State of Han

The weakest of the states that emerged from the partition of Jin, and the birthplace of Han Feizi, who watched it fail and wrote about why.

Han was small, squeezed between Qin and its rivals, and spent its last century losing territory. Han Feizi was a prince of its ruling house. He stuttered badly and wrote instead of speaking, and what he wrote was a cold analysis of why states like his own collapse: rulers who trust ministers, laws applied unevenly, prestige given for reputation rather than results. The King of Qin read the essays, admired them, and later had their author forced to drink poison in a Qin prison.