Northern Song. The country is mired in poverty and weakness, while tensions between the old and new factions have long been simmering beneath the surface. Under the banner of “the laws of our ancestors,” the Old Party wages a fierce struggle, claiming that scholar-officials should rule the realm alongside the emperor, not alongside the common people.
The Luo, Shuo, and Shu factions stand opposed to one another, while scholar-officials proudly style themselves the rulers of the realm, though they are its very undoing. Scholars have become armchair generals, and smooth-tongued flatterers have become knife-wielding schemers. Court rivalries never cease for a single day, and the people’s suffering is worse than a tiger’s.
When the new laws are enforced, the people suffer. When the new laws are abolished, the people suffer. The nation sinks amid the court’s quarrels over honor, stumbling forward through a gamble written in blood. The wager is the realm itself.
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