苻堅 永固 Fu Jian Yonggu

Fu Jian (337–385), courtesy name Yonggu, was the ruler of Former Qin and arguably one of the most remarkable figures of China's Sixteen Kingdoms period. Under his rule, Former Qin conquered nearly all of northern China, briefly creating a political landscape resembling the great north–south division of the later Northern and Southern Dynasties. His approach to conquest might seem surprisingly familiar to modern players of KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms: defeat an enemy state, pardon its former rulers, recruit its talented officers, and put them to work building your ever-expanding empire. Unfortunately, real life has a mechanic that KOEI games tend to overlook: conquered people remember being conquered. Those former rulers and generals had ambitions, loyalties, and grievances of their own. After Fu Jian's disastrous defeat against Eastern Jin at the Battle of Fei River in 383, his seemingly unified empire began to disintegrate as former subject peoples and ruling families rose in rebellion. In 385, Fu Jian was captured and executed on the orders of Yao Chang, a Qiang general who had once served him. There is a certain irony in how history remembers him. Even historians who refused to recognize his dynasty as legitimate, describing its rulers as usurpers, nevertheless praised his character, achievements, and concern for his subjects. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Fu Jian is that his benevolence and his imperial ambitions were not necessarily contradictory in his own mind. He sincerely believed that conquering the world and governing it with kindness could be parts of the same noble enterprise. Unfortunately, not everyone he conquered agreed.