How do you gain political power by having more concubines then? You get concubines BECAUSE you're the emperor. You don't become an emperor just because you had the most concubines. Today's elites have mistresses BECAUSE they're rich and influential.
Comparing concubinage to human trafficking makes sense as comparing working to prostitution. And especially viewing the past with modern morality is about as braindead as you can get. Intrigue between concubines is a feature of polygamy, not a bug. There are upsides and downsides to everything, and in polygamy's case there are more heirs so that in any event the emperor's lineage will continue, but the downside is there will be fierce competition between the heirs and their mothers.
Wealthy men had concubines, not just nobles. A rich merchant will certainly have concubines. A poor noble won't have concubines, since he can't support them. Wealth and power decided how many concubines you could have. It can certainly be said that having too many concubines lead to emperors indulging themselves rather than ruling, leading to more power to the ambitious nobles and court officials, which made the government weaker overtime, thus leading to a revolution.
"i don't understand how political marriages help solidify and gain you political power" see this is why you're a joke. The emperor doesn't naturally have all the power in china; aside from qin shihuang, that evil (but very efficient, and also history forced his hand in a lot of cases) bastard. The emperor is jostling with the lords beneath him, the ministers and scholars of the time, and with external entities/nations (cough cough other states laying claim to the title "china" especially). The very key example you brought up, nomadic peoples offering political marriage, is a way for the emperor to gain power by demonstrating ties and links to the nomadic people in question, just as they gain power amongst their neighbors by demonstrating they have ties to the empire, and can sway his opinion on the margins, should said neighbors try anything funny.
Yes, you have to have quite a bit of power before you can start pulling it off, but you're naive to think that it doesn't snowball like, say, capital does.
concubinage to human trafficking is like comparing work to prostitution
we can understand that at the time, this was their best solution to problems with poor solutions, and also understand that we've DEVELOPED PAST THAT POINT, SO MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T CONSIDER IT ANYMORE. and/or MAYBE WE CAN SPEEDRUN GETTING PAST THAT POINT.
yes, and this feature is fucking bad. what is cutthroat competition within a family supposed to achieve, everyone fucking dying miserably? sons killing each other, men casually going henry the 8th? "more heirs" is nice and all but if you're gonna have a succession crisis anyways it frequently doesn't matter? (not to mention the rapid expansion of court politicking to literally the entirety of the state, in every aspect, whenever this succession crisis does hit)
these most frequently took the form of major landlords, last i checked? AKA on the level of a minor european noble but with a different spread of privileges? (not to mention privileges from being of the intellectual class, usually.) AKA the primary cause of landholding concentration （土地兼并） leading to either forcible redistribution by the emperor or a peasant revolution or the latter followed by the former? And even then their harems are only not considering status insofar as the person can afford to ignore status, AKA insofar as the person is ignoring politics.
"i don't understand how political marriages help solidify and gain you political power" see this is why you're a joke. The emperor doesn't naturally have all the power in china; aside from qin shihuang, that evil (but very efficient, and also history forced his hand in a lot of cases) bastard. The emperor is jostling with the lords beneath him, the ministers and scholars of the time, and with external entities/nations (cough cough other states laying claim to the title "china" especially). The very key example you brought up, nomadic peoples offering political marriage, is a way for the emperor to gain power by demonstrating ties and links to the nomadic people in question, just as they gain power amongst their neighbors by demonstrating they have ties to the empire, and can sway his opinion on the margins, should said neighbors try anything funny.
Yes, you have to have quite a bit of power before you can start pulling it off, but you're naive to think that it doesn't snowball like, say, capital does.
we got a monarchist level of feudal reactionism. "bumbling" around with this kind of rose-tinted view, lol.
we can understand that at the time, this was their best solution to problems with poor solutions, and also understand that we've DEVELOPED PAST THAT POINT, SO MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T CONSIDER IT ANYMORE. and/or MAYBE WE CAN SPEEDRUN GETTING PAST THAT POINT.
yes, and this feature is fucking bad. what is cutthroat competition within a family supposed to achieve, everyone fucking dying miserably? sons killing each other, men casually going henry the 8th? "more heirs" is nice and all but if you're gonna have a succession crisis anyways it frequently doesn't matter? (not to mention the rapid expansion of court politicking to literally the entirety of the state, in every aspect, whenever this succession crisis does hit)
these most frequently took the form of major landlords, last i checked? AKA on the level of a minor european noble but with a different spread of privileges? (not to mention privileges from being of the intellectual class, usually.) AKA the primary cause of landholding concentration （土地兼并） leading to either forcible redistribution by the emperor or a peasant revolution or the latter followed by the former? And even then their harems are only not considering status insofar as the person can afford to ignore status, AKA insofar as the person is ignoring politics.
A socialist calling anyone anything is not taken seriously, friend . You get political marriages BECAUSE you're already political powerful. No self-respecting political leader is going to marry his daughter with someone with no status. The emperor gets his power by being born into the leading dynasty. That's the whole point of monarchy.
The Chinese viewed the nomadic people as barbarians. Why would the emperor tie his authority to his marriage with a barbarian? The marriage between the sedentary and the nomadic was most of the time a peace token. The emperor would only marry a barbarian if the tribe was POWERFUL. If it was a tribe that wasn't the strongest, why would the emperor marry? You have it backwards, then call ME the joke? Marriage ties with the Emperor of China doesn't mean anything to the nomads, if you don't have enough influence and military to dominate other tribes. Once again, they initiate these marriages BECAUSE they're powerful.
My whole point is that you must have power IN THE FIRST PLACE to have concubines, yet you argue with me? You even agree with me that you have to have power.
Socialists like to twist meaning of words to make their arguments better. That's what you were doing, so I mocked you.
Who's advocating for concubines in the modern world again? You're whining about concubinage in a manga about medieval fantasy setting. Is conflating reality with fiction your hobby?
The family bickering resulted in the most resourceful inheriting the throne, in theory anyway. It lead to the the emperor's child inheriting the throne in one way or another.
If you're a major landholder, you're already a noble. I meant merchants, but you didn't take the hint. You're a wealthy merchant. You see a beautiful courtesan. You buy her contract. Now she is your concubine. Simple as.
Yeah, how dare I... ascribe meaning to the words people say? But no, I'm sure that the dude whose profile pic is Trump in a fucking fascist uniformtotally isn't being sexist when he says "we should go back to how the ancient Greeks treated women, i.e. as literally the root of all evil". Jesus Christ, you're as dull and ignorant as you are hypocritical.
Anyways, he and I have history, but not in this thread
Yeah, no shit, you stalker. Fuck off, and quit projecting your own horrible personality on everyone you talk to while you're at it. If your response to all disagreement is to scream "bAd FaItH!!1!", guess what? You're the bad-faith actor.
A socialist calling anyone anything is not taken seriously, friend . You get political marriages BECAUSE you're already political powerful. No self-respecting political leader is going to marry his daughter with someone with no status. The emperor gets his power by being born into the leading dynasty. That's the whole point of monarchy.
The Chinese viewed the nomadic people as barbarians. Why would the emperor tie his authority to his marriage with a barbarian? The marriage between the sedentary and the nomadic was most of the time a peace token. The emperor would only marry a barbarian if the tribe was POWERFUL. If it was a tribe that wasn't the strongest, why would the emperor marry? You have it backwards, then call ME the joke? Marriage ties with the Emperor of China doesn't mean anything to the nomads, if you don't have enough influence and military to dominate other tribes. Once again, they initiate these marriages BECAUSE they're powerful.
My whole point is that you must have power IN THE FIRST PLACE to have concubines, yet you argue with me? You even agree with me that you have to have power.
Socialists like to twist meaning of words to make their arguments better. That's what you were doing, so I mocked you.
Who's advocating for concubines in the modern world again? You're whining about concubinage in a manga about medieval fantasy setting. Is conflating reality with fiction your hobby?
The family bickering resulted in the most resourceful inheriting the throne, in theory anyway. It lead to the the emperor's child inheriting the throne in one way or another.
If you're a major landholder, you're already a noble. I meant merchants, but you didn't take the hint. You're a wealthy merchant. You see a beautiful courtesan. You buy her contract. Now she is your concubine. Simple as.
that you bother trying to stop me, means you do care at least a little, mr. "i totally fail to understand power relations but also totally know how class works." Otherwise you wouldn't try to stop me more than once. It'd be a waste of time.
there wasn't a major fucking merchant class, but there was a major non-"noble" landowning class, until like the fucking song dynasty. And even then its power and influence paled in comparison to the intellectual class until late qing/chinese republic
formal authority vs real authority; being able to say "lol you can't go influence the tribe to work against me cuz i can coordinate with them, speaking of which, i can advise them to fuck around with you" IS POWER YOU NUMBNUT
and as for the tribe, you don't have to be the most powerful, you only have to be close enough and powerful enough, i.e. top two or top three and not overwhelmingly dominated (in fact, being the MOST powerful sometimes works AGAINST a political marriage because the other side thinks you can't be controlled well enough). again, do you fucking understand politics?
(not to mention, even if you are the most powerful, that doesn't mean you might not get gangbanged by your neighbors. PLEASE for the LOVE OF GOD read up on the spring/autumn and warring states periods. 合纵连横, 围魏救赵, about half of《韩非子 · 亡征》, etc etc etc)
your shoddy understanding of hierarchy and "elites"... actually totally meshes with your godawful understanding of political power. welp.
and sometimes offered gifts/tribute to just smooth over tensions instead of fighting them, and at other times fought them by learning their methods, and at yet other times, died horribly for not learning to deal with them properly. but no, the whole barbarian schtick couldn't possibly be an ideological justification for not launching military campaigns and for isolationism. nope. and doublespeak wasn't invented until jorjor whale personally came along and did so.
(for reference, why the fuck do you think xinjiang is called xinjiang? "new frontiersland" 新疆 ? could it have anything to do with it being formerly the very edge of china, in fact in older dynasties not even being recognized as part of china itself, not until basically ming/qing? oh ho, the "barbarians" are now well and proper part of china, not the 西域三十六国 of a thousand years prior)
yes, very medieval, so medieval that you LITERALLY HAVE (international?) CORPORATIONS AND COMPANIES AND THE CONCEPT OF REAL ESTATE AND STOCKS, SO MEDIEVAL
SO MEDIEVAL THAT REMBRANDT, A REAL ESTATE MOGUL, BASICALLY DOMINATES TSIGE (well, as of now, only a significant portion), SO MEDIEVAL!
(so medieval you have an entire city state around a fucking magical academy, operated as a CORPORATION! we are totally not well into the renaissance/mercantilist eras, couldn't possibly be!)
(contract work, employment and wage negotiation, a decided shortage of actual guilds, aside from the adventurer's oh sorry also the merchants, so medieval!)
(unified coinage, magical alchemy, long distance communications literally all over the place! fantasy? yes! medieval? hardly!)
DO YOU FUCKING KNOW HISTORY!? bruv if you read even other fucking isekai you'd know not to say this, LMAO
(not to mention my original criticism is that her goal was dogshit and, to achieve that dogshit goal, she had the hyumans take a shit policy. hey! the policy is rapidly reaching the end of what very little use it had before! maybe we should, idfk, curb it if not be rid of it! the specific alternative is up for grabs, because the discussion hadn't even gotten to that point!)
m8 i was up to date with the wn when i made that comment. you still aren't up to date. who's conflating what with what now? to say any more would be a spoiler lol, but anyways,
the world is literally a couple steps away from just having an industrial revolution. in fact, the demons have more or less already had theirs, and would totally stomp the hyumans if it weren't for the heroes... and makoto. tsige is literally itching for one, which happens later after tsige stomps aion in an independence war.
A socialist calling anyone anything is not taken seriously, friend . You get political marriages BECAUSE you're already political powerful. No self-respecting political leader is going to marry his daughter with someone with no status. The emperor gets his power by being born into the leading dynasty. That's the whole point of monarchy.
The Chinese viewed the nomadic people as barbarians. Why would the emperor tie his authority to his marriage with a barbarian? The marriage between the sedentary and the nomadic was most of the time a peace token. The emperor would only marry a barbarian if the tribe was POWERFUL. If it was a tribe that wasn't the strongest, why would the emperor marry? You have it backwards, then call ME the joke? Marriage ties with the Emperor of China doesn't mean anything to the nomads, if you don't have enough influence and military to dominate other tribes. Once again, they initiate these marriages BECAUSE they're powerful.
My whole point is that you must have power IN THE FIRST PLACE to have concubines, yet you argue with me? You even agree with me that you have to have power.
Socialists like to twist meaning of words to make their arguments better. That's what you were doing, so I mocked you.
Who's advocating for concubines in the modern world again? You're whining about concubinage in a manga about medieval fantasy setting. Is conflating reality with fiction your hobby?
The family bickering resulted in the most resourceful inheriting the throne, in theory anyway. It lead to the the emperor's child inheriting the throne in one way or another.
If you're a major landholder, you're already a noble. I meant merchants, but you didn't take the hint. You're a wealthy merchant. You see a beautiful courtesan. You buy her contract. Now she is your concubine. Simple as.
except for the uh numerous times the country just split into 2, 3, or a few dozen pieces, and also that one time the empress regnant just said "fuck it i'll be the 'emperor,'" and this is not counting the (many) failed peasant revolts
so I got banned for a while. Swagner probably reported me lol. Just the kind of pathetic move you can expect from him. I'm not going to continue this discussion between us, if I'm going to be banned for it. Have a nice day!
so I got banned for a while. Swagner probably reported me lol. Just the kind of pathetic move you can expect from him. I'm not going to continue this discussion between us, if I'm going to be banned for it. Have a nice day!
lol, lmao even, the goal of interacting in forums is making decent points until you get banned, don't you know? (and once you get banned, you go touch grass)
(i will retract my earlier statements regarding the mods, well, partially, anyways)
lol, lmao even, the goal of interacting in forums is making decent points until you get banned, don't you know? (and once you get banned, you go touch grass)
(i will retract my earlier statements regarding the mods, well, partially, anyways)
as an older zoomer who spent most of his early internet years watching newgrounds videos & playing flash games, it's quite interesting to see these extended forum slapfights. seeing guys going on for pages at a time about bullshit no one else but them cares about makes me feel like i'm getting that sweet, sweet somethingawful experience 20 years after its heyday
as an older zoomer who spent most of his early internet years watching newgrounds videos & playing flash games, it's quite interesting to see these extended forum slapfights. seeing guys going on for pages at a time about bullshit no one else but them cares about makes me feel like i'm getting that sweet, sweet somethingawful experience 20 years after its heyday
. You get political marriages BECAUSE you're already political powerful. No self-respecting political leader is going to marry his daughter with someone with no status. The emperor gets his power by being born into the leading dynasty. That's the whole point of monarchy.
