There were no white banners at my funeral. There were no joss clothes, there was no jewellery. There was not even someone bowing to honour my spirit. Even in death, when my ugly, white body was concealed, they still saw me as a monster. There was no imperial ceremony like that at my father's funeral, there was no tomb filled with gold and pleasures, there was no funerary band nor were there mourners.
Is this what my life was worth? Is this what its worth trying to industrialise China? Is this what its worth for trying to bring back the imperial family and taking power away from traditionalist monks who cannot hold a sword?
Is this what everything I did to make my ancestors and especially my parents proud is worth?
I wasn't blessed with love and respect the day I crawled out of my egg. I wasn't showered with gifts for simply being alive for yet another day. I wasn't idolised nor was I respected. Not even my own parents respected me.
All because they couldn't see underneath these disgusting, sickly white feathers that I was a peacock just like them. I had the same emotions, empathy and desires as every peacock in China!
My father isn't innocent, he has committed countless of genocides on civilian villages suspected of stealing the method for making gunpowder. Yet because I gathered my own men and went there myself I am a monster and a murderer? When my father and the traditionalists who took his side kill countless civilians they're venerated as heroes, but when I wipe a village off the map because it is a genuine threat to the imperial throne I am a villain?
When my father invented something that was merely cosmetic and frankly useless, he was venerated as the greatest peacock in the Southern Han's history, but when I invent a useful tool to defend our empire and protect everything we know and hold dear, I'm going down a dark path? When my father killed every Gazelle in Chongqing because of a suspected Crusader uprising, he was claimed to have defended the empire and Chinese culture from a risen menace that would destroy all we knew and loved. Yet when I kill every panda in China's borders, and fail, I am spat on and disrespected by everyone in Gongmen.
Had I been vibrant and blue like my father, there would have been thousands at my funeral.
There would have been the purest of white banners made of the finest silk, there would have been hundreds of portraits, all hand-painted by the greatest artists in East Asia. There would be bands from all over the world playing funerary songs and entire cities worth of people crying over my body.
Had I been vibrant and blue like my father, I would have had the luxury of a mother's love. I would have had the honour of being called "Emperor Shen". I would have had the embrace of a peahen and the embrace of the heir she gave me. I would have a tombstone above a royal tomb of gold and red, next to my father's. I would have buildings named after me and monuments of memoriam. I would have been a hero, and I would have been loved.
Yet here I lay face-down, veiled in the silty mud of Gongmen Harbour. A nameless cluster of flesh and feathers, put to the sea's filthy horrors, without a name to remember my body by.
While I know I restored the Imperial Family, and while I know I was the true last Peacock Emperor,
China thinks that the last peacock monarchs were my father and mother: Liu Lian and Liu Ai.