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Flavius Aetass posted:I gotta hear what happened to the happy goats
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Jan 12, 2021 16:38
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unfortunately a lot of the happy goats have already been roasted (and something else i dont understand and translates as sheep scorpion but I assume is skinning them) but theres still loads of them left and the huns aren't gonna sit there and watch the Wusun guys herding their happy goats. they're gonna pre-enact Taken but with happy goats they know they can't attack the han emperor (gets translated as "the big man" which i also love, also the empire is sometimes "the big house") they know they're no longer strong enough to fight the big man (20 years ago the big man had been The War Emperor and was a real dick/great leader™ and essentially when the huns asked him to pay them not to raid him he spent 50 years at total war with them instead) but they reckon they can carry out a quick robbery of Wusun and steal their goats back its unclear if Wusun are stupid or this was a trap, but the Huns do successfully take them unawares and send an enormous army as a show of force but mainly because they need the manpower for all the hundreds of thousands of happy goats which they load onto carts and abscond with unfortunately the giant happy goat heist crew runs into trouble when the weather turns to pure poo poo and their carts get stuck out on the grasslands, exposed. they've presumably been easy to tail, but thankfully the han should be slow to respond. back in the imperial court, as in our times, a lot of courtiers and ministers time is spent avoiding having to do things or take responsibility for anything. the ideal emperor in the eyes of a minister is basically someone who takes responsibility for everything but does nothing, the idea of wu wei "doing something by doing nothing" is almost libertarian if you squint, ideally the government shouldnt do anything, a perfect society is then spontaneously generated by untarnished aaanyway the ministers all come up with different ways to avoid doing any work or answering for their fuckups and the most popular method is to pretend to be sick until people stop asking for you. its extremely common and multiple ministers do it every time a crisis occurs which is often. Old shamed General Chongguo isn't like that though, like everyone else being at court makes him anxious and he doesn't wanna do any political work, but instead of pulling sickies what he does is go to the front and ride around killing huns... quite probably like a total bastard! someone probably wanted to ask questions about how chinas greatest general couldnt find hundreds of thousands of huns or happy goats when a rando diplomat found them by accident, so Chongguo just so happens to have ridden off to the front to go kill some huns. (or this was all a trap, but still, this habit is a thing he is known for so i choose wacky coincidence for dramatic effect) anyway word gets to Chongguo that the whole loving hun army is stuck out in the open plain babysitting myriads of happy goats and you gotta imagine this guy is like "yes, my whole life is vindicated." he has 3000 cavalry and splits them into 3 to surround the much larger army and soon the whole region is getting involved, everyone smells blood. Wusun's army turn up from the west going "aha we meant to lose the happy goats all along!", another kingdom Wuhuan's army turns up from the east around mongolia. I can't be bothered to properly look up who he is but some guy called Ding is leading another army from the north and he's loving it "exuding ecstacy as he faces the prey". the huns are equipped for goat retreival not this and get completely owned, you hate to see it. half their army/male population are knocked out and they are permanently knocked down from a competitor to a threat to china. the happy goats couldn't have been worth it surely. the hun emperor nods his head and goes "well taking the goats back was a good plan, but you know what else is? lets be friends." the hun dude sends the chinese empire a suggestion that he marry into the imperial family so they can be official allies. as i said the chinese emperor at this point is a pretty chill dude (extremely so compared to the war emperor) and he accepts, an extremely landmark agreement considering the preceding decades of total war. but this does remind the chill emperor he needs a new wife. the previous empress was the love of his life from his teen years as a commoner and the new empress is to be the daughter of the woman who killed her and the most powerful man in china. but that... genuinely is a tale for another day
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Jan 12, 2021 18:12
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The chill emperor  Up there with the Yellow Emperor
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Jan 12, 2021 22:03
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Communist Thoughts posted:unfortunately a lot of the happy goats have already been roasted (and something else i dont understand and translates as sheep scorpion but I assume is skinning them) but theres still loads of them left and the huns aren't gonna sit there and watch the Wusun guys herding their happy goats. they're gonna pre-enact Taken but with happy goats gently caress yeah, more Chinese history. I’m just starting to really get into it because of the Han episode of fall of civilizations, and holy moly the dumbass court intrigue is top-tier. the emperor who was afraid to go up his palace stairs because his eunuchs said it would bring bad luck to all of China (and because he’d see all their swank palaces in the valley below)
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Jan 12, 2021 22:16
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Dumb Question: when the emperor was clearly like Maximus Thrax awful, did the senate spend a long time saying "well, he's learned his lesson with that latest massacre?"
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Jan 12, 2021 23:54
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Translating Chinese governing concepts into modern political compassery gets fun pretty fast. "The emperor should just sit still and do as little as possible and people will just kind of elevate to virtue" is a heavy theme of the Mengzi, which also very funnily proposes a Georgist-style single land tax instead of transaction based taxes to best regulate markets (here understood in the much more concrete "the place in a town where people trade things" rather than just the layer of society that does that). A really good one from even older is the death of Lord Shang. Shang Yang was on the opposite end of the political spectrum at the time, being a pioneer of legalism: every thing that happens in a state should have some sort of legal status, and deviations from what is legally prescribed should be harshly punished. A sort of hyper-bureaucratic absolutism. As a set of reforms it mostly worked out well for the Kingdom of Qin in the Warring States Period, since it lead to significantly better legal protections for peasants than in its rival states and was part of how Qin moved from being the rear end end of nowhere state to being the juggernaut of the era (in addition to crippling the nobility, they also did a ton of infrastructure projects). Shang was a man of his very lovely principles, and when the crown prince committed some crime, Shang followed through with the punishments. The ruler was ok with this but when the prince ascended to the throne he immediately ordered the nine exterminations for Shang. Understandably Shang hit the bricks. He found himself begging to be let into an inn to escape captivity, but the innkeeper refused, citing a law that Shang himself had invented: that you cannot let somebody stay at your inn without proper identification. When Shang presented his identification, the innkeeper cited another of Shang's laws, that harboring a fugitive makes you guilty of their crimes as well. So Shang got captured and then executed very brutally. The other most important legalist philosopher, Han Feizi, was from the state of Han and got invited to the state of Qin since the king liked what he heard so much. At court in Qin, he wrote an essay about why Qin shouldn't attack Han. One of Han Feizi's rivals used this as pretext to frame him as dangerously too loyal to the Han and managed to get Han Feizi imprisoned and forced to commit suicide.
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Jan 13, 2021 00:06
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China: Total War: Goat Simulator
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Jan 13, 2021 00:35
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Flavius Aetass posted:I gotta hear what happened to the happy goats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dxMKtFhfu8
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Jan 13, 2021 01:10
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man chinese history is crazy interesting and theres just so much of it. kinda criminal that we barely learn anything about it in school other than "its there" anyways considering how cutthroat court politics seemed to be, just pretending to be sick all the time and never doing anything seems pretty smart to me ngl
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Jan 13, 2021 01:12
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babypolis posted:man chinese history is crazy interesting and theres just so much of it. kinda criminal that we barely learn anything about it in school other than "its there" there's a hamlet-esque story referenced in the i ching where a prince in the court of a tyrant just pretends to be insane until things change and man for a chinese noble circa 3000 years ago i feel that guy
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Jan 13, 2021 01:14
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babypolis posted:man chinese history is crazy interesting and theres just so much of it. kinda criminal that we barely learn anything about it in school other than "its there" https://chinahistorypodcast.libsyn.com/
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Jan 13, 2021 01:47
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No. of seasons 33 No. of episodes 2,513 Hopefully there aren’t any Chinese parents out there who are driven insane by their children asking to listen to the theme song over and over again. Hodgepodge posted:there's a hamlet-esque story referenced in the i ching where a prince in the court of a tyrant just pretends to be insane until things change and man for a chinese noble circa 3000 years ago i feel that guy Claudius did that, and Khrushchev too.
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Jan 13, 2021 01:54
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Speaking of self-coups, there's one Chinese emperor who became emperor when he was 15. But all the power was held by his grandmother, and so when decided he was going to do things his way he found that nobody was obeying his orders and he was almost forced to abdicate on the grounds that he didn't have any children (remember, he was like 16 at the time). But he managed to hang on, and devoted himself to throwing wild parties with other young, ambitious men, and he was able to get them jobs in the middle ranks of the army and the bureaucracy. So after a few years, while all old farts are still taking orders from grandma, all the middle ranks are taking orders from the emperor, and they're the ones that get poo poo done. So the old farts tell the army to stand down, the middle ranks tell them to get moving, and guess what? They listed to the middle men and the martial emperor was back in business.
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Jan 13, 2021 02:34
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It's more because unlike the Greeks Phillip created a true combined arms military (Shock Calvary/pikemen and "special" forces units) 
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Jan 13, 2021 02:54
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sullat posted:There was a coup in Prussia that basically involved a guy buying an officer's uniform from a pawnshop, ordering the local soldiers to lock up the town mayor and open up the town vault for him. Unfortunately the next town over wasn't quite as gullible and arrested him. I know at least in WWII some prisoners managed to escape using the trick of creating Officers uniform since the average Wehrmacht soldier would be too afraid to step up and challenge authority.
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Jan 13, 2021 02:56
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The chill emperor is a cool dude and his approach to power is very interesting. He's made emperor as a young man after being raised among the middle class as the grandson of a rebellious imperial heir (Well, accidental rebel after a comedy of errors involving witchcraft that kills thousands) The dude who makes him emperor is lord Huo, the most powerful man in China and probably one of the most powerful inviduals in history. By this point Huo controls basically the whole civil service of China and almost everyone respects and fears him, everyone else is one of his failsons. After coming up under the War Emperor who ruled for 50 years, loved doing things (no! Bad!) and bankrupted the country and killed poo poo loads of people, Lord Huo really, REALLY wants a pliant young child emperor and he's powerful enough to appoint them so why not go for it. The first Emperor he appoints is not pliant but shockingly dies at 20 years old shortly after they begin to reconcile when Huo's grandaughter Shangguan is married to him as a 12 year old Empress The next guy Huo tries is this young party boy who is totally uninterested in politics. Unfortunately even that party idiot knows that Huo is the biggest threat to him and so begins replacing all of Huos failsons with his own friends. He also publically mocks the anxious 15 year old Empress Dowager Shangguan (Queen mum basically, a VERY senior imperial familial position) Huo takes this ill and now has to come up with a way to legally depose the emperor, this is an intensely delicate situation, any time ANYTHING happens in China at his period thousands of people die and now he's trying to swap out an emperor. It seems like Huo and his conspirators are very aware of this. They draw up articles of impeachment against the emperor. Who has only been in power for 27 days at this point and as reasoning they point to all his crazy partying. Technically this month is the period of mourning for the previous emperor but the party emperor has committed 1,127 sins during this period by drinking, loving, sucking and eating meat. The party emperor realises he's in deep poo poo when he turns up to court and wee Shangguan is sitting on the throne in her full regalia to approve the impeachment. Party emperor is now party Prince and is declared insane and lives in secluded luxury for the rest of his life on the condition that he pop up every year to go "yep still mad, can't take the throne back sorry, heaven says so" otherwise presumably he will have an accident. Huo does some performative crying at court and... there is no megadeath. The transition goes smoothly. This has to be one of the greatest political achievements in history. Incidentally this means his daughter Shangguan is now the 15 year old Grand Empress Dowager. Queen grandmother an inconceivabley senior title and he is HER Grandfather. So he's like imperial dad cubed. The new guy they've chosen is the young man who will become the chill emperor. Hes an unknown from a disgraced branch of the imperial family. Raised in imperial jail then eventually pardoned as a baby (after a dramatic prophecy and armed showdown lol Chinese history rules) he's moved from household to household but has made a nice little life for himself as a sort of itinerant lawyer and things-knower on the side of the farm he owns with his wife. He has privilege but has actually interacted with the real world and peasantry. He also seems to be very smart and knows a lot of the imperial rites nobody expects him to know. They have to make him a Prince first because a commoner can't become emperor and he also has to change his name. When he was a baby he was very sick (maybe he was named in jail for dramas sake?) , and so for good luck he was named "Sickness begone!". Unfortunately it's illegal to use the emperors name in conversation, which means nobody can say sickness or begone. So he changes his name to Xun which I suppose was a less common word and appears to mean To Inquire maybe reflecting his appetite for knowledge or chattiness (the chill emperor is later actually titled the chatty emperor) The chill emperor is extremely aware that Huo deposed one emperor already, however Huo is aware that he just caught lightning in a bottle and he almost certainly can't do that again and avoid another civil war, its unclear if anyone would back this new emperor but there's other people who always look for times to rebel. There's this one Prince I cba to find his name so gonna call him the Dumb Angry Prince who rebels every few years but every time the nobility pretends not to know he was behind it and executes everyone but him and slaps his wrist. Anyway Huo is waiting to see what this Prince does, he doesn't want to try that again. The first thing the chill emperor does is release an edict like "whoa everybody thanks I'm utterly unworthy, lots of rewards to my best friend Huo and rewards for the hard working peasants." He actually declares Huo King or a similarly extremely high rank that gives him some degree of sovereign authority. Huo declines this because his instincts are this is a trap, people already talk about him wanting to take over. So chill emperor releases another edict "Huo is so humble he won't take the title, but I don't know gently caress all about running China so while I learn I give him all the imperial authority. Also peasants get more rewards and look after old ladies please!" Meanwhile in court they're both really getting along, chill emperor is a really amicable and self effacing guy and he keeps giving decorative titles to Huo. Every time Huo comes in he will make a fuss of announcing his full, ever longer title as an ongoing joke between them. He's the perfect emperor, he relinquishes all his authority to the court and every time something bad happens like an earthquake or drought he does these amazing edicts fully apologising for his failures since if he was better heaven would be running smoothly. Every edict also comes with a tax lien or promotion for the peasantry, every tax payer is being promoted yearly so if you're a millet farmer who coughs up you're a Knight or some cool poo poo by now. The people love this guy, when the peasantry like an emperor in this period they report seeing phoenix's as a sign of heavens approval and people are constantly reporting them. Huo is actually getting a little annoyed cause he doesnt believe it. He sends some dudes to check and they report nah there's totally phoenix's. It's possible there is a genuine fancy bird migration from somewhere during this guys rule lol. But something else is bothering Huo, he has all the authority and power but his support in court is dwindling. The more power he has the more toes he treads on, only his many many failsons and failnephews are loyal and they're very fail, and people like chill emperor. Also the emperor keeps virtuously giving away all the taxes to the peasants, Huo has all the power but no money to do anything with and the peasants LOVE the emperor now. Hang on... Is this emperor actually chill? Does he have a certain gleam in his eye. Huo hopes not. Well they're friends at least. As long as nobody goes and kills the love of the emperor's life. Enter: Huo's crazy wife
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Jan 13, 2021 16:37
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Oh my. Storytime ancient history thread is best ancient history thread, please keep Chinese Emperor postin'. (Dumb question: was the Chinese [kingdom? Empire?] structured roughly like a feudal system, or was it a big organization that collected tax and kicked its share upstairs, with regional admin centers, provinces, and some kinda "federal" structure? fake e: please explain the structure of Chinese government at the time in a sentence
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Jan 13, 2021 16:59
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chill emperor sounds like a massive Chad ngl
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Jan 13, 2021 17:14
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i read ahead on wikipedia a bit and i'm excited for a more detailed account
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Jan 13, 2021 17:23
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I'm loving this poo poo. Paradox give us an ancient china game goddamit.
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Jan 13, 2021 17:41
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quote:(after a dramatic prophecy and armed showdown lol Chinese history rules) you know you can't just drop that in there right?
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Jan 13, 2021 17:44
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Nebakenezzer posted:fake e: please explain the structure of Chinese government at the time in a sentence Let a hundred schools of thought contend, let a hundred flowers bloom.
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Jan 13, 2021 17:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:(Dumb question: was the Chinese [kingdom? Empire?] structured roughly like a feudal system, or was it a big organization that collected tax and kicked its share upstairs, with regional admin centers, provinces, and some kinda "federal" structure? Depends on the era! 0th thing to keep in mind - the empire was not continuous, there are multiple periods of disunity. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms that you probably played some anime game about covers one of the more famous ones, but there's quite a few others. 1st thing - the generally unambiguous dynasties are Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Jin, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. These are the ones that are the big ones in the history books, and for nearly all the other things you might see in a dynasty table like "Later Wei" and stuff, can't reasonably be considered imperial dynasties at all. 2nd thing - those first 3 dynasties were definitely not running a federal system. The Xia are only semi-historical so y'know whatever, the Shang didn't leave a ton of records but what we do have indicates they were somewhere between feudal and tributary, and the Zhou we have great records and they were unambiguously a feudal confederacy. During the later parts of the Zhou, the temporal holdings of the family clan didn't even qualify as a significant political power, it was practically like the Vatican. So to actually try to answer your question, for the Qin, Han, Jin, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing, there's generally a civil bureaucracy that notionally handles the collection of taxes, and there's a federal army that is funded/provided in some centrally managed way, and the emperor is the main guy in charge and he appoints the most qualified people to be governors and generals and such. Pragmatically however the society is profoundly inegalitarian, and the bureaucracy tends to be pretty 'light on the ground' - mostly ruling through the cooperation of local notables, which is useful when it means the new governor can roll up to a town and know who to talk to when you want to smack around bandits and less useful when the governor finds themselves not able to exert control over the local big men. Most dynasties have a fairly long period of economic decline during which more power is devolved positions that are less well-checked power wise, which then become hereditary and woops you walked back into feudalism. The end of the Tang is a particularly famous period for this, as the military administration was devolved, and then the civil administration of peripheral areas was merged into the local general's responsibilities creating a "governor-general" (jiedushi) position that ultimately became a de facto independent warlord state up until the Tang completely collapsed. There's a bunch of fun minor complexities - many eras decentralized the administration of coinage, so different parts of the empire would have different, floating currencies relative to each other that were entirely managed locally. Combined with coins basically never being removed from circulation, you could walk into a market where like 20 loving currencies are in use. Two different times the empire completely privatized money, which was a loving disaster.
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Jan 13, 2021 19:42
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a good rule of thumb is that nearly all pre-modern nations were essentially "feudal" in the sense that regional governors controlled their own armies and if they decided to rebel their armies would follow them.
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Jan 13, 2021 20:06
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Hodgepodge posted:you know you can't just drop that in there right? if i can maybe be quick (lol i failed): 20 odd years previously chill emperor's grandad, the war emperor's heir is accused of witchcraft by another minister. that minister is running the anti-witchcraft unit set up by the war emperor who is both frightened of witchcraft and almost certainly doing loads of it himself to become immortal and may have actually that moment been doing sex magic with his hot new wife who claimed to be magical. my interpretation of the witchcraft at this time is its just the native traditions and religions of the area which is vaguely shamanist and its being replaced with an official state ideology but in the meantime everyone still practices it during this period. but the heir is caught with some voodoo dolls (wugu dolls) of the emperor, almost certainly planted there by the witchfinder minister who hates him because of petty drama between them going back years, it may even have been the prince who started this round of bullshit. a cascade of stupid mistakes means thousands and thousands of people die in a massive battle in the capital in which the prince makes many great decisions. ill have to do this justice later, theres so much great stuff wherever you look in this period. anyway the end result is basically the emperor accidentally executing his own heir, and his mother the empress commits suicide for her own major part in the fuckup, after that basically the whole family is killed apart from this one infant baby, grandson of the heir who is henceforth known as The Unrepentant Prince. one guy who knows the wudu doll stuff was all bullshit is a guy called Bing who works at the Prison for Imperial Vassals (roughly the place posh people and members of the family get locked up in). he seems to have ended up with handling the child's legal case though i'm not entirely sure whether theres a defence/prosecution stuff or if he's in charge of all of it. anyway he delays punishing this baby for as long as he can and in the mean time raises the kid in prison with two prisoners acting as surrogate mothers and pays for the kid out of his wages. everyone forgets about the baby, everyone except a sexy up and comer who doesn't like loose ends, mr Huo. (the war emperor seems to have liked Huo a lot and i've seen implications that they may have been loving, theres other sources talking about Huo having sex with dudes so it seems like it may have been common at the time). The chief diviner suddenly gives a warning to the emperor, there is someone plotting to overthrow you and they have the evil aura of that unrepentant prince! Now he might have had nothing to do with this, but the chief diviner is Huo's cousin and he is fully on board the faction that wants to back the new young boy heir who is fully confirmed magic (no i cant get into it right now). so the war emperor doesnt gently caress around and instead of investigating that prison he's just like nah execute every person in all the prisons in the capital, that will sort out the prophecy. one fun note is that the war emperor has by this point has already figured out his son was innocent and gone on a murder & apology tour, but he still does this kinda poo poo, he is 66 and full of potions by this point. lovely old Bing doesn't obey though, and gets his prison to lock up, the emperor tasks someone with taking the prison by force and he resists for two days until he manages to get them to take a message to the emperor saying "hey its your grandkid and this is extremely illegal, heaven hates this poo poo". the war emperor remembers he's already accidentally killed at least one heir and ends up being super greatful. he pledges to make sure the little boy is looked after and then promptly dies before the edict is passed so Bing has to make allies in the imperial harem (the harem is basically the royal family household, its more important and less horny than it sounds though still fairly horny) to find this kid a home. Bing is such a dedicated nice guy freak that even after ending up in the chill emperor's court he never mentions a word of doing any of this and someone else has to tell the emperor when Bing is on his deathbed. Communist Thoughts has issued a correction as of 12:18 on Jun 4, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 20:22
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Tulip posted:Depends on the era! Flavius Aetass posted:a good rule of thumb is that nearly all pre-modern nations were essentially "feudal" in the sense that regional governors controlled their own armies and if they decided to rebel their armies would follow them. Cool, thank you friends Tulip posted:There's a bunch of fun minor complexities - many eras decentralized the administration of coinage, so different parts of the empire would have different, floating currencies relative to each other that were entirely managed locally. Combined with coins basically never being removed from circulation, you could walk into a market where like 20 loving currencies are in use. Two different times the empire completely privatized money, which was a loving disaster. Good lord. Money, like water and sewer is definitely one of those technologies we're lucky we have to think about so little. The complexities of metal money alone could be extremely lovely, but then you have to argue about the worth of the money you are paying with...! Also privatized money! I mean, what the loving gently caress. "Everything is a credit card you pay a percentage for the privilege of using?" Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 01:36 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 21:11
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Oh so a little more fun stuff about Chinese coinage: After a while, silver coins are settled on as the 'of state' money. Other forms of coinage are still made but taxes are paid in silver, so this has a couple of "fun" consequences if you're poor enough that you don't get paid in silver. Copper is the most 'common' in general but iron and zinc coins are also made. You've probably seen coins like this, with a square hole in the center:  The reason for this is kind of neat - Roman etc. coins are made by stamping, so y'know a dude with a stamp and a hammer starts with a little disk and beats it into a coin. China casts their coins instead - pours molten stuff into a bunch of molds. This is dramatically cheaper in labor but does have significantly more material loss, anything you cast will have sprues and those need to get removed and that's not going to be 100% recovered:  So the point of the square hole is so that you can slide a square rod in and then lathe off the sharp crap. This also means that you can string coins together, and it's time to enter hell. By convention, you string 1000 coins together into a single bundle, sort of like how it's conventional that a roll of pennies is 100 pennies. But, stringing together coins is a job done by a person, who expects to be able to eat. And the way that these guys, the qianpu, got paid was that they'd take a few coins off of every string. So if you give them 1000 coins to string, they'll keep 10 of those coins and hand you a string of 1000 coins (that actually has 990 coins). Or it might be 965, or 980, depending on the local prevailing wages for qianpu. If somebody hands you a string of cash, how do you know exactly how many coins it is? By custom of course, just local knowledge. Also the coins weren't very valuable so you'd wind up with this poo poo happening:  Isabella Bird traveled in China in the late 19th century and when she converted her 18 shillings into local currency wound up with 72 pounds of coins.
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Jan 13, 2021 21:41
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Communist Thoughts posted:lovely old Bing 
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Jan 13, 2021 21:47
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When chill emperor has just taken the throne he really leaves it up to Huo and the court to decide everything for him, but there is one thing he demands and it causes a lot of drama. After being moved around a lot as a child he finally gets settled in a nice quiet province with a good teacher who is giving him an appropriate education for a royal family member. He's already surprisingly well educated for a kid with his background so obviously lovely Bing was making sure he could read and to get him books. There is some fun drama here cause his teacher basically becomes a surrogate dad to him, but that teacher is already the adoptive father of his own brothers son. The teacher's brother gave his son to him after the teacher got castrated for a crime (this happens a lot) , but when the teacher meets Xun (xuns original "sickness begone" name is actually Bingye at this point but that just makes it confusing with lovely Bing) he completely loses interest in his adopted son which understandably pisses off his bro. While there Xun falls in love with the daughter of one of the civil servants looking after him, Pingjun, and they get married. They supposedly make a nice life together taking hikes around the countryside and running a farm before he is surprisingly summoned to the capital to replace the party emperor. When he's first made emperor they can't figure out why but he seems so sad and someone asks him and he says he misses Pingjun too much, he can visit her but she's a common law wife not an imperial wife so they raise her family up to high ranking nobility and make her an official wife so she can come stay in the palace. Later, the first proper demand the chill emperor makes is that Pingjun is made his primary wife and Empress. This causes a ruckus. Huo's granddaughter is now Grand Empress Dowager so he's already got a strong familial connection to the throne, but she was married too young (which is supposedly something he points out at the time) and never had any kids (afaik). What the Huo family wants is an imperial heir with direct blood ties. So they want an Empress and as it happens Huo has a young daughter of just the right age. When I say the Huo family wants, I mean Huo's wife wants, Lady Xian, "the lady you notice" maybe. A lot of the women in this period are obviously up to stuff but don't really get fleshed out in the historical record, most of them including Xian we don't even know their actual names. Lady Xian is one of those women in history who is blamed for everything as an example of evil scheming womanhood, its hard to tell how much of it is true. What I guess to be true is that Xian was born common or of very low rank and managed to schmooze her way to a position as Huos primary wife. (though Chinese stories love blaming evil on people with improper breeding so that could be bullshit too) There's a great story that she was a servant who seduced him by dressing up in his wife's clothes, getting into bed and waiting for him to get in then basically flattered him and cried until he had sex with her. Then supposedly she poisons the primary wife to take her place, but either way Huos wife dies and she takes the position. Though Huo is basically running the han empire and the court, he's very much not the boss in his family, Xian is known to turn up unannounced at the Palace and go where she pleases around the harem dressed in fabulously expensive outfits and basically acts like she's queen. She's fully aware that the Huos are running the show and doesn't mind showing it off. Now there's a position for Empress vacant and she has an eligible daughter and she won't shut up about it. Neither will the daughter. The court mostly agrees, the Huo family is very powerful and it'd be good to officially join them to the throne to prevent turmoil, plus Huo has impressed everyone by bloodlessly couping the party emperor and not putting himself on the throne. (he's seen as a hero for not doing this but he did already practically own the court, so there's not much reason for him to go further) But chill emperor puts his foot down and does so in a dramatic way by asking for his sword. I've seen this portrayed as him threatening them, they tell him his wife can't be Empress and he demands they bring him his sword. But I also read a source saying that actually he was doing something quite different. He released an edict asking if people could find the cheap sword he carried as a common man. Anyone who could would be rewarded because despite it being a common sword he is nostalgic and cares for the things from his previous life. This sends the message to everyone that he is not going to give up the things that were dear to him and makes anyone trying to convince him to set aside his wife look like an rear end in a top hat. It's also yet another appeal to the people, this emperor used to be among us. So eventually a compromise is found where his wife Pingjun can be Empress but he also marries Huo and Xians daughter as a high ranking wife just below her. (I'm not sure on what the ranks are at this period, the harem is like a mirror imperial court and has its own ranking system with Empress at the top. The harem has only recently been set up at this period by the war emperor who may also have been the horny emperor) Chill emperor makes a big speech in court about how beautiful and great his new wife Consort Huo is (her actual name is very close to Pingjuns so I'm just gonna call her consort huo) and Huo is fairly happy but Xian is pissed. Remember the awkward teen Grand Empress Dowager Shangguan? Lady Xian sends her to discredit and spy on Empress Pingjun, she can always have her rank retracted and then her daughter becomes Empress. The plan backfires though, the two of them become great friends. Pingjun is older than the Grand Empress Dowager and has run a household herself whereas Shangguan has been royalty since she was 12. Pingjun ends up looking after the young queen grandma and having her round for dinner and becomes an older sister figure. And ill leave it there because I love that little detail and soon things are about to get messy. So I'll leave it with Pingjun teaching the Queen grandma how to make sweets when she's supposed to be being spied on. Communist Thoughts has issued a correction as of 17:15 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 14, 2021 16:45
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sullat posted:Let a hundred schools of thought contend, let a hundred flowers bloom. I have heard this, though I thought only three flowers are known today: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism.
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Jan 14, 2021 17:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:I have heard this, though I thought only three flowers are known today: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. It's a joking reference to this. Speaking of communist thoughts, though, thanks for the summaries, they are very interesting. quote:(I'm not sure on what the ranks are at this period, the harem is like a mirror imperial court and has its own ranking system with Empress at the top. The harem has only recently been set up at this period by the war emperor who may also have been the horny emperor) war emperor is the sex magic emperor, right?
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Jan 14, 2021 20:26
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Communist Thoughts posted:When chill emperor has just taken the throne he really leaves it up to Huo and the court to decide everything for him, but there is one thing he demands and it causes a lot of drama. Its interesting to know that even in China, Livia did it.
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Jan 14, 2021 21:23
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sullat posted:
Yeah though to be fair that is mostly my head canon. Like a lot of emperors of this period he does get into magic to make himself immortal and the exact nature of it I couldn't really tell. But when reading about magic in this period the two types of magic that constantly come up and everyone is worried about are poison magic and love magic. His new wife claims that their son (who goes on to become the emperor but dies at 20) is magical and was in her womb for an extremely long time. She also made an origin story for herself that her hand was fused shut from birth until the emperor kissed it to reveal a jade belt buckle. And at the time of the witchcraft rebellion he is secluded in a pleasure Palace with her. The emperor is also apparently a horny dude and may be having sex with men as well as his large harem. Adding all this together I like to believe the most sensationalist interpretation that this guy was demanding people root out witches while having ritual sex with his witch wife. The more boring interpretation is he's bathing in hot springs and spending time with the new family he likes while drinking stupid potions for immortality, but that's not as fun. As a fun side note coz she probably won't come up again, war emperor likes shagging this new wife but he distrusts her so much that when he makes her son his heir he does so on the condition that she is executed at the same time her son ascends the throne.
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Jan 14, 2021 21:48
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Dalael posted:Its interesting to know that even in China, Livia did it. for a second I thought this was referring to Livia Soprano and, you know what, it still sorta works
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Jan 14, 2021 21:54
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Communist Thoughts posted:her hand was fused shut from birth until the emperor kissed it to reveal a jade belt buckle. that is some real redneck poo poo
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Jan 14, 2021 22:24
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Qin Shih Huang, the Qin Emperor was also searching for immortality. Supposedly he managed to poison himself by drinking mercury, but that might be an urban legend. But later, when Han propogandists were listing the crimes of Qin, one of them was 'searching for immortality'. So officially that sort of thing was not OK.
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Jan 15, 2021 00:12
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I seem to remember reading that when they found his tomb, one of the first indicators that they might have the right place was that the ground was still massively contaminated with mercury. Some quick googling seems to suggest that's true, but I always figured it might just be a bad translation / good story someone made up.
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Jan 15, 2021 00:45
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Communist Thoughts posted:if i can maybe be quick (lol i failed): bing is evidently the superior search engine for lost heirs
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Jan 15, 2021 00:46
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sullat posted:There was a coup in Prussia that basically involved a guy buying an officer's uniform from a pawnshop, ordering the local soldiers to lock up the town mayor and open up the town vault for him. Unfortunately the next town over wasn't quite as gullible and arrested him. Some Nazi prisoners in America tried the same tactic while escaping a POW camp in Texas. They stole uniforms and a truck, then told a nearby farmer that they needed some diesel for military business. The farmer held them captive with a shotgun and called the army demanding to know why the military was trying to expropriate his property. etalian posted:I know at least in WWII some prisoners managed to escape using the trick of creating Officers uniform since the average Wehrmacht soldier would be too afraid to step up and challenge authority. General Bradley and General Montgomery both got held captive as possible spies for failing to answer questions about baseball trivia Chamale has issued a correction as of 01:45 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 01:41
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So I assume that the Harem had byzantine rules for what emperor bastard child had what rank? When you think the Saudi Royal family has something like 25,000 members, it seems like something you want sorted early
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Jan 15, 2021 01:43
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