Beneath the polished throne hides the rotting corpses of countless men. Behind the high palace walls echoes wails of regret and screams of revenge. But these lost souls will never see daylight; for, they are nothing more than sacrifices to the Heavens.
Despite these horrors, men and women still fight to their deaths to enter this cage of bone, knowing very well that those who enter may never find the exit. The promise of wealth and power lures them in. Then the doors snap shut. When lucky, a remain or two may find its way out—a fragmented jade or two bloody teeth—a remembrance that this indeed was history.
If those who lost their lives can hope for rebirth, then those who fell to their demise in the palace are destined for an eternity in hell. But who are they really?
The rustling pages of historical records spell a definite story of black and white. There are but a few who can enter the stage, certain traits that manifest in cycles over and over yet again. The stories told seem near-familiar, mere scripts to follow in the passage of time. The grouping is simple: the wicked and the great. All the rest are cast away. After all, there is simply no space to waste.
True history is multi-faceted, but oftentimes, the stories people are familiar with are not. The factors at play are instead disregarded in favor of clear-cut morals.
Whatever blemishes are wiped clean in the face of the "great," and any contributions are erased in the case of the "wicked." For the "great," fratricide means to right the wrongs, and rape spells an opportunity for the less fortunate. But for the "wicked," any shadow of controversy is magnified until it swallows the actual person for who they were.
The main characters are a man who is widely regarded as one of the worst tyrants in Chinese history and an honorable empress who has been slandered to become an immoral seductress. Here, their supposed sins are weighed under the societal expectations of their times as well as the trial of their experiences.
In my opinion, Emperor Yang of Sui is not a good ruler by any measure. Never would I personally ever want to live during his regime. But at the same time, his actions altered the entire course of Chinese history, paving the way for the much-lauded prosperity of the Tang dynasty. He helped reunite China, constructed the Grand Canal, pushed for meritocracy, and made many contributions to the arts and poetry. During his reign, for the first time, China's map grew to more than a third of its original size, and the population count had reached an all-time high. At the same time, he was a wasteful emperor who didn't care for the wellbeings of his citizens, pushing them well beyond their limits, ultimately overthrown. Nonetheless, his motivations cannot be condensed merely into lust, riches, and power.
This is simply a tale to remind you that history in the face of society is neither black nor white but rather a spectrum of gray. These characters were once living, not as archetypes blindly pursuing their ends in a historical text, but real people struggling between decisions spelling the difference between life and death.
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Crocodile Tears
Historical Fiction"Let us meet again in hell." Before she became the infamous seductress. Before he was the most hated tyrant. Before it all fell apart... Born a curse, she was cast away from the royal family. But when the kingdom needed an alliance, she was the one...
