User talk:Wombat1138

"Grandfather", Celestials, and the Ming/Qing dynasties

There could be an entire generation/branch of Celestials missing if some of them went with the "Southern Ming Dynasty". Heck, for all we know, "Grandfather" was bonded to the Chongzhen Emperor (1611-1644) and stayed with him in Beijing while the other Ming princes fled with all of the other living Celestials and their eggs, leaving behind only the Celestial eggs carried but not yet laid by Imperial females.

Chongzhen killed all of his daughters except one, and all of Chongzhen's sons seem to've died/disappeared. This leaves plenty of questions about what might've happened to their dragons, if any. The first Southern Ming claimant, the "Hongguang Emperor", was Chongzhen's nephew; it looks like the subsequent Southern Ming claimants were more distant relatives, but still collaterally related to the Ming imperial family.

...there might also be some issues about whether the Jiaqing Emperor would've been properly referred to as such during his life. In modern Japanese usage, at least, the reign name is only used to refer to previous emperors; during the reign, the emperor is simply referred to with a title that means "the current emperor". On the other hand, as with the Wade-Giles/pinyin issue, it's possible to handwave a lot of slips as being filtered through Laurence's imperfect understanding of Chinese customs/language. (This gets more difficult for sections narrated from Temeraire's POV, but hey.) --Wombat1138 11:54, 18 August 2010 (PDT)