Nina's Blog - Wednesday 27th August 2025

That had been three months ago.

And of the things that had occurred to him in those intervening three months the most shameful was this: he had come to believe that the Sun Emperor was not, in fact, the Lord of Heaven, the Pillar of the Sky and the Great River of Blessings, but an evil-minded madman whose death had been too long delayed.

It was an awful thought. It was like hating motherhood and raw fish, or objecting to sunlight. Most people develop their social conscience when young, during that brief period between leaving school and deciding that injustice isn’t necessarily all bad, and it was something of a shock to suddenly find one at the age of sixty.

It wasn’t that he was against the Golden Rules. It made sense that a man prone to thieving should have his hands cut off. It prevented him from thieving again and thus tarnishing his soul. A peasant who could not pay his taxes should be executed, in order to prevent him falling into the temptations of slothfulness and public disorder. And since the Empire was created by Heaven as the only true world of human beings, all else outside being a land of ghosts, it was certainly in order to execute those who questioned this state of affairs.

But he felt that it wasn’t right to laugh happily while doing so. It wasn’t pleasant that these things should happen, it was merely necessary.

From somewhere in the distance came the screams. The Emperor was playing chess again. He preferred to use live pieces.

Two Little Wang felt heavy with knowledge. There had been better times. He knew that now. Things hadn’t always been the way they were. Emperors didn’t use to be cruel clowns, around whom it was as safe as mudbanks in the crocodile season. There hadn’t always been a civil war every time an Emperor died. Warlords hadn’t run the country. People had rights as well as duties.

And then one day the succession had been called into question and there was a war and since then it’d never seemed to go right.

Soon, with any luck, the Emperor would die. No doubt a special Hell was being made ready. And there’d be the usual battle, and then there’d be a new Emperor, and if he was very lucky Two Little Wang would be beheaded, which was what tended to happen to people who had risen to high office under a previous incumbent. But that was quite reasonable by modern standards, since it was possible these days to be beheaded for interrupting the Emperor’s thoughts or standing in the wrong place.