Which brings us back, in a very roundabout way, to the fundamental problem of how early Chinese historians wrote their history. Traditional Chinese historians were all trained in the Confucian classics, which emphasized the idea that good emperors behaved like good Confucians. Would-be historians had to know these classics by heart, and they'd imbibed their lessons, chief among which was the idea that in order to maintain the mandate of heaven, you had to behave properly and not engage in orgies, or eat your enemies, or eat your enemies while engaging in orgies. In this history, the political fortunes of a dynasty ultimately rest on one man and his actions, whether he behaves properly. The mandate of heaven is remarkably flexible as an explanation of historical causation. It explains why, as dynasties fell, there were often terrible storms and floods and peasant uprisings. If the emperor had been behaving properly, none of that stuff would have happened.