If you are going to claim divine right to the throne, it seems it makes sense that natural disaster are the divine displeasure manifest.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Explanation: In pre-modern societies, there is a tendency to assign the cause of natural disasters to the displeasure of supernatural forces with the behavior of mortals. When a disaster was widespread enough, it would often lead to the ruler losing legitimacy and being overthrown.
In Imperial China, this was known as "The Mandate of Heaven", but you see variations of this general line of thinking in nearly every pre-modern society, from Greece to Egypt to India to Germany.
Hell with that.
Home the Emperor responsible. He should have invested in the necessary institutions during the fat times to prepare downturns.
Damn straight he lost the Mandate of Heaven and the people should hold him appropriately accountable.
I don't think food could be preserved as well back than and as effective as it can now + The food yield from a single farmer isn't enough to have significant rations.
Grain is pretty easy to store, and the big issue is the fluctuations of pre-modern harvests. A good year might be nearly triple an ordinary year, while a bad year might be half or less of an ordinary year. And farmers have precious little control over that.
Rice and wheat are common crops because they do last several years kept in the proper conditions. Hence why granary construction is important.
Food storage is like the whole point of agriculture.
Damn, you right tho
Additionally now we better understand how much of an impact human activity has on climate.
I hate that I know about this already because Ive read an ungodly number of xianxia/xuanhuan novels.
"Pre-Modern"
Yeah, we are not as far past this as you might think - much of the anti-lgbt moral panic included allusions that natural disasters of all sorts were because we were becoming to "morally deficient" by treating the LGBTQ community as people.
It has been quieter in the last decade or so, but the 2000s were bursting with that attitude.
tbf many of those people are pre-modern relicts who would gladly burn people at the stake too
And how hurricanes and tornadoes are caused by "the gays".
Where I live far-right politicians blame natural disasters caused by climate change on the (non-white) immigrants. While simultaneously denying climate change.
Yeah, Mandate of Heaven. That's why New Sorpigal is overrun with those crazy Baa fanatics.