"A good ruler must rule not just the people but also their hearts."
An efficient emperor rules the minds of people, but a ruler conquers their hearts.
Many years ago, the ancient land of China was under great stress as it had been broken apart and was being ruled separately by conflicting rulers. Like two estranged lovers, northern and southern China needed a ruler who would unite them with one another and make the country whole once again.
Emperor Wen of Sui renewed the vows taken by Northern China and Southern China by reinitiating their marriage, which later gave birth to the Sui Dynasty that governed China for almost four decades. In the thirty-seven years that the Sui Dynasty governed China's people, many momentous decisions were made.
The early end of the Sui Dynasty arrived when the first emperor departed from the world and left his place unattended for his son, who was second in line for the throne. Yang Ti was arrogant, tyrannical, and excessively worldly. During his reign, Yang Ti governed China's people by indulging their minds, building tall structures that appealed to their arrogance, long canals to stroke their ego to beautify China's image in their perspective to keep their loyalty engaged.
The residents of China in that era thought from their heart. They made decisions with the permission of their soul, which is why it didn't take them long to understand that while China was unified, it still lacked completion under the rule of emperor Yang Ti because he too couldn't decipher what it meant to be complete. The lack of compassion and soul with which Yang Ti ruled injected doubt into his followers' hearts. While he improved China's architecture, he lost sight of what mattered: the people who lived within the tall archaic walls that he had constructed.
However, it wasn't China that he cared about. It was the grandeur of governing China that he was in love with. He was obsessed with the power that he had been granted and the decisions he could make through its use. Chinese culture is embedded in spirituality. The people believe in a mandate of heaven, which refers to the divine right to rule. Therefore, when a ruler is selected, the people must obey them as they have been given the divine right to rule directly from the forces governing the earth to rule on their behalf.
Hence, the people who were being governed by Emperor Yang Ti bore with him until they could not bear it any longer. The people knew of a few signs that they could use to identify if the heavens had decided to take away the right to rule from a particular ruler. One of them was flooding. So, just as the people had raised their hands in prayer to the heavens and asked for a solution to their despair, the rivers of China flooded the roads and drowned Yang Ti's empire in distrust.
The people knew that it was now only a matter of time before a new ruler would take over the throne. Thus, when Emperor Yang made the remarkably shortsighted decision to invade and conquer Goguryeo, known as modern-day Korea, all three of his attempts failed, leading to the nation suffering from bankruptcy and bloodshed and the assassination of Emperor Yang by his army general.
China was vulnerable and ripe for the taking. It is then that the Tang Dynasty came into being when Emperor Li Yuan conquered China and began to rule its people and their hearts. The years following the birth of the Tang Dynasty are considered to be a highpoint in Chinese civilization and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture in China.
Li Yuan's reign benefitted China's people. He utilized the learnings of his past successes to transform China into the most powerful nation of the time. The people of China had a special place in their hearts for Li Yuan. He had become their ray of sunlight after a long, dark night that had been the reign of the Sui Dynasty.
He made China great again.
Li Yuan had a family and made the royal palace his home. The Daming palace was the center of the Tang Dynasty government. Its tall walls rose into the horizon, a symbol of Chinese pride and excellency. Each brick had been placed on top of the other with great care and caution, like an abstract painting slowly forming its meaning with each stroke of color. The color palette used to paint the palace hosted vibrant hues of red and orange, revealing the ruler's fiery strength who resided within to anyone who dared to look towards the palace with an unfavorable intention.
The royal palace was built with multiple floors, with a wraparound terrace adorned with rare and colorful flowers planted in the garden surrounding the palace walls. It embodied an outer and inner court, with several layers of halls and pavilions that spread out on the central axis, displaying a traditional outlook of Chinese imperial palaces.
The greater the number of floors in a palace, the richer an emperor was assumed to be, which in China divulged his resources' strength. The number of floors was understood as a sign of the hierarchy that existed in the present government. The topmost floor belonged to the emperor and hosted the evening festivities every night to keep the emperor entertained and satisfied.
Within the royal palace walls resided the emperor's immediate family, such as his wife, children, and hundreds of concubines, who were the greatest source of entertainment for an emperor. These concubines were exceptionally beautiful women who had been trained to present themselves with a blanket of seduction, lust, and desire wrapped around their very persona. They were trained to become perfect, fit for a king, to be precise.
An aura of jealousy arose from within the palace walls, from every room where a concubine lived, laughed, and cried. They had no friends amongst themselves, as each woman was competing with another to win over the latest emperor's heart. The status, wealth, and importance of every concubine depended on the number of nights the emperor visited them, and his wife was expected to be at peace with such norms of the royal family.
While the top most floor was secured for the emperor and his needs, the floor below that was reserved for his wife and children, and the third floor was guarded with great care as that's where his beautiful mistresses rested. The floor situated directly below the third floor was utilized as an office space for the emperor and his government officials, where some of the most momentous decisions would be made regarding the fate of China. The floors built below these four were deemed insignificant, as they were built for other family members of the royal family, friends, and guests from other kingdoms.
The truth about royal families is that they are grounded in lies. Some lies are centuries old and have been carried from one generation onto the next until they become well-guarded secrets. These secrets are preserved in the walls of every palace, present in every room, with the scent of suspicion lingering at every door. Once a secret had been born, it was to be protected at all costs, or the price of disclosing it was paid by innocent inhabitants of the palace.
The servants, laborers, and guards of the royal palace often face a turbulent end. When a secret is revealed or treason committed, the burden of said atrocity is carried by the individual whose life is deemed to be of least value to the rest of the royal family. This means, when a member of the royal family commits a crime, its punishment is not borne by the criminal but by their subordinates, whether they are guilty or not. As wealth, status, and respect define an individual's worth, the royal palace servants were deemed unworthy of being alive when their value was assessed against the disadvantage of punishing a royal family member with death.
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