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| Image from Marco Polo, streamed via Netflix |
As the Dowager Empress shrewdly recognised, the power of Jia Sidao stemmed from the constant threat of war. Though there was a clear line of succession, which meant that power was now supposed to be on the hands of the boy emperor, no one would feel comfortable having a child, or perhaps his mother, in control of the Song Dynasty, not when the Kublai Khan and his formidable forces could attack at any time. Jia Sidao was a wartime leader. Take away the war, and he was perhaps easier to dislodge from his place of prominence.
