petronia

"You think of yourself as a hero but do you know your reputation in Korea?" OUCH THAT HURT. Didn't see it coming. Am shamefully not swotted up re Japanese invasions of the mainland. See, when I say Mirage lacks gen fans what I mean is I need people to discuss the implications of this sort of passage with me.

Of course, in the annals of Lines People Really Didn't Want To Have To Hear, that one still falls quite a ways below "Hullo, Mitsuhide. Haven't seen you since the Honnouji incident, have I?"

Would anyone like me to make a linkpost re the actual historical Yashashuu members plus assorted onshou (given that I, uhm, know crap-all about Japanese history other than what I've learnt from the intarweb, T's textbooks and

tsutanai), or have y'all taken full advantage of Google and Wikipedia already? ...Ahh, screw it. For the sake of reference:

Uesugi Kenshin. From which we learn that the man did not start off as either Kenshin or an Uesugi, which is sort of a general theme of this period. No women, much sake. Apparently this led to a crack rumour that Kenshin in fact was a woman, which perhaps explains Paku Romi (if you don't know what I'm talking about, worry not haha).

List of Uesugi generals (this whole site is rather good for quickie lookups). A surprising - okay, not really surprising is it - number of these people do crop up in Mirage; even if they're not mentioned by name I imagine a whole bunch of them were at Aso *weep*. That and read about the Yashashuu plus Kagekatsu's traumatic parentage. XD; Drawing a chart comes in handy. Also, Naoe Nobutsuna isn't in there because he's terribly obscure. There's an oddly compelling logic behind why Kuwabara picked him to pick on, though, which goes roughly like this:

Naoe Kanetsuna was one of Kenshin's loyal retainers from his early days - iirc he was one of the people who convinced him as a teenager to make a claim for the leadership of the Nagao family. He was considerably older than Kenshin and lived to an advanced age, but had no son and only one(?) daughter, whose name was Ofune I think but don't quote me on that. Nobutsuna was actually the son of a branch of the Nagao family, to whom Kanetsuna married said daughter, at the same time adopting him as heir. After Otate and Nobutsuna's death (Kanetsuna having died before Kenshin), in order to continue the family name, Kagekatsu had Ofune marry - well, damned if I could ever read his original name kanji but Higuchi something, and that was Naoe Kanetsugu. Who is famous. ~~You know it because he's in video games.~~ Thus,

Kenshin (father) -> Kagetora (obscure adopted son 1) -> Kagekatsu (famous adopted son 2)
Kanetsuna (father) -> Nobutsuna (obscure adopted son-in-law 1) -> Kanetsugu (famous adopted son-in-law 2)

.....Makes sense? x_x Oh, and Kanetsugu was Kagekatsu's lover from before he was a Naoe. Somebody'll probably spork me for leaving that point out. ~~Although I swear I won't talk about the Helmet of Love.~~ The point is, by fangirl logic the Uesugi are obviously supposed to have a Naoe each the way Fowls have Butlers or Bagginses have Gamgees, so if you're going to make Saburou Kagetora the protagonist of your book (which is a great idea all things considered, because his backstory is so much plot/angst-fodder), you had better assign him a Naoe as well.

On Kagekatsu, Nagahide etc. ...Uh, tomorrow. *goes back to reading book*