Professor Andrew Meyer

Qi was a very powerful state and it had grown very big.

The other great power in the north was the state of Jin, which was directly to the west of Qi.

And Jin and Qi had both grown to these big sizes by swallowing other states.

What you would find is that in both Jin and Qi, you have this very complex internal social structure where ostensibly you had the duke at the top in both states, but honeycombs throughout the states were dozens.

It was a simulacrum of the larger Zhou system where you had the king and 100 vassals.

Each of the regional lords had sort of emulated the Zhou kings in parceling out land and responsibilities to kin and allies.

And you would find in a state like Qi or a state like Jin, you would have all of these regional noble families.

The ruler of the regional state, they were called by courtesy Duke.

Almost all of them, actually, the rank that they held, I translated as Marquis.

You would find about half of the vassals of this Marquis were his cousins, were people who came from his clan.

And each of them was given the rank of Viscount.

And about half of them would then be allied families.

What you found in each regional state is that a process went on that sort of mirrored the larger problem going on in the Zhou Dynasty, which is that all of those regional, those little sub-feudal vassals fought with one another and devoured one another.

And in the internecine struggles between them, the internal power dynamics of each state became undermined and subverted and volatile.

Long story short, it was a hot mess.

She is this great, great power in the East.

They had become very powerful over several centuries.

In part, it was the product of the prestige of their ruling clan.

The ruling clan was this Liu clan.

They had been very close allies of the founding Zhou kings.