War of the 8 Princes | MOSTLY ACCURATE HISTORY 

Its insane

Its a soap.

Real history is always better, overall, than written. Written fiction based heavily upon a real bit of history is the next best thing. Hence the RoTK novel being fuckin' amazing.

China's history is basically them uniting then breaking apart then uniting then breaking apart then uniting etc. etc. over and over again

but we liked Game of Thrones as well : ). Real good stories will always be appreciated anywhere, anytime, no matter the culture backgrounds.

The Ghost of Dong Zhuo advised against it, and then the Sima Prince said "Who the hell are you!?"

@@minuteman3317 DZ: "I'm your Father!" Prince: "NOOO!!!"

You made me laugh out loud. Thanks dude

"If they make them croak again, I'm telling you, TWO EIGHTY AD is gonna happen again. TWO EIGHTY AD!"

😂

Sima Jones

Which is why you always want a clear line of succession.

@Robert Claus Would a clear line of succession have worked in China? I mean what's stopping this drama when there are so many sons.

​@@johnrockwell5834 ​ "Clear line of Succession" was only a fantasy back in that particular period of Chinese History. Please allow me to elaborate: 1, An Imperial house can not solely rule by themselves, they had to rely on the helps & alliances of powerful regional nobles, whom were the backbones of manorial economic system at the time. Also a fair amount of high-ranking government official positions had to be shared among them, and some times political marriages with the Crowned Prince had to be made. The imperial house had to deal with them with extreme caution, Emperor Wu of Jin himself stole the throne from the Cao family following his father's and grandfather's steps. 2, Naturally the Crowned Prince will be put into essential civil & military positions after coming of age, exp: Deputy Army Marshal, Deputy Minister, while his own staff would be assigned to. Not only to make sure he'd become a more qualified ruler, but also very importantly, NOT become a PUPPET for the powerful noble house in the future. Such methods sounds all rational & logical, however there's a very DEADLY side-effect: Crowned Princes whom had been put into such position have a common trend to plot to murder and overthrown their fathers to seek power sooner, while their fathers have a similar common trend to arrest and execute the sons out of such fear as well. There were many examples trough out history, even among some of the emperors considered the greatest. 3, Now imagine you are an emperor in such dilemma, name a adult, smart, competent son as Crowned Prince there's a high chance you'll end up killing each other. Name a child, or in this case mentally disable, incompetent son, he'll probably end up as a puppet or be killed by someone else. Emperor Wu of Jin did this, he sent his cousins, nephews, members of his own families (the princes) to important regions, with prominent military & civil powers. Hence creates a balance between noble houses, imperial family members, and imperial courts. Personally I'd say it was the best he could've done at the time. Even if it ended up a total mess.

@Cheng Kane Thoughts on Europe in their succession? Did they do better than the Chinese?

@@johnrockwell5834 it's centralisation vs feudalism, and I'm really not a expert on European history, all I know it's that once pure bureaucrat classes completely replaced nobles in the political system at around 8th to 9th Century in China, succession stopped been a problem at all.

Didn't know the first part. I just figured no one taught him how to share as a child.

I don't think the Hebrew Bible was an book well known in China. The fall of Solomon is directly attributed to his 1000 large harem and was about a millennia before the 8 Princes period. History does like to repeat itself.

@@artofthepossible7329 plus i mean at the time, how many ppl would've been able to translate Hebrew into Ancient Chinese script? i feel like that task in of itself is like winning the lottery if u could find such a person at the time.

@@andrewle7429 As there was Roman coins from the 5 Good Emperors period in China, it wouldn't be too out of place to find Hebrews among the Chinese population, great wanderers to escape persecution and all that, but as the farthest I can get for translated copies of the Bible was the 1800s, although version likely existed during the Mongol empire and the Yuan dynasty.

Last part is a bit shocking. Was Wu handsome for them? Were standards really that low?

Oh, like you’re one to talk, Tarkin. How’s that backlash from Alderaan treating you? Oh, wait, you got blown up for that. That‘s everything you need to know. The prosecution rests.

They werent actually brothers. Just related

@Adrian It's kinda complicated, Sima Lun & Sima Liang are brothers and sons of Sima Yi. Sima Yue is the grandson of Sima Yi's brother Sima Kui. Sima Yong is the grandson of Sima Yi's brother Sima Fu. Sima Wei and Sima Ai are brothers and grandsons of Sima Zhao, brother of Liang and Lun. Sima Ying is the halfbrother of Ai and Zhao. Sima Jiong is the cousin of all three of them. Then there are the emperor bloodlines but it gets even more convoluted

"Brothers" is a stretch, only a handful were actually brothers and even then, more likely than not did not have the same mother and were raised separately. Besides, they were all groomed to be count nobles and royalty where trust in one another really isn't taught.

@@KittenCritters wait, Sima Ying is the half brother of Sima Ai and Sima Zhao, but Sima Ai is the grandson of Sima Zhao....what? how? Sima Zhao's mom would have to be involved in some weird crap where one of Sima Zhao's sons has a kid with his mom...

@@andrewle7429 Half-brother of Ai and Wei, In confused myself trying to write it even

well Sima Yi's family eventually ate themselves inside out

And cao mao when seeing what a mess sima clan is :"eat shit"

Every body wants to recruit Zhuge liang.... cao cao only hates him because red cliff

Paper Cat not sure why he’d hate him for that. That was all zhou yu. Had nothing to do with zhuge.

@Sima Yi I'm totally agree with you. The LGZ version of RoTK is more bias towards Shu-Han and made out against the Wei. I would say possibly Sima Yi had more upper hand on him.

@@hansottawa There are many advantages, of course. Sima Yi is sticking to Cao's estate. Eating cling to the Cao family

And Cao Cao is laughing saying "serves you right you treacherous so and so!", as whatever their problems, the Cao family stuck together.

@SovietBiscuit the worst mistake was when Cao Shuang tried to demote Sima Yi.

"IMBECILES!!!"

Cao cao and sima yi are fighting while zhuge liang , liu bei and the 5 tiger generals are watching having a good laugh and eating popcorn

Malik Rahman technically, it’s not a demotion. Sims Yi was promoted to the position of Grand Tutor, but that took away all his military authority.

ElectableDane there s no irony there, changsha does tend to produce good people and im proud to say im from there ;)

Straight shooter, quick temper, and slightly over average fighter. Those are good people.

@@junnengchen5895 damn man changsha has some good food too

kabigon Spicy food da best!

between the 2, i prefer Sima Ai's playstyle, tech and infrastructure development, and Jing Infantry and Archers r nice . tho it is annoying that any building chain that increases food reduces "Reform"....

Liu did actually but few century after with Rise of Sui Dynasty

While making this history she became the one I was most interested to play. It's a real shame she wasn't finished for the game. She even has a unique unused model.

@@codybonds hopefully they add her later

@@codybonds She has an in game model~? Waaah?

@@codybonds is there somewhere that we can see it?

@@basilismaster I think Cody is referring to the trailer model.

Just double checked my notes. You're right I misread it. I even put 10,000 in the script. Though I still believe it's unlikely it was all slave women and frankly doubt the event happened at all. But it does aptly describe the barbarity of the era.

@@codybonds I've read in quite a few places that numbers of armies were greatly exaggerated lol

Wow I didnt know Evenicle was based on a true story

@@masonarmand8988 This is China we're talking about, where there's bodies to throw into the grinder everywhere.

Jfc

It’s ok it’s before your language was modernized. In US we even speak a different English dialect to Mother Britannia

@Akin Khoo actually it was yang jun who broke the status quo by conspiring against sima liang

yeah, classic "I'll make my good for nothing son the heir so when he die my genius grandson will become the emperor when he die" move. what can go wrong

So China went from 3 kingdoms to 8 princes to 16 kingdoms?

@@antlantis1234 China went from a lot of chaos/wars to a lot of chaos/wars, then to a lot MORE wars and then to EVEN MORE wars. It only became relatively stable in Tang Dynasty (618 to 907) and then back to f**king chaos and multiple kingdoms again. Then there was the relatively stable (but not really) Song Dynasty from 960 to 1279, followed by Mongolian invasion and colonisation (Yuan Dynasty 1279 to 1368) which, you guessed it, more chaos and wars, fire and blood. Then the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) was relatively peaceful (but not really) and then...you guessed it, fking chaos were brought by another Northern tribe, Manchu, which ruled China in its LAST dynasty ever - Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912) which was filled with ethnic conflicts between Man and Han people, and a bunch of princes fighting against each other for the throne. After that, it was anti-feudal uprisings and revolutions, conflicts between domestic warlords, European colonisations, Japanese genocidal invasion (WW2), bloody civil war between Mao (Communist Party) and Jiang (Nationalist Party), and then Communist ruling until now. So yeah. That's just a super brief summary of Chinese history, AKA Game of Thrones non-stop for 4000+ years. Now you know why so many Chinese people want to migrate to other parts of the world.

JLhannah24 gonna binge watch them soon

@@antlantis1234 Basically, china was punished for the better part of a thousand years because Han did in fact have heaven’s mandate and Cao Pi’s ambition cursed the land with incompetent, blood thirsty usurpers. I choose to believe this because it at least tries to make sense of why China for years couldn’t stop KILLING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN PETTY POWER STRUGGLES.

That's why I tried to keep the faces up there when talking about them. The names are not easy to remember.

But not funny? I meant this one to be humorous but nobody has mentioned that. Poop jokes are high art!

@@codybondsOk . They were funny mate. Not Richard Pryor, David Chapelle funny, but funny all t he same lol. thanks for the vids

Keeping the pictures of each relevant person onscreen is the only way I could keep it straight.

Wikipedia recognizes him as Sima Ai as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sima_Ai

@@codybonds wikipedia is wrong

@@gonavygonavy1193 Wikipedia isn't strictly wrong- the character used for Ai/Yi has two pronunciations (see en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B9%82). This isn't the first time ancient peoples' names have been pronounced differently - consider Caesar (which I'm assuming you pronounced in your head with a soft C, not the "correct" hard C) or Zhang Jue/Jiao (Jiao being the more modern of the two pronounciations).

@Akin Khoo It’s read Ai even noted in Jiyun (集韻) and Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典). The pronunciation of this word in Mandarin Chinese somehow evolved to Yi.

In Mandarin Chinese it is pronounced yi, but in older version dictionary(especially those written before CCP made Chinese pronunciation standardized ) and Taiwan dict it has both ai and yi pronunciations. Also 乂exists in Japanese kanji, and some say it could be pronounced as がい(gai) (I’m not good at Japanese so I’m not very sure about that) So calling him Sima Ai s is okay, but probably we will never know if his real name should be yi or ai

Fun fact. His name is both Ai and Yi as it depends on how you translate it. It was still a mistake on my part but technically not wrong.

Cody Bonds Oh neat!

乂 could be Ai, or Yi（义）

Thanks. It took about 3x longer to make than my normal ones. And I personally just can't get into a historical game if I don't know something about who I'm dealing with.

@@codybonds I feel the same. I'm only really now getting into the base 3K after watching your videos and a smattering of the 2010 show itself.

It's clear Total War got the idea from ROTK. I was surprised how similar the art styles were.

@@codybonds yup, the only difference is CA characters are more crude and realistic than the fantasied Koei characters.

7 is the game that includes the Sima family's rise to power.

There's just not enough info on them to warrant a separate video for each. I'll probably do one video that covers all their game mechanics but this is their whole story in one go.

@@codybonds Well..if you want to know more detailed history about the princes .There are 8 episodes made by Serious Trivia that cover almost all of the war and why it happened. It's really interesting,you should check it

​@@codybonds en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Jin#Annals_(%E7%B4%80) Eight princes' biographies are all noted in Volume 59, and Empress Jia's is in Part 7 of Volume 31, Emperor Hui in Volume 4. Although there's no translation in the Internet, there is book in Amazon.

He was in his teen when the war broke oit

Keep in mind that the population of China was about 60 Million which put them about the same as the Roman Empire at its height. Considering Roman emperors could raise the legions to 650K its possible that separate Princes can raise about 100k Each

Yep that’s why China has a different culture than democratization of the West. I frankly don’t blame them not even Russia had a better history

I could not find any resources in English when I made this. Hopefully someone knows of a Chinese translation that will help.

@@codybonds thanks man for the quick response. I love you're work!

@@jeremyminten5340 The only work I know of is one by Rafe de Crespigny. The guy who CA used as their historic advisor. And it is a small part of a larger book on the era.

@@codybonds yessss! I was wondering who they used! This is very helpful thanks man!

If this DLC had sold better I would. But as is nobody talks about it anymore.

@@codybonds too bad I actually like it.

Karma, that's what happens, Cao should be the only family that won the war of three kingdoms.

The game the art assets are drawn from is Total War: There Kingdoms

Yep. That's why I used the portraits, it helps to keep them straight.

Not enough asian actors