L.F-Hist.Novelist Chapter 41 The End of the China Craze
Chapter 41 The End of the China Craze
After meeting with the party leader, Palmerston arranged for someone to go to the palace to inform the king.
The mission to Han has returned, bringing back a reply to the King, as well as gifts for the King and the Crown Prince.
King William IV of Britain was also very interested in this trip and wanted to know what gifts the Emperor of Han had given him in return, so he immediately arranged for a meeting.
The next morning, Palmerston and his deputy Staunton went to the palace to pay their respects to the King and the Crown Prince.
Palmerston and Staunton entered the hall where the king received them, and as they looked up to pay their respects, they realized a problem.
The king had two crown princes, but the Han emperor only gave one crown prince gift.
At this time, King William IV of Britain was of Hanoverian lineage and remained the common monarch of both Britain and Hanover.
Britain allows female succession, so the Crown Princess of Britain is Alexandra Victoria, the daughter of the King's fourth brother.
However, Hanover did not allow women to inherit the throne, so the Crown Prince of Hanover was the King's fifth brother, Ernst August.
King William IV now sits in the middle chair, with Victoria standing to his left and Ernst and his son George standing to his right.
Palmerston and Staunton did not blame the Han emperor for this, because they were the British Kingdom's delegation, not the Hanoverian royal delegation.
The gifts that Britain gave to the Emperor of Han were prepared by the British government and merchants, not by the Hanoverian royal family.
The return gift was only given to the Kingdom of Britain and had no direct connection with Hanover.
The king should understand this, so I don't know why he summoned the crown prince of Hanover when he received him.
Perhaps he's getting senile, or perhaps the other party also wanted to come and see.
Palmerston and Staunton, both filled with inexplicable doubt, knelt on one knee and bowed to the king with their hands on their chests.
The seventy-year-old King William IV raised his hand and gave the order:
"Please have a seat, both of you."
Palmerston and Staunton thanked them and took their seats, then instructed the workers accompanying them to bring in the gifts one by one.
Royal servants stood by to receive the gifts, placing them one by one on the long conference table in the center of the hall.
The so-called letter from the King of Britain to the Emperor of Han was actually prepared by the British Cabinet and Parliament.
The Han emperor's replies were mainly addressed to the British cabinet and parliament, while the gifts were given to the King and Crown Prince of Britain.
Moreover, the content of the reply was indeed a bit difficult to handle, so Palmerston and Staunton decided to send the gifts first to put the king in a slightly better mood before discussing the content of the reply.
Palmerston briefly explained what was included on the gift list, then apologized rather helplessly:
"I am very sorry, Your Highness (Ernst), the Emperor of the Great Han Dynasty has prepared gifts only for the King and Crown Prince of Britain."
The old king didn't take it seriously and casually offered a guess:
"This emperor of the East probably doesn't know about the complicated succession between Britain and Hanover..."
Although Ernst and his son were not very happy, they felt that this was how it should be:
"Most countries don't have two crown princes."
Staunton and Palmerston were silent for a moment, thinking to themselves that the Han emperor could even understand the British language and knew that the main power in Britain lay in Parliament, not in the hands of the king…
However, the two of them tacitly avoided making a fool of themselves and simply skipped over the topic, moving directly to the part about showing the gifts to the King and the Crown Prince.
The most important thing was the emperor's portrait.
The British delegation presented the Han emperor with a portrait of the king, and Liu Yulong reciprocated by presenting him with a portrait of himself.
Sending portraits was a tradition established by Liu Desheng.
More than a decade ago, when Staunton paid a visit to Liu Desheng, who had just ascended the throne, the return gifts he received included an official portrait of Liu Desheng, as well as clothing for the King and Crown Prince of Britain.
Liu Desheng's direct goal was to cover up the image left by the Manchu Qing dynasty with his restored image of Han Chinese before the "China craze" subsided.
From the Age of Exploration until the mid-19th century, Europe experienced a period of "China fever."
The Spanish and Portuguese led Europeans into the Age of Exploration, and merchants were the first to bring back more luxury goods from the East, mainly silk and porcelain.
Around the 17th century, European missionaries sent to the East brought back a large number of Chinese books, which were translated, copied, and even published in Europe.
This directly influenced the Enlightenment thought in modern Europe, with many thinkers at the time taking the legendary China as a model of an ideal society.
At that time, China was a fantasy land for European intellectuals, just like the European and American societies that modern public intellectuals fantasize about.
In the mid-18th century, as exchanges between the two sides deepened, European monarchs and nobles began to build Chinese-style gardens and palaces, and use Chinese-style furniture and decorations.
At the end of the 18th century, Britain sent a large official mission directly to the Qing Dynasty, and the mission members recorded the actual state of society in the mid-Qing Dynasty.
After entering the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution unfolded in Europe, and Europeans won many colonial wars around the world, which greatly boosted their self-confidence and caused the China craze to begin to subside.
The defeat of the Qing Dynasty on behalf of China in the Opium War was a crucial turning point that significantly accelerated the decline of China fever.
However, even after the mid-19th century, some modern thinkers still defended China, arguing that the Tatars who ruled China at that time were not Chinese, but rather barbaric foreign conquerors, and that the real China was not like that.
Liu Desheng overthrew the Qing Dynasty at the end of the 18th century and took the initiative to control the content of exported culture and commodities, which slowed down the decline of China's cultural boom and, to some extent, realized the views of those modern European thinkers.
Now, Palmerston, along with William IV's palace secretary and several of the king's and crown prince's personal servants, unfurled the three official portrait scrolls of Liu Yulong in turn.
One is a seated statue in a robe with a winged crown and dragon design; another is a standing statue in a crown and robe with a celestial crown; and the third is a standing statue in a ceremonial robe with a crown.
They are all Eastern-style meticulous figure paintings, similar to portraits of Ming Dynasty emperors.
William IV stood up and, together with his brother, niece, and nephew, approached to examine the exhibit more closely.
William IV first noticed the style of the painting:
"These are all Chinese artistic styles, which look consistent with the style of his grandfather's portraits, and are clearly different from European painting styles."
"I often hear people say that Chinese aristocratic painters pursued spiritual imagery more than using various tools to depict more accurate physical forms."
Sixteen-year-old Victoria noticed the people's appearances:
"Your Excellency Palmerston, how much does the figure in this painting resemble His Majesty the Emperor of the Han Dynasty?"
Palmerston carefully chose his words to answer Victoria's question:
"It is not as realistic as European sketches and oil paintings, but the overall image is basically consistent with His Majesty the Emperor's own image."
"Of course there are subtle differences, just like the difference between portraits of European royals and the actual individuals."
"His Majesty the Emperor of the Great Han Dynasty is a strong and upright young man."
"Neither thin nor fat, about five feet ten inches (178 cm) tall, with no physical disabilities or scars."
Victoria understood; the painter would definitely embellish the portraits of the nobles.
However, if you put them next to the real person, you can definitely recognize them at a glance; otherwise, the artist would be unqualified.
After examining the painting style, William IV began to observe the clothes Liu Yulong was wearing:
"His Majesty's ceremonial robes appear to be the same as those in the portrait of his grandfather, which is kept in the palace."
"It's completely different from the portraits of Tatar emperors I've seen in books."
Staunton, standing nearby, explained to William IV:
"The former Emperor Xing Han once said that the highest-ranking set of formal attire for the Han emperors has existed for 2,600 years."
"It is equivalent to something inherited from the Roman Republic era, and it never changed before the Tatar invasion."
"They drove out or eliminated the Tatars and re-established their own country and laws."
"Emperor Xinghan specially restored the ceremonial robes they used to wear."
The king's brother, Ernst, was quite interested:
"Does this mean the Spanish Reconquista was successful? And that they even changed the clothes of the Arabian people back to Christian clothes?"
Staunton felt there was a difference between the two, but he didn't argue with the prince about the details:
"Not exactly the same, but that's a general idea."
Upon hearing about the reconquest of lost territory, Victoria couldn't help but mention a legend she had heard somewhere:
"I heard that their current emperor shares the same surname as the emperor two thousand years ago?"
"Is the current royal family the same as the imperial family of two thousand years ago?"
George, Victoria's cousin who is three days younger than her, also added with great interest:
"This is equivalent to a descendant of a Roman emperor, someone with the surname Julius or even Caesar."
"Now they've reconquered all of Europe and established a new Roman Empire? This is truly an epic story!"
Staunton recalled what he knew:
"Many nobles, officials, and even commoners of the Han Dynasty believed this to be true."
"But the truth, as Emperor Xinghan himself stated, is that he himself did not know whether it was true or not."
"Because the era was so far back, the ancestors he knew of were all commoners, at most small landlords."
"He cannot identify himself as a descendant of an emperor from two thousand years ago based solely on a shared surname."
"Compared to such legends, he preferred to call himself the emperor of the Han people, just as Napoleon was the emperor of the French."
Staunton believed those things were just legends, but young people and ordinary people mostly like legends.
Moreover, there are relatively few common surnames among Han Chinese, and more importantly, a surname may have many origins and not all from the same ancestor.
However, there are many surnames in Europe, and one cannot use the surname of someone who is not a direct descendant of a nobleman.
Therefore, Europeans subconsciously feel that having the same surname carries a certain degree of persuasiveness.
The siblings Victoria and Staunton, who were present, also disagreed with Staunton's statement, and started getting excited on their own before he finished speaking.
"Imagine a member of the Roman royal family from two thousand years ago who has now regained control of all of Europe..."
"This is truly the most amazing thing! I think it's worthy of being the subject of dozens of plays!"
Ernst, observing his son and niece's reactions, casually asked a typical question found within aristocratic circles:
"This emperor seems very young? How old is he? Is he married?"
Palmerston recalled what he knew:
"His Majesty the Emperor should be nineteen years old this year. He was not yet married when we visited the Han Dynasty."
Ernst said with a touch of emotion:
"Then His Majesty the Emperor is the most powerful and wealthy unmarried nobleman in the world."
He was only three years older than Victoria and George…
"If they weren't heretics, all his women would be slaves, and princesses would line up to marry him."
At this point, Staunton chimed in, adding:
"In fact, the marriage customs of the Han Chinese are different from those of the Ottomans and other Muslims."
"Even the emperor and all nobles could only have one wife; other women were essentially legal mistresses."
"The sons born to these legal mistresses also have inheritance rights, but they are ranked after the sons born to their wives."
"The eldest son born to the wife is the de facto first heir, while illegitimate children, even if they are older, are ranked lower."
"If the wife has no sons, then the eldest of the illegitimate children will become the first heir."
"Due to this marriage system, the order of succession in the Han Dynasty imperial family and nobility was very clear, and it was also rare for the lineage to die out."
Upon hearing this, William IV turned to look at his two heirs, a niece and a brother:
"This marriage system seems to combine the advantages of both Christians and Catholics."
"If Europe had adopted this method of succession, neither of you would have had a chance to become king."
"Of course, me too. My older brother has several illegitimate children..."
The king's brother, Ernst, said with a smile:
"In that case, if European royal families could accept the legal status of a pagan's exclusive mistress, then an emperor could marry into many royal families."
"Because all their children have inheritance rights, it's acceptable to many people even if she's not the empress, right?"
At this moment, William IV instinctively shook his head:
"That's impossible. He's a heretic, doesn't have a wife, and has countless legitimate competitors. Just one of those conditions is extremely demanding. All of these conditions combined would make it unacceptable to anyone."
Staunton added from the side:
"Actually, the key point is not just the right of succession. The emperor of the Han Dynasty did not allow his mistresses to have other lovers."
"They were the emperor's exclusive mistresses, and their status was indeed like that of female slaves."
"They were not even allowed to see other normal men normally. The only servants working in the palace were eunuchs and women."
"It is precisely because of such strict discipline that their children are able to have inheritance rights."