me

whysofork come here....

i do

i was literally thinking of you like 2 seconds ago hi

sits down

ok so today's story is about 周公 aka roughly translated to Duke of Zhou he's a Cool Dude

/sits

once upon a time in china there was this kingdom called Shang 商 it started off as a pretty okay kingdom for its time (~1000BC)

but then as all dynastic kingdoms go the futher down you go on the imperial line successive emperors got more and more shitty until the last guy called King Zhou (pronounced differently from Duke of Zhou)

he's an Asshole and didn't pay attention to governance and tortured people for fun

so there was this smaller kingdom that paid tribute to Shang called Zhou and it was ruled by this guy called King Wen of Zhou

and he takes a look at the state of the Shang capital and goes, 'this sucks.'

'this country is run by a tyrant who is an Ass why do we have to listen to him and give him stuff as tribute every year??'

and his sons are like 'yeah this sucks!! dad we should do something about it'

so King Wen and his sons (of which the first 3 are the most notable) decide to start an uprising and they did it first by pacifying the smaller tribes around them. bear in mind its like 1000 BC

so its still mostly a tribal society with the larger tribes becoming more like kingdoms, that kind of evolution

except King Wen died before they could conquer proper so his sons had to take over

the oldest son also died, possibly at the hands of the Shang king, so the second son took over and became King Wu of Zhou

and he conquered all the way up to the Shang capital like a hero of justice etc etc

now the third son, aka Duke of Zhou (our main guy) is really chill and he helped his elder bro run the army as a strategist

he's a smart guy but most importantly he's a nice guy, once King Wu finished putting an end to the Shang king's antics, our Duke takes a look at the land still with smoke rising up on it and was like

'aniki i know we jsut finished a war but we cant stop now we have all these people to look after'

so he starts drafting laws and other important things.... and they would have put it up together if not for the fact that King Wu also died (probably from exhaustion)

obviously he goes shit because Wu's kid, Cheng, is like 5 years old and looking at all the other generals they're probably gonna seize power

to prevent that he pre-emptively annouced himself as regent and started unifying most of 1000BC china

he also wrote the I Ching and established the mandate of heaven etc etc

here's his wiki page if you wanna read about him

anyway so he took care of ruling stuff until Cheng came of age and what's really notable of him is that he just handed over the reins without any riffraff

in china, struggles for power are really common so this is proof that Duke is a really chill guy

--I did not know that he's the one that my parents mean when they say to talk to zhou-gong (i.e. to dream)

then he retired and he WENT TO MY HOMETOWN AND SETTLED DOWN AND BASICALLY ACTED AS A COUNTRYSIDE JUDGE like a cool guy

storywise yeah, it's him. xD

he's known in china as a really wise dude and he's semi-deified as a spirit that people sometimes pray to

he lives in my hometown i just wanted to share this cool thing

that is hella rad

hes hella rad if you consider the time period he lived in

that's super cool

omg he sounds so rad??

casually hands over rule

so my question fgo servant when

writes mandate of heaven

i remember studying the mandate of heaven back in uni...

OMG, a younger prince that did not stab and cheat his way through succession, even after being named regent!? /claps hands

(Also this is a wonderful retelling of the fall of the Shang dynasty, lol )

IIRC they didn't kill the Shang king, but threw him into jail?

Vyndasia BASICALLY LMFAO I am waiting..... saber Duke pls

I care So Much about my homeland hero

whysofork handing over power just like that is really rare in Chinese history so it marks him out as a really wise guy

Fanfictionming ISNT DUKE WONDERFUL.....

I took inspiration from the historyofjapan meme.... like a true memer

Shang king set his palace on fire and died inside it

this is also why the earliest historical records of China are from the Zhou dynasty cos Shang King was an asshole and burned everything written before that

Ohhhh so Shang king is the guy with Daji.

- yeah I was gonna talk about that too

....then older bro...yikes. I read a story once that he had a very bad end and poor dad had to fake how he felt about it.

Shang King had his favourite concubine called Daji who was pretty but also manipulative

legends paint her as a fox spirit or some sort of 妖女 (female demon) but it's likely that she was just super savvy just in the wrong way

Hahaha I like the fantasy story that's based on this. I can't remember the name but it's one of those Chinese epics.

YEAH... wartime is hard. it's like a trend that the Zhou dynasty family had the second son inherit the throne because the first son died of various reasons

I think it was 封神演义

there was an anime about it that aired when I was a kid, I loved it

Neeeeeeat owo

I wanna tell more stories when I can

i enjoy your story plurks deeply

I keep forgetting my folk tales this is punishment for becoming a gaijin...... I need to read them again

thank you

read them all and tell us