Jake is looking for themes for his Manga work. He has to look no farther than Chinese History.

 The story line, which we will be take up in the middle of the tale:

A Fabled Empire

 There was a civilization, the Middle Kingdom, from which all culture flowed. It was surrounded by barbarian tribes who desired its wealth, so its emperors built a Great Wall between the Kingdom and the Barbarian Tribes.

 Dynasties rise and fall. Here we take up the story:

Ming Dynasty

 After driving out the Mongol emperors the Ming set up a dynasty. People paid their taxes in kind: rice or silk. The Ming decided to have all pay taxes in silver. As the economy was strong and the cities were industrializing large portions of the population complied.

Unintended Consequences

 In the provinces most people were peasant farms. Instead of giving portion of their harvest, they had to sell it for copper coins, then exchange  those for silver, then pay the taxes.

Over the course of a few generations, the peasants fell in to debt, lost their land, and become brigands to survive. The bands become larger and larger. Finally, they were molded into an army and marched on the capital.

A :Hapless End to an Emperor

 The rebel army approach the capital. The emperor rises in the morning to find the palace empty. All of his ministers and servants had fled in terror without bothering to inform the emperor. 

The emperor takes of bolt of his best silk, climbs a small hill in the imperial garden over looking the palace. He cuts his finger and with this own blood writes in his most beautiful calligraphy: “Son of Heaven”, his imperial title.

He then uses the resplendent silk to hang himself from a branch of a flowering plum tree.

The rebel army takes the city and sets up a new dynasty.

The Fortress at the End of the Wall

 At the edge of the world where the Wall meets the sea, the empire had built a giant fortress to keep the barbarians out of the kingdom. A talented and faithful general assiduously worked at this task for decades, but his emperor has fallen and a new emperor sits on the throne.

The general’s first thoughts: his favorite concubine is in the capital, where he fears that the new emperor will add her to his harem. He looks across the wall and signals the barbarian army, indicating that if they agree to help his army drive the usurper out of the capital and return the emperor’s heir to the throne, he will let them enter the kingdom.

 They agree and the two armies destroy the rebel army. However, as usual the barbarians  declined to return a Ming heir to the throne, placing one of their own there. The Manchu dynasty is born.

 A side note: the pragmatic general kept his concubine and pledged allegiance to the new dynasty and became one of its best generals. (He was a protector of the Kingdom, not of a dynasty.)