A republican-era novel.
The ills of a dynasty in its final years are never limited to one or two things. They are the result of many small problems building up, and it only matters who tears away the last fig leaf. Once they have accumulated enough to bring down a country, everyone within the dynastic system suffers: the beneficiaries, the numb and indifferent, the neutral onlookers, and those who rise up in resistance. There are those who seek reform, and those whose ambitions go unrealized; the clear-eyed and the dull-witted. Regret, then, is not subject to human will. No matter how exceptionally gifted you are, once the blade falls, you are no more than dust in history. Yet willpower is precious. With a heart as strong as iron, one can transcend life itself. If light cannot dispel darkness, a life filled with gloom is no different from that of a mayfly.
Looking back at history, we no longer simply gaze up at the dragon throne. We begin to look down at the land, at the people, at the nameless figures who truly drove history forward. We begin to understand that the pinnacle of civilization is not atop a palace, but in the lights shining through the windows of countless homes. The truth of history is not found in the official historians' records, but in the lives of ordinary people.
We often say we should learn from history, but if this mirror reflects only emperors and not the common people, records only political intrigue and not the lives of ordinary folk, then no matter how clearly it reflects, it cannot show the way forward for civilization. For thousands of years, the rise and fall of dynasties seems to have repeated the same script: one dynasty rises, another falls, over and over, yet civilization has never truly made a leap forward.
Records like the Records of the Grand Historian tell the rise and fall of dynasties from the emperors' point of view, blaming foolish rulers who ruined their countries, treacherous ministers in power, and beautiful women who brought disaster. But who ever asked the people: Are you living well? Do you have the right to speak? Have your hardships been recorded?
Objectively speaking, you shouldn't write Ah Fu to death! But in the last years of the dynasty, everyone will die, but this is a novel, so it would be nice to keep her alive.