The willows by the Sui palace once reflected the splendor of a golden age; the Grand Canal's roaring waters also carried the mournful notes of a fallen kingdom. This epic saga stars Yang Guang, Emperor Yang of Sui. Weaving fact and fiction together, it reveals the bloodstained life of an emperor whose legacy has been debated for millennia.
He was Yang Guang, Prince of Jin, who rode at the head of armies to conquer Southern Chen and reunite China after 280 years of division, his eyes ablaze with the ambition to unite the Hu and Han peoples. He was the emperor of the Daye era, who built the eastern capital and dug the Grand Canal in a decade, using an iron hand to forge a prosperous realm that drew in “half the wealth of the land.” Yet the people's blood and tears soaked the banks of the Tongji Canal. The banners of his three campaigns against Goguryeo blotted out the sun: an expression of his ambition to expand the empire, but also the beginning of the country's exhaustion. Beneath the cold stars and moonlight at Yanmen, where he was besieged, we see both the emperor's panic beneath his majestic bearing and the shadows of an age engulfed in flames of war.
The novel blends in the legendary exploits of figures such as Li Jing and Li Shimin from Heroes of the Sui and Tang, while staying true to the historical course of events, including the conquest of Chen, the rebellion of Yang Xuangan, and the Jiangdu coup. Amid the splendor of imperial achievements, it shows the hardships of ordinary people; within the emperor's statecraft, it glimpses the subtleties of human nature. He is a despot whose great ambition is intertwined with stubborn arrogance, a tyrant guilty in his own age yet credited with achievements for generations to come, and a tragic figure adrift in the torrents of history. When Yuwen Huaji's treacherous blade pierced the palace curtains, Yang Guang's self-mocking decision to burn the manuscript of the Daye Code laid bare an emperor's devotion to his country and family, and the shattering of his dreams.
