What kind of nation was Northern Chu?
Her land was ravaged by war, her population somewhat sparse, her king belligerent and warlike. She was even poor—so poor that every winter, many still froze to death and starved to death.
Yet she made history remember her. She carved her name into the river of time.
She was not remembered for her beauty, her prosperity, or her strength.
She was remembered for the will of Northern Chu's king, Xiang An, and all the soldiers and people of Northern Chu.
The Qin Dynasty perished after its second generation. Warlords divided the land, and kings rose everywhere. Only three remained until the end. One was the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, Xiang Yu. His faults outweighed his merits; he had the chance to end the chaos, yet cast it aside like an old shoe and returned to Jiangdong to live his quiet life, plunging a world that could have been stabilized back into turmoil. Another was Liu Bang. He truly was a good king. He crushed the two Chus, founded the Great Han, and gave the Central Plains the lasting peace and stability that even the Qin Dynasty had failed to provide.
But his victory was not all that glorious.
War itself was never glorious. It was bloody, cruel, filthy, even nauseating.
But people always preferred something prettier.
And Northern Chu and her king, Xiang An, happened to be the "prettiest" of that era.
She rose from the chaos, suffered every pain, and never abandoned her ideal of ending the turmoil that gripped the world. Yet she also commanded an unparalleled army and brave, battle-hardened generals, enough to sweep across the realm for years, only to narrowly lose in the very end and fall upon Dingdou Plain.
But precisely because of that, she was romantic.