Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

The Laurent said:

Song Of Eleven Princes: A Basic Introduction

Accessed 4/13/2788

The Song of Eleven Princes is a series of manuscripts, poems, songs, and plays that have been cataloged and codified by the famed mortal-born artist and cultivator, Fai Lin, who later took up the name by adoption of Ling Lin. It tells the story of the dying days of the Third Dynasty, and the rise of the Fourth, though the tales selected and their presentation have obvious biases that are the subject even to this day of a great deal of controversy. It begins with the "Spring in Fall" Cycle, which outlined the ascension to the ducal seat of Cai Renxiang, the travails of the small baronial Lo family near the Golden whose scion would become the Bandit King and Hero of Mortals Lo Tzu, the splits among the Zheng, and sundry other difficulties which make it an era of great fascination to both writers and poets alike.

It then covered the rise of several rebellions in the 303rd year of the reign of the last ruler of the Mu Dynasty, the revelation of deep spiritual corruption in the heart of the Imperial Capital, and the chaos that followed.

To note for the historical rather than the literary record, what followed was a series of conflicts and wars lasting 148 years, made all the more brutal by the new techniques of war and peace, including the Xuan Land Battleships, the creation of the Red Flower Path which increased greatly the number of low-level Cultivators who could become part of the army, and several key advancements of the Art beyond the scope of this introduction.

It ended in the ascension of the Cai Dynasty, the rise of the Ducal Lings, the underground settling of Zhengism as an ideology whose anti-imperial and communal roots would grow and shift to become vital in the much later Period of Two Republics, and would be the last such civil war before the dawn of the modern age. It would also be a herald to new ways of warfare and society that shaped and defined the next few thousand years.

The Song of the Eleven Princes is one of three famed treatments of the era, the other two being a pro-Lo Tzu cycle Romance of Burnt Banners that remained incomplete after his death at the Battle of Five Dragons And Six Armies, and a pro-Jin work known as the Saga of Sharpened Blades. Ironically, considering the extent to which the Saga of Sharpened Blades portrays her as one of its arch-villains, Duchess Ling prevailed upon Cai Renxiang to leave it unbanned. While the differing cycles agree on a number of fundamental facts, their diverging opinions make them a fascinating subject in contrast. Indeed, the only major overlap is that both exalt the deeds of Gan Guangli, later to become a much-honored Great Spirit.

As a whole, the story is fantastical but the details exacting, and the rise and fall of great Princes and dangerous enemies make it a staple of Celestial storytelling to this day. The author who brought it together predicted and defined the new order even in its early days, while sharply pointing at the old order. Often in works deriving from these cycles, there are names, almost like of a Domain, given to certain events as a signpost for imagining and reimagining the content.

Thus writers speak of the March of the Land Battleships, and decades later the eventual act of the Xuan turning in the last two decades of the civil strife towards an alliance with the Cai. In the Songs, at least, this is portrayed as a brilliant innovation, even if it is at least initially turned partially against the ambitions of the Cai.

The Flight of Bai Meizhen, treated three different ways in each of the sagas, gives differing glimpses as to the nature of the establishment of the "Emerald Bai" and the eventual reconquest and alliance that would be known to history as the Cai-Bai-Xuan Alliance. In Songs, the emotional content is emphasized, as is the internal politics to an extent ignored by the other two cycles, especially in Banner. It is only in Songs that scholars can learn the otherwise half-forgotten fact that the ties involved were as much ones of old friendship as political scheming, and understand the complex dance of the Ultra-Conservative Meizhen Loyalists standing with her against the Bai Reformists in the matter of her children.

It is only largely in Banner and Songs that we can see the rise of Zhengism as a significant factor, with both treating it seriously though in very different ways. Banner emphasizes the old ties to the Zheng family, while Song emphasizes, likely under the encouragement of the Ling Clan, the communal aspect of this call for devolution of authority and Cultivation alike, and other proposals rooted deeply in a number of ideals of the past and yet creating something new whose influence, while crushed by both Lo Tzu and the Dragon Army, would resurge in the centuries to come.

It is only in Songs that we can understand the Field of Frozen Dreams outside Xiangman. The now nameless Traitor City's assault upon the heart of the Cai, at a moment of hopelessness during the Year of Sixty-Six White Flowers, is often given relatively short mention, as the victory of the desperate last stand left it seemingly irrelevent to the cycles of the Jin except for a bitter comment on Sagas about the 2nd White Ling. But in Songs it is one of the most moving and deeply controversial sections of the work, most of all for how it, in contradiction to the mores of the time, sees something almost tragic in Ling Biyu's desperate ascension from the peak of the 7th Realm into the 8th, done to save her sister during the last desperate days of the campaign. "She made a choice/and in choosing was chosen/And in choosing, always there are things Lost" so one poem in the cycle goes.

It is also one of the most complimentary, nuanced, and complete takes on the Red Flower Path one has from the time, as the Banners was left incomplete.

For those who wonder what the Red Flower Path is, as its name has changed several times between now and then, it is not like the Yellow Flower Oath named for it, which is seen even by some non-traditionalists to this day as a severe warping of the Way. Instead, it is a set of techniques that can bring almost anyone of adult or near-adult age from mortality to the first stage of Red and Gold in almost precisely a year. It can also do so quite cheaply, relative to how difficult it would be to raise someone of modest or near-nonexistent talent and skill to the rank. Initially dismissed as at least partially irrelevant, Lo Tzu, the Bandit King who came from the sandy wastes with great power, found that a combination of this and a year or two of regular training could create vast armies of modest quality but exceptional quantity, and free up resources and people for creating elite units and concentrating powerful Cultivators. The technique encouraged his early growth, until its adoption first by the Cai, and later and far more reluctantly by the other major 'Princes' neutralized its advantages and restored the bloody stalemate of the middle decades of the period.

However, it is in Songs that we see explored feelingly the emotional and practical uses of the Red Flower Path, the way that it could expand the health and well-being of artisans, workers and more, and the way that--especially as given out nigh-universally in the capital--it transformed Cai society and helped secure the true foundation, more than any one or even four White Cultivators, of eventual Cai victory.

Of all of this, writing nearly a century later, Ling Lin merely writes, "It is triumph that defines these things, and the strongest links can be shattered if the other links are weak."

One could find a thousand such transcendent lines and moments in the Songs, and though the end is one that all three agree on, that eleven Princess became one Empress, the stories emphasize the fact that the Way is never fixed aned never set and never able to be predicted, and that change is constant and ends never permanent.

As a work of literature, as a guide to one's Way, as a scholarly source, and indeed as a fun read, this site will hope to introduce you to the genre that is the Song of Eleven Princes, with this introduction merely being a teaser.

For a review of the translations of the Songs of Eleven Princes, see here

For competing historical analysis of the first Duchess Ling and recent scholarly revaluation, see here.

For information on Lo Tzu and his own Romance of Burnt Banners, left incomplete by his court poet after his death, see here.

For an evaluation of the Sagas of the Jin-faction, see our sister site here.




A/N: (First note, this was written early in Turn 17, and though I modified it I'm keeping stuff involving the Mu vague and not addressing whatever Jiao has really told us about the new Empress.)

Not sure whether this will go on, but it's just an imagined far-distant look back on what's already a far-distant future. It was fun thinking of things that could go completely bananas, though I do wanna keep some mystery about what is what in terms of a lot of this being just… an internet website's brief attempt to get people hyped up for an ancient (possibly foreign-language) cycle.

It is absolutely a take on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, complete with the Saga portraying Cai Renxiang a lot like Cao Coa, and the Romance absolutely being a hyped-up Liu Bei comparison.

It's something of a tragedy, since it's hard to imagine Ling Qi wanting to take part in a massive civil war, and she does all sorts of things that can be easily portrayed in the other two as horrific. It is how life is, Ren's mother never imagined who she would become, not fully, but at the end of a long winter, a new spring begins. New techniques are created that might transform both warfare and peacetime (automation, the Red Flower Path becoming a political football over the next few thousand years similar to healthcare in a sense), and the future is not merely a recreation of the past.

Everyone loves Gan Guangli though, there's not a single account that doesn't at least respect him.

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Doramas said:

To subtly alter the construction plans so the workers go just a bit deeper than it's safe and other small mistakes speaks of a detailed knowledge of said plans and the ability to modify them without the changes being noticed by other people reviewing them.

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TedBear said:

We have a n Indigo and a Violet spook providing oversight. To have infiltrators slip past that would be exceptional. That's not the sort of thing Shu Yue is going to let slide as a "test".

I think it's far more likely that some inside imperial faction is messing with things, using their official position as cover.

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