samurai

[schneefink]

My brain feels like puree, which makes sense because I had two lectures today and did a lot of studying (and I'm trying very hard not to think about why I couldn't have started doing that last week because that's not productive.) So normally I don't like talking about things that I barely know anything about, but I feel like rambling right now (also because I still have things to do later.)

Because of a Yuletide fic (still one rec post to come) I watched Youtube videos about Sengoku Jidai, the feuding samurai warlords period of Japan, and then read a couple of wikipedia articles, and it's fascinating. So much backstabbing! So many alliances and betrayals! Everyone had so many kids, the better to use them as political pawns, and everyone was related to everyone and still had them killed sometimes, must have been fun family dynamics. Humans are so weird. And terrible. History is horrifying and fun.
I don't think I'll delve much deeper into this period because it's, well, not very uplifting, but it was a fascinating glimpse. (Though if you have any recs for not-completely-tragic novels about some of the historical figures, in English...)

(Btw, the author of "Tales of the Otori" was a lot more blatant in borrowing from history than I'd suspected. Yaegahara, really.)

Comments

[merit]

The hours I have spent on wikipedia going through various medieval genealogies.. fun topic and everyone was surprisingly more related than I had previously thought. And travelled further for marriages than I expected at the times. Another 'dark age' myth I guess.

[schneefink]

Oh yes that is another fun one :) I'm unsurprisingly more familiar with European medieval dynasties, but yeah there was a lot of intermarrying too. And many kids sometimes, though iirc fewer than in Japan, probably because men weren't allowed official consorts of concubines because of Christianity. Still many sometimes - Maria Theresia gave birth to 16 children while ruling an Empire!
Also, the most annoying name changes were when guys were "promoted" from duke to king to emperor and the number after their name changed, e.g. I once had to do a presentation for school on a guy who started Friedrich III, then became Friedrich II, ended up Friedrich I, and the specific numbers were coincidence but fun.
While in Japan people changed their entire names! Multiple times, even! Fun times.

[merit]

That's true re: the number of children! though it was interesting see how types of marriage and taking new wives was more common, and then the Church started to curtail those practices but it took a few centuries for it take across most of Europe. There were always a few outliers for children though, some sadder than others. Queen Anne had 17 pregnancies but none of her children lived to adulthood. Some dynasties really struggled for heirs; though perhaps that should be 'male' heirs.

Oh dear! those names would get confusing.

[schneefink]

Yeah, infant mortality was terrible -.- (idk if it was better/worse/the same in Japan.)