62 pages • 2 hours read
R. F. KuangThe Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Series Context: The Poppy War Trilogy
Content Warning: This section discusses self-harm and genocide.
The Dragon Republic is the second book in a trilogy; it is preceded by 2018’s The Poppy War and followed by 2020’s The Burning God. The events of The Poppy War lay the foundation for The Dragon Republic’s focus on military operations and the characters’ emotional trauma, particularly that of the protagonist Rin and her surviving friends.
At the beginning of The Poppy War, Rin is a war orphan from the Second Poppy War. She lives with a foster family that mistreats her and tries to marry her off for their benefit. Rin wants to escape her village of Tikany in Rooster Province, and she convinces a scholar named Tutor Feyrik to tutor her for the “keju,” a country-wide exam. The students who score highest from each province can attend the tuition-free military academy at Sinegard, and Rin sees this as her way out. She studies for years, burning her arms with candle wax to improve her focus. This is the beginning of her relationship with self-harm, which lasts throughout the trilogy.
Rin tests into Sinegard but is an outcast due to her dark skin, southern accent, and poverty. She is harassed by two beautiful, pale-skinned northerners: Yin Nezha and Sring Venka, both of whom are Rin’s allies by the beginning of The Dragon Republic. Only Chen Kitay befriends Rin. At Sinegard, Rin begins studying “Lore” under a mysterious teacher named Jiang Ziya, who teaches her about shamanism.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Mugen invades Nikan, eventually attacking Sinegard Academy. During the battle, Rin accidentally calls on the power of a god called the Phoenix. Rin is not only a shaman but one of two survivors from Speer, an island of people tied to the Phoenix. The second survivor is Altan, who was a grade above Rin in school. After the battle, Rin is assigned to Altan’s elite force of shamanic assassins, the Cike. Altan teaches her about calling the Phoenix, but Rin finds her rage and powers hard to control.
The Cike respond to the aftermath of a massacre by the Federation in a city called Golyn Niis. Kitay and Venka both barely survive. Altan wants to raise an army of shamans to destroy the Federation. He goes to the mountain where shamans are interred when they become lost to their power and frees a former Cike member called Feylen, who is completely lost to the Wind God.
Altan and Rin are captured by the Federation, who perform experiments on them. They manage to escape, but Altan self-immolates to destroy the lab. Alone, Rin swims to Speer. Consumed with rage and grief, she calls the Phoenix, and her power causes volcanic eruptions on the Federation, killing most people on the continent.
Kitay and the remaining Cike rescue Rin. Kitay does not forgive Rin for her actions, but the Cike accept her back into their ranks as commander. She begins using opium to dull the Phoenix’s power. When The Dragon Republic starts, Rin and the Cike are in the employ of the pirate queen Moag, who holds Kitay prisoner, and Rin is regularly high on opium due to her guilt and inability to control her power.
Historical Context: The Opium Wars, the Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil Wars
The Poppy War presents a military fantasy version of several historical conflicts: namely, the Opium Wars and Sino-Japanese Wars. In the novel, Hesperia introduces opium to Nikan and exploits the following state of mass substance use disorder; this parallels Britain’s role in spreading opium use through China and the subsequent trade disputes that escalated into two Opium Wars. These wars roughly correspond to the First Poppy War in the book. The book’s Second and Third Poppy Wars roughly correspond to the two Sino-Japanese Wars between the Republic of China and Imperial Japan. Many events in The Poppy War directly mirror historical events. For instance, the Massacre at Golyn Niis reflects the Nanjing Massacre, and Rin and Altan’s torture corresponds to the medical experiments of Japan’s Unit 731.
Further, Vaisra’s rebellion correlates to the beginning of the 1927-1949 Chinese Civil War. Vaisra is a parallel for Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist Party, also called Kuomintang, or KMT. Chiang’s goal was to reunify China after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the last emperor of China. Daji is likely a combination of the last emperor of China, Puyi, and Empress Dowager Cixi, who was the true power behind the rule of the emperor before Puyi, the Guangxu Emperor. Like Daji, Cixi was a longtime ruler who was criticized for the methods she took to prolong the life of her Empire. Puyi, like Daji, was the last emperor of their nations. Puyi was criticized for his cooperation with Japan—he was seen as a Japanese puppet. While Daji never allies with Mugen to this extent, Rin criticizes her for ceding to the Federation at all; she allows them some territory in Nikan and is willing to work with their emperor. However, Daji thinks that working with the Federation is preferable to allying with the colonizing, Westernizing forces of Hesperia.
In 1926, Chiang was appointed commander of the National Revolutionary Army. The same year, he launched a military operation called the Northern Expedition to conquer northern warlords; this is similar to how Jinzha sails north under Vaisra’s command in The Poppy War. Like Vaisra gets aid and military inspiration from Hesperia, Chiang went abroad for inspiration to innovate his army. Vaisra’s wife Saikhara follows Makerism and was educated in Hesperia, while Chiang’s wife Soong Mei-ling was a Christian educated in the United States.
Vaisra manipulates and exploits the southern Warlords and their “peasant” population, attacking and killing them once they’ve served their purpose. Similarly, Chiang used communist forces to capture Shanghai and then suppressed the south. This led to a division between the KMT and the Communists. This division is paralleled by how Rin, Kitay, Venka, and the southern Warlord Gurubai split from the Republic. Rin realizes that Vaisra used a “vision of a democratic government” to ultimately deepen class divisions and instate a form of Western fascism with himself as the militaristic figurehead (652)—exactly as Chiang did after the Xinhai Revolution. Rin realizes that there is an untapped market of “lives to spare” in southern peasants (653), who would “do anything to get the chance to fight” (652). This realization primes Rin’s parallel to Mao Zedong in The Burning God, which is inspired by the latter part of the Chinese Civil War.
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By R. F. Kuang
