## On Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Rational Fiction in General

* Author: u/Absox  *Iserlohn Fortress**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8akku2/on_legend_of_the_galactic_heroes_romance_of_the/
* Score: 65

* Created: 2018-04-07T19:51:53

### Post:

Note: Contains spoilers for Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Romance of the Three Kingdoms

In the wake of the release of the 2018 anime re-adaptation of Tanaka Yoshiki’s [Legend of the Galactic Heroes](https://myanimelist.net/anime/820/Ginga_Eiyuu_Densetsu) (Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu, or LOGH for short), I had some musings on it and related topics that I wanted to share with this community. I highly recommend the original series to those who haven’t seen it, though watching it is a bit of a monolithic task; the show is 110 episodes long and originally aired over a 10-year span from 1988 to 1997. It chronicles the turning point in a galactic conflict spanning hundreds of years and is one of two contenders for my all-time favorite animated series (the other candidate being From the New World (Shin Sekai Yori)).

In my earlier post/essay, “[On the Tensions Between Rationality, Realism, and Humanity](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4ctk14/d_on_the_tensions_between_rationality_realism_and/),” I examined the role of realism and human limitations in rational fiction. I argued that in Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Harry is never put to any real test where he must weigh difficult choices against each other, and that this lack of difficult choices is a major shortcoming of rational fiction in general.

LOGH stands out to me because it’s a piece of fairly rational media that seemingly does the opposite; rather than dodging difficult questions, its central concept revolves around the conflict not between good and evil, but between opposing systems of virtue; this conflict is embodied by its two main characters: Reinhard embodies the good that can be accomplished by the individual; the Empire which he rules is a totalitarian government, yet is administered ably and justly, and has brought prosperity and peace to much of the galaxy. Yang on the other hand champions the cause of liberty and representative government, yet the Alliance which he fights for is an ailing democracy rife with corruption and misrule (Coincidentally, this is a narrative increasingly relevant to the current global geopolitical climate, as the institutional rot plaguing the United States and other liberal democracies becomes apparent and totalitarianism in China, Russia, and the world in general is seemingly on the rise). There are no clear heroes or villains in LOGH, nor absolute dichotomies – though Reinhard is an autocrat, he concedes that sustainable government cannot be designed to rely on the genius of one man and routinely relies on his many talented subordinates to implement his plans; though Yang idealizes liberty and the collective will, the battles he fights are often won by his tactical prowess alone, and he finds that through his victories, he himself is gaining an increasing amount of political power and influence.

To those who are familiar with eastern literature, LOGH (and much of Tanaka’s other work) is clearly influenced by the 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (RTK for short), which is a romanticized account of the fall of the Han Dynasty in the 2nd century AD, and the ensuing hundred years of civil war and chaos that followed. Though Liu Bei and his retinue are portrayed as heroes (whereas Cao Cao is portrayed as a villainous usurper) on a noble but doomed quest to reunite the fractured realm and restore the Han Dynasty, the true conflict in RTK is ultimately not between good and evil, but as in LOGH, which emulates RTK in many regards, between opposing systems of virtue. The three kingdoms of Wu, Wei, and Shu Han each hold a specific advantage that embodies an aspect of virtue: Wei has the emperor, and thus the legitimacy of Heaven’s will; Liu Bei, through his benevolence and righteousness, attracts talented characters like Pang Tong and Zhuge Liang to his cause, and thus embodies the virtue of Man; Wu, through its advantage of terrain (which in no small part enables the victory at Red Cliff), embodies the virtue of Earth.

Yet perhaps subtler, and also more important, are the choices that the characters of RTK must make between opposing systems of virtue. In perhaps the central tragedy of RTK, when Liu Bei visits Zhuge Liang to recruit him to his cause, Zhuge Liang, as a Taoist sage, is aware of the cosmic preordainment that has doomed the Han Dynasty, and knows that if he joins Liu Bei, he goes to his own demise. His Taoist sensibilities advise him to be yielding, like water, and accede to the will of Heaven. Yet his Confucian sense of duty to the realm compels him to join Liu Bei, because he knows that quest is a righteous one. Guan Yu, when he allows Cao Cao to escape from Huarongdao after the battle of Red Cliff, repays his debt to Cao Cao, who had previously spared Guan Yu. Yet in doing so, Guan Yu chooses honor over his duty to Liu Bei and the kingdom. Ultimately, Liu Bei himself chooses brotherhood over the empire; though he has the chance to march north against Wei, he chooses to invade Wu to avenge the deaths of his sworn brothers, ignoring Zhuge Liang’s advice to avoid a two-front war by allying with Wu against Wei, and embarks on a disastrous campaign that ends in his demise.

Ultimately, I would encourage people to give LOGH a watch (the original more so than the remake), and I want to make a few last remarks on the topic of rational and rationalist fiction- though (from the subreddit sidebar) rationalist fiction is defined as fiction in which the reader can reach the same conclusions as the characters using the information provided, perhaps there’s something to be said for rational work that isn’t constructed such that there is a unique solution for the reader to deduce; LOGH is one such example in that it presents big questions, such as on the nature of governance and morality, but doesn’t pretend that it knows all the answers, or even that there is any singular answer to these questions. Instead, the reader (or viewer) is encouraged by these works to contemplate the issues for themselves.


### Comments:

> **u/Nighzmarquls** [+9]  (3 hours later)
> 
> It's hard to create genuinely hard choices in fiction as an author. You have to set restrictions on yourself and the flow of fate.
> 
> You have to also keep the balance of consequence and growth.
> 
> It is not easy to do this in general, it is even more difficult to do this in a situation that you are also trying to run everything rational and have the reader be able to make a decision one way or another on it.
> 
> To make the fiction work in that regard you need to build reader empathy with the characters. And characterization is not always very strong in rationalist fiction.
> 
> Barring empathy with the characters making the choices you have to show people what happens because of those choices.
> 
> And it will not necessarily be easy to show people what the other choices the reader might have taken will have as consequences unless you also show some one making that choice.
> 
> And that will increase length, require more tuning to keep the pacing of the story working and so on.
> 
> There is a degree of there are many difficult tasks you are going to end up taking on as a author, Rationalist fiction is one, but that is only one small part of a larger whole of all the other things needed to pull off what you describe.

>> **u/None** [+4]  (19 hours later)
>> 
>> [deleted]

>>> **u/Nighzmarquls** [+3]  (23 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I agree it is possible and it does occur. I'm just saying it increases difficulty in a none linear way.
>>> Handling those situations is really the tricky/skilled storyteller skill on its own. Then if you want to have the audience not just decide the character is an idiot you need buy in/empathy from the audience.
>>> 
>>> Then for rationalist fiction (to meet the full criteria) on top of that you need to run not just the 'sim' of is this person operating with the full extent of their ability and knowledge to accomplish their goals or even pick their goals.
>>> 
>>> Then to make this not mess up the previous elements you have to then take time for the audience to follow along and ingest the information in a well paced manner.
>>> 
>>> It is easier at this point to just cut some corner somewhere.
>>> 
>>> In my own writing I tend to cut on clarity for the maximum audience members. I aim for the emotion and pacing in favor of keeping the audience up to date on ALL information that the characters making decisions in the story are using.
>>> 
>>> But I'm also writing a pretty heavily 'foreign' xenofiction story that is trying to take in some of the themes you are talking about.
>>> 
>>> To use your example of an untrustworthy character.
>>> 
>>> At the whole believable/rationality failing look at grima wormtongue in Two Towers.
>>> 
>>> Operationally this is the scenario you describe about trustworthiness but I'm pretty sure we would both agree the execution leaves both 'hard decision' and 'rationality' lacking in its execution.
>>> 
>>> When your trying to juggle a lot of spinning plates human authors will tend to focus on somethings in absence of others.

> **u/None** [+15]  (an hour later)
> 
> Damn man. No comments? This is deep, heavy water you're treading, and I love it.

> **u/WalterTFD** [+8]  (an hour later)
> 
> Legend of the Galactic Heroes is also available as a series of light novels, and they are pretty great.

> **u/TotesMessenger** [+3]  (13 minutes later)
> 
> I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
> 
> - [/r/hpmor] [On Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Rational Fiction in General (x-post from \/r\/rational)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/8akngw/on_legend_of_the_galactic_heroes_romance_of_the/)
> 
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> **u/captain-burrito** [+2]  (2 months later)
> 
> That just made me think, is the Iserlohn corridor inspired by the path from Shu to Wei in Three Kingdoms?

> **u/tnonee** [-7]  (11 hours later)
> 
> I tried watching it (original), got something like 6 episodes in before I quit. The typical anime whinging was a turn off, I don't enjoy watching children play at being adults.
> 
> OOOOOI N-N-NNAANIIII DES-KA?

> **u/serge_cell** [-4]  (10 hours later)
> 
> Whole point of rationality is making solution of hard choices automatic.

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