Dev Diary #5 吳越國 Wuyue
OK, this was the final dynasty to be done for a reason. While not the biggest, as it was spared destructive invasions and was annexed peacefully by Song it managed to keep lot's of records intact. Chiefly the official history of the kingdom 吳越備史 was composed on the Song court, a honour which wasn't granted to any other state of the so called 10 kingdoms. Also the region itself is replate with Provincial Gazeteers written during Song, Ming and Qing dynasties which also preserve informations not present in the official histories.
Thanks to that the provincial history could be completed to the level impossible for many other regions. All 13 provinces are ruled by historical prefects starting in 867.1.1 all the way until the annexation of Wuyue by Song in 978.6.9. Typically in other regions I started from the top, first adding Jiedushi as title holders in all provinces and then adding known prefects to the history. This time it was possible to do it the other way around.
11 Provinces of Wuyue, divided between 3 duchies:
Zhenhai (鎮海) with the capital at Hangzhou (杭州) held by the King of Wuyue. Known also as the Western Administration (西府).
Zhedong (浙東) later known as Zhendong (鎮東) with the capital at Yuezhou (越州) and officially helf also by the king of Wuyue, but most of the time delegated to a deputy. Known also as the Eastern Administration (東府).
Weiwu (威武) with the capital at Fuzhou (福州). It was gained in 946 as Min desintegrated following invasion by Southern Tang and partitioned.
I'll only add that the coverage for Southern Tang is not that bad either, not as good as for Wuyue, but it's a far cry from Southern Han where very little is preserved in terms of local administration.
The only reason the family trees of Chinese clans are so big is that in those times they didn't have sexual education in schools. But jokes aside, Lin'an Qian went to be a major figurers in Song politics. While there will be still lot's of reserach to be done later, I already went through the History of Song 宋史 and at least two funerary epigraphs and added known Lin'an Qian characters to the game, for example Qian Duanli (
錢端禮) who in 1168 was made a prefect of Ningguo (寧國府), which during 5 dynasties era was known as Xuanzhou (宣州). Let's say, I'm playing a long game with this mod.
Progress report:
- Balhae done, working on the successor states. The problem is that historians can't really agree on the details as the history of the region is quite murky, so expect possibly controversial decisions.
- Added more provinces for Liao and Qay, so they will be a bigger threat for the dynasties in the south.
- As I neglected Liao history before I'm currently taking care of that. Luckily, the History of Liao (遼史), while fragmentary, preserves quite a lot of information, so Liao Emperors won't be holding all provinces.
Now the question. Do you guys prefer to have release later, but with Korea already in the mod? Or earlier with Korea added in 1.1? It's still gonna take me some time to patch up Liao and Balhae successor states, but Korea would for sure push the release well into July.