Could an emperor be put on trial? In theory, yes.
This was a powerful civilization with an extraordinarily long history and countless talented people.
For a civilization to prosper over the long term, it needed the mechanisms and the culture to spot mistakes and correct them in time.
The Shacha Civilization emperor's authority was supreme, but that did not make him sacred and untouchable. The two were not the same.
His right to rule no longer came from heaven, as it had in ancient times. It came from the people.
The Shacha People were the masters of the Shacha Civilization. Neither the emperor nor the Cabinet Ministers drew their power from above. It came from below.
It was public authority granted by all the Shacha People.
This empire had never belonged to a single family. That kind of empire had been swept away in the age of the first Shacha Civilization.
The royal house was no longer a family, either. It was a people.
By surname, Han Bi, Sa Guala, the emperor, and Qian Liu were all one family. Yet weren't they bitter enemies? Apart from sharing a surname and perhaps having been kin a hundred thousand years ago, they had practically nothing to do with one another.
What Han Bi sought to do now was less like putting an emperor on trial than putting a head of state with a lifetime appointment on trial.
It was not unheard of. Three emperors in history had been tried and removed from power.
But none had faced a capital charge, and none had been accused by an ordinary citizen. Each removal had been orchestrated by a powerful financial conglomerate or an influential Cabinet Minister.
Han Bi was the first to dare confront an emperor without the backing of any conglomerate or minister.