The people who have that are mainly family members to the Emperor though, uncles and brothers and un-favored children. And they would not be allowed to (openly) raise a personal army that has a remote chance of challenging the army commanded by the central government. Plus, people with this level of power would hardly be motivated by upward social mobility in general; they would more be interested in personal power grabs.
Also, provincial peasants would need as strong a motivation as other peasants to go to war, because they would die, and that kind of loyalty isn’t given to someone that just happens to be your governor.
The victor writes history, true for all uprisings everywhere. Yet until the uprising succeeds, the current ruler is still the Chosen One, and their would be significant psychological resistance to the idea of fighting against them, especially if the leader of the uprising is not a member of the Imperial family and doesn’t having even a oblique claim to the right to rule.
A non-peasant uprising led by a non-Imperial through provincial forces certainly is possible (looks at 安史之乱), but it would require some very specific conditions.
If this is the genuine leader of the rebels and not a front put up by a puppetmaster, this is definitely going to be a peasant uprising. No local governor would be able to bully a family at the higher levels of society.
I’m not saying they wouldn’t, but if you were already their governor it would be easier to coerce them through various means into supporting you. Bullying, promises of better treatment, or simply knowing them or their leaders well enough to know the right things to say.
It’s true that the rebels are not the kind of people who would individually have great numbers of men-at-arms and militia at their disposal, but they are described as ‘major camps’, and together a bunch of wealthy merchants who can finance a rebellion, the lower-level officials who are probably the closest to the people, and some scholars to help the logistics of it all could conceivably get together a force sufficient for an uprising.
That wasn’t so much something I thought that would be in favor of rebel forces, I was just using it to lead into the below point that in the case of a rebellion that was not a popular peasant uprising, the unaffected remainder of the common folk would not really have any change in their situation one way or another. At the end of the day, for them, there will just be another distant ruler with just as much legitimacy as the last one.
As for the point that the current ruler is the Chosen One, I don’t think it would have the psychological effect that you state. There’s obviously the trepidation of engaging in an uprising in the first place, but the Mandate of Heaven was less like some kind of blessing that would give any kind of special favor to its holder but rather just a mechanism to give any ruler who happened to be on the throne an explanation for his right to rule.
Of course, looking at the character description of the rebel leader, it does look like the more typical kind of rebellion, but I thought it would be interesting to give some thought to other ways to set up a rebellion than appealing directly to some disaffected general populace. It’s definitely more morally ambiguous as in that case you don’t have the easy excuse of being treated badly by the current ruler. After all, rebellions commonly have more than one leader, and different leaders can have different ways of amassing support.
That’s a new concept to me; could you provide a link or historical example to help explain it?
It was a deep-rooted and widely-believed propaganda that literally claimed that the Emperor was the Son of Heaven. Considering that ancient people were much more superstitious and religious than the current populace, rising against the Emperor would be the medieval European equivalent of denouncing Jesus at the height of the Church’s power.
It definitely had an effect, or it wouldn’t have been passed down through so many different rulers and dynasties.
In this setting, though, if there wasn’t a clearly established alpha supported by all factions of the rebellion then they would likely start backstabbing each other for the throne, either before or after they win. New rulers can and will kill off their surviving allies and right-hand people to solidify their own authority, as shown by history.
Actually, that was a quote from ohmyvalar’s earlier post. ‘Camp’ just means the supporters of a particular cause, so since both ‘major camps’ or major driving forces of the uprising do not seem to have a populist agenda, it made me consider that perhaps this would be one of those rebellions that did not make use of the common majority.
It had an effect, but I think you are misunderstanding that effect. The first thing to understand is that the concept of the Mandate included an inherent allowance for overthrowing the current Emperor. The Emperor was not special or infallible and the Mandate granted him no special powers. Son of Heaven was a title bestowed on him, but in effect it was more like a government post that he could be removed from, which is in keeping with certain Chinese views of heaven as resembling a governmental system. It was not the same as the Western concepts of Jesus being the Son of God or kings having a divine right to rule, although they may sound similar.
Additionally, Chinese concepts of heaven and gods were not the same as the Christian views that led to the formation of the similar concept of divine right to rule in Europe. Chinese religion stemmed from many sources, and one of these was Chinese mythology, where deities and divine beings could make mistakes, fail and die or be defeated. The key point is that Heaven, as a whole, was not perfect, so the Mandate also did not mean that the person who currently held it was as well. On the other hand, the European divine right of kings was bestowed upon kings by an infallible Heaven, which is why European kings often claimed to be infallible and limited only by their own will, even if in practice this was not always true.
Therefore, the Mandate was more of a political tradition that, if an Emperor could believably claim to possess, would strengthen his claim, but it was nowhere near the absolute divine authority you are describing. In fact, there were times where the current dynasty’s possession of the Mandate was openly argued and debated in the Emperor’s court, like a piece of government policy.
Well, I wasn’t saying that couldn’t happen. So I don’t see how that is a counter to the point of mine you quoted.
Why not use the traditional character for dragon? It’s more aesthetically appealing and would work better within the context of the story in my opinion.
Well, yes, calling it “absolute” divine authority may be a bit much.
I am aware of the shape of Chinese mythology, though the “Heaven” they referred to was more a fate/will of the universe thing stemming from early Confucianism rather than a god or pantheon. The then rulers realized how useful it was for brainwashing, modified it a bit, and adopted it as their national “religion”. All the deities and Heavenly Court stuff was later born out of a mixing of Taoism and storytelling.
Yes, it didn’t give the emperor any special powers. The only thing it did was grant him absolute authority to rule under the dominant school of thought, and deference to authority is a very strong impulse among ancient Chinese people (it can still be observed somewhat in our culture) and especially the uneducated. This is what I originally meant by the psychological effect. Sorry about the miscommunication and not-quite-fitting metaphors.
I’d say the emperor’s authority was more absolute than the western king’s divine right to rule, since a king would need to appease the church, while under this system the emperor is technically heaven’s chief agent and spokesperson. I agree that it was an appointed position, but since it was appointed by the nebulous 'Heaven‘ mortals didn’t really have the right to arbitrarily un-appoint him. One could argue that the current ruler had fallen out of favor by portraying natural disasters as “Heaven” directly showing its displeasure, but the very fact that they are arguing a concept this meta in court is proof of its power. The political players and anyone with a brain probably only paid lip service and didn’t really believe a lick of it, but it was effective at preventing ordinary people from questioning the ruler’s regime.
True, the Emperor was appointed by a nebulous Heaven, but he could be un-appointed simply by being overthrown, and the appointment itself wouldn’t give him any particular resistance to being overthrown he didn’t already have. So, actually, anyone has the right to un-appoint him, or at least attempt to do so.
In theory the Emperor may have had a more absolute approval of heaven, but the fact that the Chinese version of it was as a concept less absolute than the Western version coupled with the fact that the Western kings often had ways of ignoring or convincing the Church to come around to their way of thinking means that the psychological resistance to actually overthrowing the ruler was probably stronger in most Western kingdoms.
I don’t think that the Mandate was really a large element in preventing ordinary people from questioning the ruler’s regime. Rather, the Mandate was the ruler’s way of legitimizing the control he already had over the masses in a political sense, but to the masses themselves it was probably more the ruler’s temporal power and their own submissiveness (that you yourself mentioned) due to various factors such as low levels of education and other psychological elements that allowed him control over them. Therefore, the barrier to getting common folk to participate in an uprising would be to convince them that they could make a stand against the temporal power of the Emperor, which is an altogether less intimidating prospect than facing the power of heaven. The aforementioned submissiveness would also make the ordinary people more likely to obey their officials and governors directly above them on totem pole motivating them to rebel than a nebulous fear of the mostly-distant Emperor would in the opposite direction.
The fact that they could argue the concept in court is, in my view, a sign that it was not actually a major part of the Emperor’s actual power, since he had already established control and was not worried that discussion of whether or not he had the Mandate would affect his overall control greatly, only being a matter of how legitimate that control was, a distinction that probably also would not have great meaning to the relatively uneducated majority of the population.
I would contend, though, that the submissiveness and deference to authority you mention and that I agree was present was not in fact a distinguishing feature of the Chinese but rather a feature of humanity in general. It may be less obvious in other societies because they have more outspoken people and, at present at least, governments more willing to let them speak out against established systems, but the majority of humanity, no matter where it is, has for most of history been quite amenable to simply go along with whatever people higher than them told them to do, regardless of ethnicity.
Hmm, you’re right. I retained the foreign name to highlight her ethnicity, but since the same logic applies to a foreign Empress… Thanks for the advice! I’ll just add her background in her intro scene!
Nice prologue! There aren’t too many political intrigue games around, or games based on a more eastern setting. It’s a great start to a very exciting sounding game. I can’t wait for more! Bravo!
@Anni_Zhang & @FabricSeat thank u for your illuminating debate and suggestions! Whew that took some time to read, but I’ll definitely keep your ideas in mind on moving forward, esp about the Uprising origins!
No problem. Not that the simplified character is bad, but the traditional character does look nicer. The title looks nicer in my opinion due to the substitution.
That said, the simplified character can be used in a more modern setting while the traditional one can be used to try and harken to the past, which seems like what you’re trying to do.
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