Pretty much the entire three kingdoms period in China. No one accomplishes what they set out to do, all the great heroes die ordinary deaths due to politics or disease, and everything they create gets arbitrarily absorbed into a Jin dynasty that none of them foresaw (except maybe Kong Ming) or wanted.
Eh, I’d argue that it was less stupid games and prizes and more… Unusually equally matched candidates vying for the throne? I mean, think of the warring states, or the Chu-Han contention, or whatever the fuck was going on in Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
In each of the cases, after the fall/overthrow of the previous dynasty, multiple powerful folks threw their hats into the ring. Warring states ended with Qin beating its rivals. Liu Bang out maneuvered Xiang Yu to reunite all/most of China. The Song Dynasty succeeded where all the previous 5 Dynasties failed and absorbed the ten kingdoms. The Three Kingdoms era was mostly similar, but somehow the three major contestants managed to almost perfectly balance their power and just got stuck at an impasse for long enough that the good ol’ classic causes of the downfalls of Chinese dynasties (corruption of bureaucracy and the imperial families) took hold.
On reddit, I once read a really good perspective of the whole thing. To summarize: one of the greatest tragedies of the three kingdoms was that Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan were born in the same conflict era, as each of them were more than capable rulers and leaders that had what it would have taken to unite china. Meanwhile, the other conflict eras had only one or two truly capable emperor-aspirants that had the potential to take it all.
Pretty much the entire three kingdoms period in China. No one accomplishes what they set out to do, all the great heroes die ordinary deaths due to politics or disease, and everything they create gets arbitrarily absorbed into a Jin dynasty that none of them foresaw (except maybe Kong Ming) or wanted.
Awesome story though.
Eh, I’d argue that it was less stupid games and prizes and more… Unusually equally matched candidates vying for the throne? I mean, think of the warring states, or the Chu-Han contention, or whatever the fuck was going on in Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
In each of the cases, after the fall/overthrow of the previous dynasty, multiple powerful folks threw their hats into the ring. Warring states ended with Qin beating its rivals. Liu Bang out maneuvered Xiang Yu to reunite all/most of China. The Song Dynasty succeeded where all the previous 5 Dynasties failed and absorbed the ten kingdoms. The Three Kingdoms era was mostly similar, but somehow the three major contestants managed to almost perfectly balance their power and just got stuck at an impasse for long enough that the good ol’ classic causes of the downfalls of Chinese dynasties (corruption of bureaucracy and the imperial families) took hold.
On reddit, I once read a really good perspective of the whole thing. To summarize: one of the greatest tragedies of the three kingdoms was that Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan were born in the same conflict era, as each of them were more than capable rulers and leaders that had what it would have taken to unite china. Meanwhile, the other conflict eras had only one or two truly capable emperor-aspirants that had the potential to take it all.