Emperors Huizong and Qinzong, Which One Is My Dad?

I was born into the bitter cold of Wuguo City.

Emperor Huizong taught me to play the qin and paint; Emperor Qinzong told me of Bianliang’s splendor. But the contemptuous looks of the Jin guards constantly reminded me that I was merely a “bastard,” born to a maidservant, with impure blood.

I drifted between taverns and gambling dens, held beautiful women in my arms, and called myself an imperial scion, yet everyone despised and reviled me.

A brutal beating finally brought me to my senses. In the snow, my frozen fingers touched a lost Khitan shamanic scroll.

For ten years I bided my time. I used music to control people’s hearts, paintings and calligraphy to pass secret messages, gambling to lay deadly traps, and banquets to turn the court upside down.

The Jin nobles had no idea that the seemingly carefree libertine had already brought the whole empire under his thumb.

When the Southern Song envoy mocked my bloodline, I smiled and wrote beside Huizong’s own work: “By Heaven’s mandate, I ascend the throne; all lands return as one.”

Beneath Lin’an’s walls, a million cavalrymen stood silent as mountains. I looked down at the prostrate Song emperor and said:

“Call me Father.”