Chapter 156
Things had gotten seriously out of hand.
Where, exactly, had things gone wrong?
Had that rotten Ming finally gone insane?
It would be maddening enough if they told us to send another collateral member of the royal family... but the Crown Prince?
In other words, they were telling us to accompany young Crown Prince Munjong all the way to Beijing.
Well, when you considered the matter carefully, this was not something that was completely impossible by the standards of the time...
When Yi Seong-gye was king, Yi Bang-won, who was effectively second in line among the princes, had gone to Ming and returned.
Even when Yi Bang-won was king, Grand Prince Yangnyeong, who was Crown Prince at the time, had gone to Ming and returned.
So Crown Prince Munjong being summoned to Ming was neither particularly unprecedented nor something that absolutely could not happen.
The important thing was that the responsibility our diplomatic mission would have to shoulder had grown enormously.
While I was spacing out for a moment after being confronted with this bewildering fact, someone approached me and immediately began shouting.
"Chief Secretary!"
"Yes, My Lord Vice Commissioner of the Central Military Office."
"What are you doing right now? We are about to accompany His Highness the Crown Prince to Ming to perform a court visit (going to Ming to meet the emperor and pay our respects), so not the slightest gap can be allowed in our preparations... And someone who is supposedly the chief secretary is letting his mind wander during working hours. Good grief, back in my day, such a thing would have been unthinkable. This all happened because my younger brother is far too soft and failed to properly maintain discipline among the officials. Good grief, what is going to become of Joseon..."
The post of Vice Commissioner of the Central Military Office was an honorary position created to show consideration to a person of ministerial rank who held no particular office.
And the man hastily appointed to that position was Huh Ju, the old-fogey demon king who was displaying the full power of an old fogey before me—a man so old-fashioned that even Huh Jo clicked his tongue at him.
Huh Ju was the eldest son, but after he suffered a stroke, his younger brother Huh Jo took charge of the ancestral rites. Apparently, an unavoidable situation arose that led him to violate the rules of ancestral rites ever so slightly.
When Huh Ju learned of this, he mercilessly rebuked his younger brother, calling him a disgrace to the family...
According to the records, the minister Huh Jo only received forgiveness after standing outside his brother's door and begging forgiveness for three days.
As someone that old-fashioned, he was extremely well versed in ritual etiquette, which was why King Sejong had specially brought him in to oversee protocol for this Seongjeolsa mission.
"Even I, despite suffering from a stroke, have dragged my disabled body out here to work. And a young fellow who is not even in his mid-twenties is losing focus during working hours?"
"I beg your pardon, My Lord."
"Yes, but were you listening to what I was saying?"
"You were saying that the hat among the ceremonial robes Ming bestowed on Grand Prince Yangnyeong when he went to perform a court visit could cause a problem, were you not?"
Even in the twenty-first century, not the slightest breach of etiquette was permitted at a ceremony involving protocol.
If an important person visited a military base and a soldier honestly answered, “There are some difficulties,” instead of saying, “I love military life,” the general would immediately launch into a top-down ass-chewing.
Even when arranging seating at a dining table, failing to seat important people in the proper order often resulted in the unit commander raining fire down on everyone.
How much more important, then, was etiquette in East Asian cultures dominated by Confucianism, where observing ritual was considered more important than human life?
If even one mistake occurred here, it might not go so far as to destroy relations between Joseon and Ming, but several people could physically lose their heads.
"That's right. When His Highness was Crown Prince, the hat worn by the minister in charge of state affairs on the Seongjeolsa mission was identical to the hat worn by then-Crown Prince Yangnyeong."
There is a saying that one should not judge people by their appearance, but honestly, that is nothing more than an unrealistic ideal.
That is because every person living in human society possesses the instinct to judge others by their appearance.
Moreover, on the diplomatic stage, where etiquette was strictly enforced, there were rigid rules requiring people of different status to wear different clothing.
In such a Confucian cultural sphere, it was a very serious problem for two people of different rank within a Seongjeolsa mission to wear the same “hat.”
"Ming will also know very well that this is incorrect according to proper etiquette."
Huh Ju, who had been furiously angry until just moments ago, changed his attitude, nodded, and agreed.
"That is why the Ming bastards will try to blow this into a serious matter and find fault with us if we do not go wearing the ceremonial robes they bestowed on us this time. And His Imperial Majesty will sternly rebuke the young Crown Prince."
"The ostensible reason they deliberately included His Highness the Crown Prince in this Seongjeolsa mission and had him perform a court visit is that, as the Crown Prince of a tributary state, he ought to appear at the imperial court at least once. But the real reason is that they want to hear why Joseon conquered the Jurchens beyond the Pajŏ River, judge whether Joseon intends to betray Ming, and tame us to suit their own wishes, is it not?"
"They know that the protocol is incorrect, but seeing as they have not said a word about His Highness the Crown Prince's hat until now... they are clearly planning to find fault with it when they summon the Crown Prince who has come to perform a court visit this time."
One method frequently used by important people, especially those with thoroughly warped personalities, to relieve their stress is to endlessly harass someone over an incredibly trivial problem.
For example, suppose there is a subordinate who makes the mistake of setting the font size in a report to 11 pt when it should be 10 pt...
They say that anyone who set the font size to 11 pt must either be incredibly stupid or completely out of their mind.
Then they get furiously angry, asking how they can possibly accomplish anything with a subordinate like that, and even launch into a “back in my day” tirade, asking whether food can really go down his throat after committing such a blunder.
When the subordinate being reprimanded turns miserable, they then claim that the subordinate's direct superior must have taught him improperly.
This time, they call in that superior and scold him in exactly the same way in front of the subordinate.
The man calling himself the emperor of Ming could be considered the same sort of person.
No, to put it more bluntly, he wanted Joseon to show that it could not dare resist and would only tremble helplessly before him when he acted this way.
Therefore, we must not give the Ming bastards any grounds to find fault with us in the first place.
"So, although it goes against Joseon's etiquette, are you saying that we should wear the ceremonial robes they bestowed on us for now, so that we do not give them grounds to find fault with us?"
"Yes, exactly. And we must show the Ming Ministry of Rites that we are deeply troubled by this and apologize, saying that it would look bad in His Imperial Majesty's eyes."
"That is a wise idea."
The Joseon we commonly imagine as doing nothing but bowing and scraping before Ming only appeared after the Jungjong Restoration.
Before that, Joseon was in a relationship where it was sometimes extorted by Ming and sometimes showered with gifts, gradually being tamed.
After going through all of that, how could we possibly like Ming?
Everyone privately savaged them with a liberal sprinkling of profanity.
They merely endured it because those bastards had a large population and powerful military forces.
It was like secretly beating an old-fashioned boss hundreds or thousands of times until his nose bled profusely, yet smiling and treating him politely whenever we actually faced him.
"It would be best to follow exactly the protocol used when Grand Prince Yangnyeong performed his court visit."
"Thanks to you, my worries have been greatly reduced. Then we will follow that protocol. But the truly important question is what justification we will present to legitimize our conquest of the Jurchens. Is that not the real issue?"
One of the most infuriating flaws of the Ming bastards was that they thought everyone in the world was their subordinate.
No, to be more precise, they lived while harboring that delusion.
They naturally considered even Vietnam, where their influence did not reach at all, to be their vassal, sending a massive army when it dared to ask, “You dare try to become independent?”...
During the Qing dynasty, they seized extremely important men sent by the East India Company or the British Foreign Office and made a great fuss, insisting that they were all subjects of the Qing and had to perform the three kneelings and nine prostrations.
In that respect, they considered all the Jurchens their subordinates as well.
Thus, they granted powerful Jurchen tribal chiefs nominal titles and insisted that they were their subjects.
The nominal title Ming granted Imanju, whom Joseon had punished this time, was “Assistant Commander of the Jianzhou Guard.”
An Assistant Commander was nothing more than a lowly nominal office that Ming's own constables would not even recognize, but its official rank was Senior Third Rank.
This suggested that they could make a huge fuss, claiming that Joseon had punished an extremely important Ming official for no reason at all.
"If we say that we punished Imanju because he dared cross Joseon's border and try to plunder our territory, the matter is effectively settled. There is no need to overcomplicate it."
Even if Imanju was treated as an extremely important Ming official, that was only his nominal status.
In reality, if you put it in terms of an online game, Imanju was nothing more than a hostile humanoid monster.
So why should we make lengthy excuses over having subdued someone like that?
In a case like this, the longer our excuse became, the more opportunities we would provide them to find fault with us.
"However, it could become troublesome if they took issue with Joseon's attempt to expand its territory northward. How about telling a single lie?"
"You mean deceiving the Ming court? That will not be easy."
"I am not suggesting that we tell an obvious lie."
The important thing about a lie is to tell it at a decisive moment, in a way that prevents the person being deceived from noticing.
"We should say that we heard testimony that Imanju had joined hands with Northern Yuan, united part of the Jianzhou Guard, and intended to attack Datong (the northern frontier of Ming), as well as Joseon's Pyeongan and Hamgyeong Provinces."
From Ming's perspective, there was no way to verify whether this rumor was true or false.
But they knew very well that Northern Yuan was the sort of entity that was more than capable of doing exactly that.
Even if they captured Jurchens living along the Pajŏ River and heard their testimony, the important question would be whom they would believe if the Jurchens' words contradicted Joseon's.
They would never trust the words of Jurchens who were close to Northern Yuan.
"This should be enough to provide us with cover. We can discuss the rest again once Lord Choe Yun-deok, who has been chosen as the deputy of this Seongjeolsa mission (the person in overall charge in this case), returns."