i've been reading The Romance of the Three Kindoms and I can't help but see throughlines in it with other primary texts on revolutionary action, coupseeking, and the conditions of a solitary child. In the recent Omelas piece, the revolutionaries we are given in the text believe that killing a child is a necessary action; this may not bring about a grand future for the nation, but it will arrive at a kind of parity.
And there's a weird synchronicity with Dong Zhuo's murder of the child emperor, to set up his abuse and control of the next child emperor? The Ten eunuchs' abuse of the nation made the failed revolutionary action of the yellow scarves necessary, and their prolonged abuse after the fact made the elimination of the Ten necessary. This {set} of revolutionary violence then sets the stage for Dong Zhuo's malevolence to be merely another tick of the clock, rather than an acceleration from zero, right? And so the one child set aside loses his life, and the next child is brought in to take his place.
I am, of course, also thinking about the best piece of writing I've read in many years, the Bishop Bienvenue and the revolutionary Member of the Convention in Les Misérables, where the Bishop asks whether the child dauphin deserved the same death as the kings of france, and for my curiosity about plights of child emperors—your Larsas Solidor—I find myself chastised for my folly.
I persist,” continued the conventionary. “You have mentioned Louis XVII to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than ’93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.”
“I weep for all,” said the Bishop.
“Equally!” exclaimed the conventionary; “and if the balance must incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering longer.
