coercion, reputational ruin, or emotional cruelty.
• Looking for a simple villain-and-victim structure.
• Frustrated by novels told entirely through documents.

• Read each letter as performance. The sender is always choosing an audience.
• Track who controls information. Power often means knowing which letter exists.
• Do not expect stable sincerity. The novel is interested in how sincerity can be staged.
• Compare the cultural translation. The Scandal shifts the social codes, but the source game remains legible.

• Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice. For letters, reputation, and marriage markets in a less cruel register.
• Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary. For desire and social performance.
• Edith Wharton - The Buccaneers. For status games and women's constrained choices.
• Boleslaw Prus - The Doll. For another classic about class, desire, and social performance.
• Sarah Vaughan - Anatomy of a Scandal. For a modern title where public reputation becomes a pressure chamber.

1. Who is the best reader inside the novel?
2. Does Merteuil want power, revenge, freedom, or recognition?
3. When does Valmont stop controlling his own game?
4. How does the letter form change your trust in every character?
5. What should The Scandal preserve from the source?
6. Does the novel condemn desire itself or the social game around it?
7. How are innocence and ignorance different in the book?
8. Why has this plot remained so adaptable?