The midnight wind snuffed out the lanterns, but Zhao Guangyi, Governor of Kaifeng Prefecture, remained awake. …
The midnight wind snuffed out the lanterns, but Zhao Guangyi, Governor of Kaifeng Prefecture, remained awake.
The voices wouldn't stop. Since implementing the Tang Coin confiscation reform, his ears rang with protests, mockery, and pleas.
Yet he wouldn't yield. Where his elder brother proved himself on battlefields, his trial was this deceptively calm Kaifeng City.
They call his brother magnanimous. Only he knows the Emperor sleeps no better.
How can any ruler rest with wolves at the gates?
He wasn't afraid of the world comparing him to his elder brother - he firmly believed they were fundamentally the same. That's why his brother never opposed him. And that absence of opposition was support enough.
Let history remember his brother as the benevolent hero. He'd gladly be the ruthless one.
This was merely his opening move. There'd be more, his own legacy, his own glory. When historians wrote of this era, his light wouldn't be overshadowed. It would burn alongside his brother's.