The Dragon Empire of the East: Aria’s History and Mythology Summarized
by Dr. Torrad Langagerm
Háskólinn í Býkonsviði | University of Býkonsviði
Sögudeild | Department of History
The eastern lands of Aria (De Lóng Guo, 地龙国), historically known as the realm of Eras of the Dragon Nation (龍國大地), has long fascinated Prydanians and others in the Nordic world. Traditionally an inward looking, reclusive nation, we have reached a point where ambassadors from the Court of the Four Winds are meeting with His Majesty and the Court of St. Absalon.
The goal of this article is to explain the mythology and history of Aria, to educate the Prydanian public on the nature of the Arianese state, its history, and its mythology in celebration of our peoples coming together.
Be forewarned though. For attempting to separate mythology and history in Aria is not as easy as it might appear.
An Eternal Empire?
The current Emperor of Aria is known as the Chenghua Emperor (成化帝). His name before he ascended to the throne is of little importance, as the name “Chenghua” denotes the name of the era proclaimed for his reign. “Chengua” means “accomplished change,” and reflects the Emperor’s desire to modernize his realm and reach out to the world.
The Emperors of Aria claim a mandate to rule that stretches back thousands upon thousands of years. In this sense the Imperial state of Aria is the longest continuous monarchy in the world, though it is not quite so simple.
According to Aria mythology the world began as a sea of chaos, while the Jade Emperor ruled in the Court of Heaven. The Jade Emperor decided that the time of man was upon the cosmos, and sent his son the Dragon God to Eras to make the world ready. The Dragon God descended into the stormy seas and did battle with all manners of sea serpents. He succeeded, but was dealt a fatal blow, dropping into the water where his body formed the land of Aria.
In time his body accumulated dirt and grass, and his divine blood mixed with that dirt to form man. So was humanity born, according to Arianese mythology. Each part of the fallen Dragon God gave part to a different tribe of man. As man came to live, so too were monsters. And demons, rising from hell. So the Jade Emperor in Heaven sent his five most trusted generals in the Court of Heaven to the land to guide humans.
Each divine general was entrusted a divine dragon, and each reigned over humanity as the Five Divine Emperors. The Five Divine Emperors of the Dragons are said to have reigned for four centuries, introducing everything from writing, clothing, engineering, mathematics, literature, and more to mankind. At which point the Jade Emperor is said to have decided that man was ready to lead himself. The Five Dragon Emperors asked the Jade Emperor if each nation was to lead itself, but the Jade Emperor disagreed. As there was one Emperor in Heaven, so would there be one Emperor on Eras, to claim the Mandate of Heaven.
The Five Divine Dragon Emperors returned to the Court of Heaven and the Jade Emperor inaugurated the Weida Emperor of the Golden Dragon clan as the first human Emperor.
This is where history and mythology become hard to pull apart. Most, if not all of the above might be easily dismissed as mythology. Yet for thousands upon thousands of years Arianese historians and philosophers regarded this lineage as historical truth.
Further complicating matters is the historical record. Archaeology in Aria has produced the earliest written records, the Oracle Bone Inscriptions, dating back to ~2100 BC. These inscriptions mention contemporary Emperors, and mention the Weida Emperor as having lived in the distant past. For the ancient denizens of 2100 BC Aria the Weida Emperor was an ancient figure said to live four thousand years previous. If the Weida Emperor truly existed as a flesh and blood man he lived prior to the development of writing in Aria, and likely anywhere else, itself.
If the first emperors of the dynastic system are shrouded in myth and legend, then what of the divine Emperors that preceded them?
Debate Within Delóngguo
The Chenghua Emperor has desired to embody change in ways beyond diplomacy. His reign has also seen an opening up of Aria's academic arena. Foreign scholars are now welcomed, and an academic revolution in the fields of history and archaeology have sprung up.
Broadly speaking no academic in Aria takes the mythology stated at face value. How it’s interpreted depends on the camp the historian or archeologist belongs to. The Realist camp tends to believe that the myths of the Five Divine Dragon Emperors and the first human Emperors in the distant past reflect past events that had some degree of truth to them. The Historical Reconstruction camp tends to view any “history” prior to the Oracle Bone Inscriptions, from ~2100 BC, as pure mythology used to justify the ruling Imperial power structure that emerged out of the Bronze Age.
Old Sayings
An old Arianese saying, dating back to ~400 BC, equates five dragons and nations with elements. The white dragon is that of bone, the black dragon is that of rock, the red dragon is that of bronze, the blue dragon is that of iron, and the gold dragon is that of…gold.
In many ways these can be interpreted as the building blocks of civilization. The Realist Camp of Arianese history seeks to understand the mythological past in a way that strips the supernatural elements from the narrative. We know that Aria is divided into five lands, five "tribes" of Arianese. In the central delta region is the Golden Dragon Clan. Said to have led Aria since time immemorial. To the east is the Blue Dragon Clan. To the West is the White Dragon Clan. The Black Dragon Clan rules the north. And the Red Dragon Clan rules the south.
This lines up with the myth of the Five Divine Emperors riding dragons of those colours, serving at the behest of the Jade Emperor in Heaven. If we strip the idea of divinity we see a familiar story. In Syrixia the first Emperor unified the state riding a great tiger dragon. The dragon perished in his campaign's final battle and this was said to have been the last dragon to have ever lived. If the first Syrixian Emperor was the last dragon rider, were the Five Divine Emperors of Aria's distant past the first?
The debate between the Realist and Historical Reconstruction camp tilted in the Realist Camp's direction lately with the discovery of inscriptions which tell of a great war, in a word that is best translated as "crusade." While most people understand Aria as being made up of one ethnicity and five clans, the truth is that there were other peoples in the lands now known as Aria who were conquered and assimilated into the Dragon Clans. For the longest time to even speak of the Tortoise, Phoenix, or Tiger peoples was to be stricken as a heretic of sorts.
These days this restriction is no longer in place, though the Imperial government still refuses to accept these ethnicities as separate from the "main" Arianese ethnicity (Jin).
These groups are important though. The Tiger peoples, for example, speak of being of the land "before the people of the dragon came." And it's these recent discoveries that seem to confirm some historical basis for a conflict deep in the bowels of history between the various Arianese Jin Dragon Clans and the peoples of the Tortoise, Phoenix, and Tiger.
The leading consensus among Realist historians is that the myth of the Five Divine Emperors is a sanitized allegory that tells of the Jin peoples waging war on pre-Jin peoples and conquering and assimilating them.
Understanding Delóngguo
We Nords tend to compartmentalize history and myth. The two should not infringe on each other. For Aria things are different. They have looked inward, and old records and myths have become one in the same. That is not to say that they are ignorant as to the separation. The debates within their universities is proof enough of the struggle to reconcile the two.
When our viking ancestors pushed as far into Auroria as they could manage and found De Lóng Guo they named it Árland, Land of Rivers. This name formed the basis of the name Aria, and from that moment we have tried to understand this strange land of dragons from beyond the horizon of the rising sun. While the Realist Camp of historians in Aria has been boosted by recent archaeological discoveries it still seems to fly in the face of their mythology as we Nords understand it. Even if the Tale of the Five Divine Emperors is rooted in some historical truth, does stripping away its divine nature not disprove it? As Nords we would say so.
What needs to be understood, however, is that history informs myth. This is true for all peoples, ourselves included, but especially so for a society as inward-looking as Aria. Was the first Emperor real or not? Were the Five Divine Emperors who proceeded him real or not? We will likely never have definitive proof one way or another. It the present though, if only as a touchstone to understand the foundations of Arianese society. Even without the divine anything that would validate the history of the pre-writing Emperors would only confirm the one central tenant of the Arianese state.
The Mandate is eternal.
