The Hegemon King 项羽, 西楚霸王
The legendary warrior king Xiang Yu toppled the Qin Dynasty of China's first Emperor and then went on to briefly dominate the post- Qin world. His stormy life and tragic death inspired the famous Beijing Opera: "Farewell My Concubine."
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Han dynasty tomb fresco of Xiang Yu depicting him in a banquette.
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Comments
At the point Xiang Yu made himself the King of Western Chu he was pretty much the de facto ruler of eastern China anyway. So it's a formality.
It is my opinion that Xiang Yu was only buying time by carving up the 18 kingdoms. Most of it was done to divide up the territories of some of his strongest potential rivals, including that of Liu Bang. It's a move to nerf everyone else while still holding on to a solid core of good troops and the allegiance of most of the powerful lords. A lot of people disses Xiang Yu for blindly dividing the country rather than declaring himself emperor and ruling all of the empire as he see fits. But I think he did so because he think that if he did so many of the lords would not not right support him. So he has an elaborate plan to nerf his enemies then swoop in and reap the rewards once his foes have weakened themselves.
However his plan never came to fruition. Only 3 months after he carved up the 18 kingdoms the whole realm went into a berserk battle royal, and it quickly boiled down into an all out Chu- Han war with many of the smaller states supporting one or the other.
The same was with Macedon, who saw themselves as part of the Hellenic world and constantly involved themsleves in Greek affairs since the Persian wars and were a hegemonic power by the time of Phillip II, but many Greeks looked at Macedon the same way the Zhou world viewed Chu, with the famous Philippic by Demosthenes calling Macedonians barbarian invaders. Chu was no different in that it saw itself as part of the Zhou world, as King Zhuang declared himself Ba (hegemon), a title normally bestowed upon the leaders of interstate alliances such as Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin, and the hegemon system was an integral part of the Zhou world in the Spring and Autumn. It is interesting how Chu, like Macedon, desired and saw itself as part of the Zhou world, while in many regards (particularly in the Spring and Autumn and not so much the Warring States) they were viewed as not necessarily foreign, but as outsiders and backwards and uncivilised.
The fact that they were a looming semi-assimilated "barbarian" civilization that outmatched their overlords makes them very interesting. And you can bet so many tiny states are scared the living crap of by them. Then boogeyman- rouge state, attitude is really interesting.
They did well for themselves for the majority of the time along the Zhou dynasty, even out living it well into the time of the Qin unification. Not to mention they were resurrected to destroy the Qin. I venture to say that the Han dynasty and early Han dynasty culture had a great amount of Chu influence as well.
Yes, Macedon is a great analogy for Chu, Russia is another good analogy vis a vis early modern Europe during the reign of Peter the Great. Usually these analogies are accurate in regards to culture. But the geo-political status of Chu, I've read some academic papers comparing the State of Chu to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, both are sprawling geographic empires made up of numerous different ethnic groups and a high bound court culture where change was difficult to enact. They got away with it for so long because they were large geographically, rich economically and had a large population, like Russia and Austria-Hungary. But when confronted by a tightly organized, ruthlessly centralized and brutally regimented state like Qin State (and Prussia/Germany) ... they couldn't cope and were eventually defeated on the battlefield if not totally destroyed.
I've also read Chu is basically the center of the Daoist philosophy, as opposed to Qin's Legalism.