Astral Codex Ten

king

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king

Article

king is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 01, 2023 and August 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “the personal bond between the king and the established regional lords”; “They rebelled against the King eventually”. It most often appears alongside 536 BC, ACX, Africa.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: September 01, 2023
  • Last seen: August 01, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Zuozhuan
September 01, 2023 · Original source
More than three thousand years ago, the Shang dynasty ruled the Chinese heartland. They raised a sprawling capital out of the yellow plains, and cast magnificent ritual vessels from bronze. One of the criteria of civilization is writing, and they had the first Chinese writing, incising questions on turtle shells and ox scapulae, applying a heated rod, and reading the response of the spirits in the pattern of cracks. “This year will Shang receive good harvest?” “Is the sick stomach due to ancestral harm?” “Offer three hundred Qiang prisoners to [the deceased] Father Ding?” The kings of Shang maintained a hegemony over their neighbors through military prowess, and sacrificed war captives from their campaigns totaling in the tens of thousands for the favor of their ancestors.
But the Shang faced growing threat from the Zhou, a once-subordinate people from west beyond the mountains. Inspired by a rare conjunction of the planets in 1059 BC, the Zhou declared that there was such a thing as the Mandate of Heaven, a divine right to rule—and while the Shang had once held it, their misrule and immorality had forced the Mandate to pass to the Zhou. Thirteen years later, the Zhou and their allies defeated the Shang in battle, seized their capital, drove their king to suicide, and supplanted them as overlords of the Central Plains.
If the Shang were goth jocks, the Zhou were prep nerds. In grave goods, food-serving vessels replaced wine vessels. Mass human sacrifice disappeared, while bureaucracy expanded. The Shang lacked the state power to administer their surrounding subject peoples so much as intimidate them into line; the Zhou, galvanized by a rebellion not long after the conquest, put serious thought into consolidating their control. While the king remained in the west to rule over the original Zhou lands, he sent relatives and allies east into the conquered territories to establish colonies at strategically important locations, anchoring Zhou rule in a sprawling network of hereditary regional lords bound together by blood, marriage, custom, and ancestor worship of the Heaven-blessed founding Zhou kings.
Your Review: Joan of Arc
August 01, 2025 · Original source
She didn’t keep quiet. When the Emperor arrived in Alexandria for a festival, this festival included gladiatorial games and chariot races and feasting and drinking, and, of course, the best part - feeding Christians to lions. The prefect’s daughter telling the Emperor he was wrong to feed Christians to lions might have been pardonable softheartedness if it was just that she disliked watching slaves fed to lions, but her telling him that he was wrong because the Christians were right and he was wrong was flatly unacceptable. He had no more interest in offending her parents than anyone else, though (and, in fact, he was considering putting his wife aside and marrying her - a useful alliance and she had brains and guts) so instead he called on his top fifty philosophers to outargue her.
Instead she converted half of them to Christianity, so he had to have them killed. That was the point where he threw her in prison, hoping she’d change her mind and be sensible. Instead she converted everyone who showed up to argue with her in prison; when he deprived her of food she was fed by a dove, when he had her tortured her wounds miraculously healed. When his wife tried to talk sense into her, she converted and the Emperor had to have her killed, too, so since the slot was empty he, as a final try, proposed marriage to Catherine. She told him she had a better husband - Christ - and at that insult he condemned her to death. The first try failed when the breaking wheel shattered at her touch; the second try employed an axe, but though the blade struck true milk flowed from the stump instead of blood.
Meet Jeanne d’Arc, Maid of Orleans. Yes, yes, she defeated an invincible army and is a feminist hero and also one of the national saints of France, fine. More importantly, Joan of Arc is documented! She's a miracle-working saint who has evidence! She might have more evidence than any other non-monarch before the printing press! This is, then, an agnostic’s review of the evidence3 for Joan of Arc - artillerist, fraudbuster, confirmed saint, and Extremely Documented Person.
Inline links: 3