Dum vita est spes est

a heroic breakout later ensued (after arthur and francis ate some food swiped off the grocery shelves) 

India doesn’t have a tilaka on his forehead because the Mughal emperors were Islamic, not Hindu (though of course, a big proportion of Indians during the Mughal era were still Hindus). 

lol nothing to see here kids, move along 

i suppose i have lived quite a long life, mei guo.  

anw drawing the great grandpa in han dynasty clothing is always a great distraction

Yao’s chosen zombie-killing weapon is a  shaolin spade whereas Alfred’s got a plain old shovel. Imo Yao and Alfred would make quite a pair- Alfred is super strong but really quite freaked out because he’s NEVER seen anything like this. And obviously a hell lot more against the thought of dying because of how young he is. Whereas Yao just looks deceptively youthful and sometimes unnerves Alfred with his old man logic and calm resignation that “well even if we should fail, all nations have to die eventually anyway” haha

(sorta morbid but see when the first emperor unified the country, he kinda thought that to herald the dawn of the new era of unified china, he had to wipe out dissent and our past histories. and that consisted of burning books and burying scholars alive.)

procrastination doodles: Sadık, four hundred years ago

hello update, you kind of broke my heart.

all aboard the angst train, everyone

i’ve been quite preoccupied with the concept of the mortality of the nations thanks to the update and like, canon!wise it’s interesting to explore how China is so old that he was actually around and would remember plenty of eras and civilisations that are now long gone…

hello why yes gilbert is getting inordinate attention from me thanks to you know what, so here’s to Friedrich von Steuben’s role in slapping the US Continental Army into shape during the American Revolutionary War. Also, I do like exploring the idea of young Alfred, because it’s so interesting to remember how he wasn’t always a superpower.

happy 25th anniversary!

The Taj Mahal was built during the era of Mughal India, by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. It was a gigantic mausoleum to mourn his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, when she died in childbirth, giving birth to their 14th child. It’s considered one of the finest pieces of human architecture, and it took 21 years to complete in the 1600s.

“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

Also, Iran is mostly Shi'a Islam, whereas Turkey is majority Sunni Islam (it’s a sectarian difference like Catholic/Protestant in Christianity). While they were at loggerheads most of the time, Iranian culture greatly influenced Ottoman Turkey and also Mughal India- Ottoman fashion often followed that of the Iranian court :P Selim I was indeed a pretty accomplished poet who wrote in both Turkish and Persian- he greatly expanded the borders of the Ottoman Empire by the time of his death- and it’s under his son Suleiman the Magnificent, that the empire reached its height. Tulips seem to have first been cultivated by Iranians, and were a very popular plant in Ottoman Turkey.