Imperialism is bad. However, it is important to remember why imperialism is bad. Concentrating power in the hands of one person is bad. But it's easy to forget why it is bad. The 2014-2016 TV show Marco Polo deftly reminds the audience of why imperialism and concentrating power in the hands of one person is bad. It does so without resorting to exaggeration, dehumanization or demonization. Indeed, it shows how demonization, exaggeration and dehumanization are the tools of Imperialism: not the tools to break it down. Kublai Khan and Prime Minister Jia are nemeses: long-time foes, in some ways so similar but also in fundamental ways so different. And both are sympathetic. These are both people who have, at various times in history, been called both heroes and demons. But this show feels no need to choose one as it's hero and the other as it's villain. Indeed, one of the best things about TV shows is that, due to their episodic nature, they do not need to pick heroes and villains: a character can be an antagonist in one episode and the protagonist in the next one.
Jia is not the villain, and his actions are both patently cruel and entirely sympathetic. [Side note: he is frequently referred to in the show as "Sidao", but this is his given name. Like all Chinese people, he puts his family name first: so his full name is Jia Sidao, but he would be addressed as "Mr. Jia"] The show gives the audience a true appreciation of the impossible situation that Jia finds himself in: a virtual prisoner within his walled city, taking care of a boy Emperor who doesn't even know what being Emperor means yet. He is a mouse sitting inside a trap, and he knows it. Or as he himself might have said: a grasshopper in a cage, being stroked with a brush. That is Jia's favorite pastime, provoking grasshoppers to fight: so much so, that he is called the "cricket minister" by his enemies. But it isn't simply for amusement. Like everything Prime Minister Jia does, it has a purpose. He observes the grasshoppers, learning how they move. This is, by the way, a real thing that Chinese scholars did and they developed something called "grasshopper kung fu", which was based on the movements of grasshoppers and which was extremely hard for the uninitiated to combat. Mostly due to how few people knew about it. But in a metaphorical sense, Kublai Khan is holding a brush over Jia and making him twitch. He knows he cannot win the physical battle against the Khan.
However, he can win the political battle. He can inspire the people of southern China to believe in the Song Dynasty as they never did when it was at it's height. [side note: the name of the dynasty is not a translation. Their name was "Song" also written as "Tsung" or "Tsong".] He can make the Khan regret taking the city, make him pay for victory with blood and tears. Jia is a commoner, who worked alongside his sister Mei Lin to become Prime Minister. He's clearly also a child prodigy, he can't be more than 30. In many ways he's similar to Kublai Khan: practical, willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, calm under pressure, a good long-term planner. And like Kublai, Jia is willing to take power by any means necessary. However, unlike Kublai, Jia overestimates how much power he truly has. He believes too strongly in the ritual words of flattery and in the power inherent in his office as Prime Minister, too much in the loyalties of people who have no reason to love him or his cause. Kublai Khan knows that in order to keep someone's loyalty, you have to give them something that they want. Jia ultimately fails because he tried to shunt aside the Empress Dowager, he tried to make himself regent for the new Emperor. Because of this, the Mongols have enough loyalists in the South that they can hold onto it: even as revolutionaries fight fiercely. Jia's machinations give Kublai just enough leverage to destroy the Song and their legacy.
Of course, Kublai Khan is no conquering hero. He's a man who stole the throne, and has never sat easily on it. He must generate goodwill from his people by expanding the Empire, and even that doesn't completely stave off rebellion. After all, not every Mongol sees the Empire as completely beneficial. They worry about losing their traditional way of life, especially when they look at Kublai's half-Chinese son Jingim. In order to control Northern China, the Mongols had to take on some traditions and to move their administrative center to China. They gave the city a Mongol name, Cambulak, but there isn't really any escaping the fact that it's China. Nor is there any escaping the fact that Kublai is both Khan and Emperor. He has to wear that golden robe with the five-toed dragon: otherwise the Chinese will revolt. But to the Mongols, it looks like he's selling out. Things are hardly that cut and dry of course: Katie Jones gave both the characters costumes that delicately balance Chinese and Mongol aesthetics. Kublai keeps his clan's traditional hairstyle, but tends to wear Chinese style slippers: the obvious reason being comfort. Jingim wears his hair in a Chinese fashion, not that the girls are complaining, but also wears the traditional Mongol boots and his robes are cut in a decidedly more Mongol fashion: at the knee, rather than the ankle length that would be typical of Chinese civilian clothing. Although made from silk, they are also considerably more tailored: he knows he has a great figure, whereas his father uses the Chinese cut of his robe to disguise his beer gut.
The show also feels no need to demonize Arik or Kaidu: the two rebellious chieftains who challenged Kublai Khan's rule. In particular, the show treats Kaidu very sympathetically: and does an excellent job of showing off how complicated he was. While Arik was mainly just a straw-man conservative: Kaidu is something entirely different. Yes, he's a skeptic of the Empire: but he isn't simply afraid of change. Indeed, Kaidu is an agent of change, just as much as Kublai or Jingim. His vision is for a more egalitarian Mongol society: with female leaders, and an elected ruler who is not put above his people. Kaidu is a man in a family of strong women, who genuinely respects them and sternly teaches his son to do the same. His vision of the Mongols' future is based on a romanticized notion of the distant past: but it is very much a vision of the future that takes into account the political realities of the present day. In other words, he's a feminist several hundred years before that word was even invented: and he's committed enough to start a war. The only thing he hasn't banked on, is Marco's bizarre willingness to protect people who have hurt him. He would have succeeded in killing Kublai to take the throne if not for Marco's last-minute and unexpected intervention. Marco Polo, the son of a disgraced merchant, decided the fate of half the world by stabbing Kaidu in the back. It's almost a tragedy, because Kaidu is a genuinely noble man.
Yet Kaidu's death makes room for another noble man to succeed. Jingim Khan is not known in the West, for a good reason. He was not an expansionist. Having been elected fairly, Jingim had no need for aggressive foreign policy. He was forced into an isolationist stance by the Catholic church's racism, despite them having a common interest in defeating the Ottoman Caliphate. He chose to neither aid nor fight them, which probably led to their ultimate victory in the Holy Land. Jingim isn't simply pretty. The tragedy of his life is that he can't have a child. Chabi makes the hard choice to sanction the rape of his wife, so that he will have heirs and she tries to do it without his knowledge. But he surely knows what really happened, and surely it's painful for him to know even if nobody else does. But Jingim knows that he must make peace with who he is, he learned that from his father. Kublai is under no illusions about who he is: he is aware of both his virtues and his vices, and never wants to avoid the consequences of his choices. He knows that he carries the fate of half the world's people on his shoulders, and that he cannot always control his impulses. He knows he stole the throne, even if he has earned the right to sit there through his actions. He knows when he meets men who are better than he is. Men like Yousef, Hundred Eyes, and Jingim. Far from feeling threatened by these men, Kublai appreciates them and knows that they make him a better person. Indeed, Jingim's virtue is a source of hope for Kublai: an antidote to the cynical world of politics that he so often has to live in. Despite all his faults and struggles and crises, Kublai Khan raised a son who could be a better man and a better ruler than he could. Since Kublai Khan is remembered as a great ruler, that's saying something.
If this show has a hero, then surely it is Yousef. At first blush, it seems like he is the stock Evil Vizier character. But like I said before, the best thing about TV is it's episodic nature. Yousef is first presented as an antagonist because Marco is working for Ahmad, who is Yousef's rival. It basically boils down to Yousef having zero tolerance for bullshit, and Ahmad being a walking pile of it. But, then the perspective shifts when Marco finds Yousef's house. Yousef is the Khan's lieutenant, his right hand man: and when Jingim was younger, the designated regent. It's expected for a man in his position to use that position as a way to enrich himself. Yousef has not done so, his house is bare and he wears his shift (underwear) at home. His court clothes, it turns out, are his only clothes. For a man in his position this is beyond restrained: it's ascetic. But in the end, we can see that Yousef is not doing this simply for himself. His interest is in influencing other people to good behavior: and it works. He knows that everyone around him, including Kublai Khan, views him with awe. Then he manages to upstage himself. Marco reported false information to the Khan, which got men killed at the first siege of Chongqing: the city that Jia Sidao controls. Marco didn't know the information was false, but the people are demanding vengeance: so Marco is condemned. At the last moment, he thinks of a way to earn his redemption: giving the Khan schematics for a wall-destroying siege engine called a trebuchet. A normal catapult can't destroy a wall: it can't throw the stones hard enough or far enough. But a trebuchet uses spin to throw heavy objects faster and farther: so far out that it can't be hit reliably by archers, or even by a typical ballista. They're harder to make, more finicky to use, and crucially in this scenario: useless against personnel. They are not accurate enough to target even large groups of soldiers with any reliability, so they are useless for defense unless the attackers have built structures. Still, someone must pay for the lives of the soldiers. Yousef sent Marco on the mission, but the Khan doesn't want to punish him. However, Yousef forces his hand by writing his own confession. This act of sacrifice is a message both to Kublai and to Marco. Yousef says to Kublai, that he should never let anyone avoid the consequences of their actions no matter how great they are or how dire the consequences. Yousef says to Marco, that no one is going to abandon him as long as he sticks with the Khan. You see, that's the thing about Marco that Kaidu and Ahmad and Jingim didn't understand: but which Kublai and Yousef did. Marco doesn't care whether people like him or whether they are good: he only cares that they don't abandon him. He's willing to protect, serve and care for people who have hurt him: so long as they don't abandon him.
Marco demonstrates this further by saving Jingim's life at the second Siege of Chongqing, without having been asked to. Jingim and Marco didn't exactly hit it off. Marco's honesty hurt Jingim's pride: and the Prince had it out for him for a while. But then, as he lay with arrows in his body among his men, Jingim heard an accented voice cry "Get to the Prince!" He was surrounded by shields, and lifted up while Marco and Byamba led some men in pushing the defenders back. They were outnumbered, but the fight was personal to Marco in a way it hadn't been before. He'd only been fighting the Chinese before because he was told to, he couldn't care less about them. But now, he was fighting for his life: because if this siege of Chongqing failed then he would surely be executed. Better to die on the field. A man with nothing to lose is the most lethal kind of man: as military commanders, detectives and terrorists have always known. Marco Polo, at the second Siege of Chongqing, was a man with nothing to lose. Marco and Byamba push the attackers all the way back to the palace, with the rest of the Khan's men streaming in behind them. The Chinese fight well, but they're no match for the enraged Mongols. Finally, Jia Sidao is cornered but he too fights to the bitter end. The show gives Jia his well earned poetic justice, by having Hundred Eyes beat him at Grasshopper kung fu. Hundred Eyes being the ironically named blind Shaolin monk, whom the Khan keeps enslaved by threatening to destroy all of the Shaolin manuscripts if he leaves or disobeys. The show is pretty unashamed of it's love for kung fu choreography, although it keeps the physics-defying stunts to a minimum.
The Siege was successful, and Marco doesn't just earn back his place as the Khan's agent. He gains the friendship of Prince Jingim as well. But most importantly he demonstrates his best quality: his willingness to help people who have hurt him. Marco is no saint, and does not think he is: but he does have this particular Christian virtue, even if there was a mundane reason why he has it. This is something Kublai and the Mongols have never seen before, it's not something their culture encourages or teaches: but they understand that it's something to admire and try to replicate.
Ahmad is the perfect foil to Marco, because Ahmad parodies this trait. Ahmad appears to be gracious, easily helping people who have hurt him and being kind to people who have tried to be mean to him. But underneath the controlled exterior which has fooled everyone, Ahmad is seething. He's furious, so much so that he has dissociated: until the day when his real identity and the one that the Khan constructed for him collide. It happens when he unwittingly has sex with his mother. She has become a prostitute, the only way for a woman alone to support herself in those days, and he happens to encounter her in a brothel. The realization that he slept with his mother is too horrific, he goes into a psychotic rage and kills all the women including her. And then the rage calms, but the psychosis doesn't.
Yet, Ahmad has a good heart: he doesn't like the violence he is now capable of, the killer he has become. It's the ultimate recipe for making a killing machine: take a boy and strip him from his family, pamper him like a pet but never treat him as an equal. It's what the Ottomans did to the Janissaries, and before them the Persians did to the Immortals. Only Kublai Khan accidentally pointed the weapon he'd created at his own heart. Ahmad's internal conflict fuels his fetish: he wants to be tied up so he can be sure he won't hurt anyone, he wants to be dominated so as to be reassured that there isn't anything wrong with his dark desires. His masochism only enables his ruse, indeed it's the only way such a thing could work. When the Khan compliments him and gives him gifts, Ahmad reacts with genuine happiness. But the problem with reactions is that you can't actually tell what the person is reacting too: just whether or not it's genuine. Ahmad isn't lying, he is truly happy: he's just taking perverse pleasure in being humiliated and dominated rather than reacting out of true love. Ahmad can be patient in conditions that would have broken other peoples' resolve, because he isn't in constant pain. But he is furious and vengeful. The one thing Kublai does not understand about himself is that his love for Ahmad is born out of guilt for what he did to the people he conquered. Raising Ahmad is a way for Kublai to rationalize his Imperial ambitions in a paternalistic way, to see himself as bringing the light of civilization to other lands.
There is a lot to be said for the hybrid Mongol-Chinese culture that has grown up at the court in Cambulak: but the merits of this culture do not inherently justify imperialism. People should choose to take it on, not have it forced upon them. Kublai does genuinely love Ahmad, but his failure is in understanding that Ahmad can never reciprocate his love. Ahmad nearly tears apart the society that Kublai has worked so hard to build up. He made one simple mistake, and that was enough. He believed Mei Lin loyal to him, he believed she hated the Khan and was loyal to the Song Emperor. She wasn't. She only wanted her daughter. Mei Lin ended up helping to kill Ahmad: ah, excuse me, Jia Meilin, sister of Jia Sidao.
The show doesn't need to demonize Ahmad in order to tell this story, nor does it need to demonize the Jias. It doesn't even need to demonize Prince Nyan: the reformed pedophile brother of Kublai. Prince Nyan and Ahmad are good men who have desires they don't like: they deal with these things in different ways. In many ways Nyan illustrates precisely what is wrong with Ahmad: he does not have any way to release his true feelings. Nyan's method is gruesome, but on both a physical and emotional level highly effective: he stabs his own hands, mimicking the Stigmata or wounds of Christ. Yep, he's Christian: having converted after being confronted with the damage his behavior was causing. His self-torture would in fact be effective at restraining his desires, and perhaps even works as a kind of Pavlovian conditioning (although this type of conditioning has only limited effectiveness in organisms of human-level intelligence). When you experience pain the brain releases cortisol, which counteracts any dopamine that might happen to be in your system. This stimulates the fight or flight response, which shuts down the sexual response really quickly. Because Nyan does this every time he feels the desire to molest a child, his brain would soon begin to associate the pain with the desire. This would be effective at restraining him from acting on the desire, and indeed he would probably react violently to the suggestion that he should act on it. But, the desire is only repressed, not vanished. Dogs can't repress their desires: they're incapable of lying about how they feel. But humans can repress their desires: they can act in a way that opposes how they feel sometimes without anyone being able to realize that.
Which brings me (I know, finally) back to Marco. When Marco kills the wolf that is about to rip Kublai's throat out, he's doing something he has every reason not to do. When he stabs Kaidu, Marco is doing something he has every reason not to do. When Marco saves Jingim, he's doing something he has ever reason not to do. But Marco knows that in each case he's doing the right thing. Or, as Kublai says, "the hard thing". This is Kublai's greatest strength as a ruler. He's willing to do whatever is the right thing, regardless of how personally painful for him in might be. But for him, this is something learned: a duty that he is bound to because he is the Khan. For Marco, it's natural: Marco doesn't care if the people around him are morally good, he doesn't care if those people even like him. All he cares about is that they won't abandon him: because that's the one thing he can't stand the thought of. Marco needs a society, a community, and he'll do anything or overlook anything to get it. He'll brand his own father, stand by as his friend is hacked to pieces, fight to protect a man he doesn't like, betray a woman he loves, build a machine to destroy a city, rat out his mentor, etc. Kublai just by being Khan offers Marco what he needs: a supportive authority figure, a father figure. There's a reason we call kings "Sire", and it's because they're supposed to act this way towards their country.
Of course, it doesn't always happen that way: and that's the key problem with monarchy as a system of governance. It's not because all kings are bad but because nobody has the power to stop a bad one. Empire isn't bad because all Emperors are bad: but because Empire-building destroys people's lives and puts cultures at risk. The most benevolent and enlightened rulers in the world can't change that. There is no need to spin a false narrative that all absolute rulers are evil in order to criticize the idea of monarchy. There is no need to demonize every conqueror in order to criticize the idea of conquest, every emperor in order to criticize the idea of Empire.
Jia is not the villain, and his actions are both patently cruel and entirely sympathetic. [Side note: he is frequently referred to in the show as "Sidao", but this is his given name. Like all Chinese people, he puts his family name first: so his full name is Jia Sidao, but he would be addressed as "Mr. Jia"] The show gives the audience a true appreciation of the impossible situation that Jia finds himself in: a virtual prisoner within his walled city, taking care of a boy Emperor who doesn't even know what being Emperor means yet. He is a mouse sitting inside a trap, and he knows it. Or as he himself might have said: a grasshopper in a cage, being stroked with a brush. That is Jia's favorite pastime, provoking grasshoppers to fight: so much so, that he is called the "cricket minister" by his enemies. But it isn't simply for amusement. Like everything Prime Minister Jia does, it has a purpose. He observes the grasshoppers, learning how they move. This is, by the way, a real thing that Chinese scholars did and they developed something called "grasshopper kung fu", which was based on the movements of grasshoppers and which was extremely hard for the uninitiated to combat. Mostly due to how few people knew about it. But in a metaphorical sense, Kublai Khan is holding a brush over Jia and making him twitch. He knows he cannot win the physical battle against the Khan.
However, he can win the political battle. He can inspire the people of southern China to believe in the Song Dynasty as they never did when it was at it's height. [side note: the name of the dynasty is not a translation. Their name was "Song" also written as "Tsung" or "Tsong".] He can make the Khan regret taking the city, make him pay for victory with blood and tears. Jia is a commoner, who worked alongside his sister Mei Lin to become Prime Minister. He's clearly also a child prodigy, he can't be more than 30. In many ways he's similar to Kublai Khan: practical, willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, calm under pressure, a good long-term planner. And like Kublai, Jia is willing to take power by any means necessary. However, unlike Kublai, Jia overestimates how much power he truly has. He believes too strongly in the ritual words of flattery and in the power inherent in his office as Prime Minister, too much in the loyalties of people who have no reason to love him or his cause. Kublai Khan knows that in order to keep someone's loyalty, you have to give them something that they want. Jia ultimately fails because he tried to shunt aside the Empress Dowager, he tried to make himself regent for the new Emperor. Because of this, the Mongols have enough loyalists in the South that they can hold onto it: even as revolutionaries fight fiercely. Jia's machinations give Kublai just enough leverage to destroy the Song and their legacy.
Of course, Kublai Khan is no conquering hero. He's a man who stole the throne, and has never sat easily on it. He must generate goodwill from his people by expanding the Empire, and even that doesn't completely stave off rebellion. After all, not every Mongol sees the Empire as completely beneficial. They worry about losing their traditional way of life, especially when they look at Kublai's half-Chinese son Jingim. In order to control Northern China, the Mongols had to take on some traditions and to move their administrative center to China. They gave the city a Mongol name, Cambulak, but there isn't really any escaping the fact that it's China. Nor is there any escaping the fact that Kublai is both Khan and Emperor. He has to wear that golden robe with the five-toed dragon: otherwise the Chinese will revolt. But to the Mongols, it looks like he's selling out. Things are hardly that cut and dry of course: Katie Jones gave both the characters costumes that delicately balance Chinese and Mongol aesthetics. Kublai keeps his clan's traditional hairstyle, but tends to wear Chinese style slippers: the obvious reason being comfort. Jingim wears his hair in a Chinese fashion, not that the girls are complaining, but also wears the traditional Mongol boots and his robes are cut in a decidedly more Mongol fashion: at the knee, rather than the ankle length that would be typical of Chinese civilian clothing. Although made from silk, they are also considerably more tailored: he knows he has a great figure, whereas his father uses the Chinese cut of his robe to disguise his beer gut.
The show also feels no need to demonize Arik or Kaidu: the two rebellious chieftains who challenged Kublai Khan's rule. In particular, the show treats Kaidu very sympathetically: and does an excellent job of showing off how complicated he was. While Arik was mainly just a straw-man conservative: Kaidu is something entirely different. Yes, he's a skeptic of the Empire: but he isn't simply afraid of change. Indeed, Kaidu is an agent of change, just as much as Kublai or Jingim. His vision is for a more egalitarian Mongol society: with female leaders, and an elected ruler who is not put above his people. Kaidu is a man in a family of strong women, who genuinely respects them and sternly teaches his son to do the same. His vision of the Mongols' future is based on a romanticized notion of the distant past: but it is very much a vision of the future that takes into account the political realities of the present day. In other words, he's a feminist several hundred years before that word was even invented: and he's committed enough to start a war. The only thing he hasn't banked on, is Marco's bizarre willingness to protect people who have hurt him. He would have succeeded in killing Kublai to take the throne if not for Marco's last-minute and unexpected intervention. Marco Polo, the son of a disgraced merchant, decided the fate of half the world by stabbing Kaidu in the back. It's almost a tragedy, because Kaidu is a genuinely noble man.
Yet Kaidu's death makes room for another noble man to succeed. Jingim Khan is not known in the West, for a good reason. He was not an expansionist. Having been elected fairly, Jingim had no need for aggressive foreign policy. He was forced into an isolationist stance by the Catholic church's racism, despite them having a common interest in defeating the Ottoman Caliphate. He chose to neither aid nor fight them, which probably led to their ultimate victory in the Holy Land. Jingim isn't simply pretty. The tragedy of his life is that he can't have a child. Chabi makes the hard choice to sanction the rape of his wife, so that he will have heirs and she tries to do it without his knowledge. But he surely knows what really happened, and surely it's painful for him to know even if nobody else does. But Jingim knows that he must make peace with who he is, he learned that from his father. Kublai is under no illusions about who he is: he is aware of both his virtues and his vices, and never wants to avoid the consequences of his choices. He knows that he carries the fate of half the world's people on his shoulders, and that he cannot always control his impulses. He knows he stole the throne, even if he has earned the right to sit there through his actions. He knows when he meets men who are better than he is. Men like Yousef, Hundred Eyes, and Jingim. Far from feeling threatened by these men, Kublai appreciates them and knows that they make him a better person. Indeed, Jingim's virtue is a source of hope for Kublai: an antidote to the cynical world of politics that he so often has to live in. Despite all his faults and struggles and crises, Kublai Khan raised a son who could be a better man and a better ruler than he could. Since Kublai Khan is remembered as a great ruler, that's saying something.
If this show has a hero, then surely it is Yousef. At first blush, it seems like he is the stock Evil Vizier character. But like I said before, the best thing about TV is it's episodic nature. Yousef is first presented as an antagonist because Marco is working for Ahmad, who is Yousef's rival. It basically boils down to Yousef having zero tolerance for bullshit, and Ahmad being a walking pile of it. But, then the perspective shifts when Marco finds Yousef's house. Yousef is the Khan's lieutenant, his right hand man: and when Jingim was younger, the designated regent. It's expected for a man in his position to use that position as a way to enrich himself. Yousef has not done so, his house is bare and he wears his shift (underwear) at home. His court clothes, it turns out, are his only clothes. For a man in his position this is beyond restrained: it's ascetic. But in the end, we can see that Yousef is not doing this simply for himself. His interest is in influencing other people to good behavior: and it works. He knows that everyone around him, including Kublai Khan, views him with awe. Then he manages to upstage himself. Marco reported false information to the Khan, which got men killed at the first siege of Chongqing: the city that Jia Sidao controls. Marco didn't know the information was false, but the people are demanding vengeance: so Marco is condemned. At the last moment, he thinks of a way to earn his redemption: giving the Khan schematics for a wall-destroying siege engine called a trebuchet. A normal catapult can't destroy a wall: it can't throw the stones hard enough or far enough. But a trebuchet uses spin to throw heavy objects faster and farther: so far out that it can't be hit reliably by archers, or even by a typical ballista. They're harder to make, more finicky to use, and crucially in this scenario: useless against personnel. They are not accurate enough to target even large groups of soldiers with any reliability, so they are useless for defense unless the attackers have built structures. Still, someone must pay for the lives of the soldiers. Yousef sent Marco on the mission, but the Khan doesn't want to punish him. However, Yousef forces his hand by writing his own confession. This act of sacrifice is a message both to Kublai and to Marco. Yousef says to Kublai, that he should never let anyone avoid the consequences of their actions no matter how great they are or how dire the consequences. Yousef says to Marco, that no one is going to abandon him as long as he sticks with the Khan. You see, that's the thing about Marco that Kaidu and Ahmad and Jingim didn't understand: but which Kublai and Yousef did. Marco doesn't care whether people like him or whether they are good: he only cares that they don't abandon him. He's willing to protect, serve and care for people who have hurt him: so long as they don't abandon him.
Marco demonstrates this further by saving Jingim's life at the second Siege of Chongqing, without having been asked to. Jingim and Marco didn't exactly hit it off. Marco's honesty hurt Jingim's pride: and the Prince had it out for him for a while. But then, as he lay with arrows in his body among his men, Jingim heard an accented voice cry "Get to the Prince!" He was surrounded by shields, and lifted up while Marco and Byamba led some men in pushing the defenders back. They were outnumbered, but the fight was personal to Marco in a way it hadn't been before. He'd only been fighting the Chinese before because he was told to, he couldn't care less about them. But now, he was fighting for his life: because if this siege of Chongqing failed then he would surely be executed. Better to die on the field. A man with nothing to lose is the most lethal kind of man: as military commanders, detectives and terrorists have always known. Marco Polo, at the second Siege of Chongqing, was a man with nothing to lose. Marco and Byamba push the attackers all the way back to the palace, with the rest of the Khan's men streaming in behind them. The Chinese fight well, but they're no match for the enraged Mongols. Finally, Jia Sidao is cornered but he too fights to the bitter end. The show gives Jia his well earned poetic justice, by having Hundred Eyes beat him at Grasshopper kung fu. Hundred Eyes being the ironically named blind Shaolin monk, whom the Khan keeps enslaved by threatening to destroy all of the Shaolin manuscripts if he leaves or disobeys. The show is pretty unashamed of it's love for kung fu choreography, although it keeps the physics-defying stunts to a minimum.
The Siege was successful, and Marco doesn't just earn back his place as the Khan's agent. He gains the friendship of Prince Jingim as well. But most importantly he demonstrates his best quality: his willingness to help people who have hurt him. Marco is no saint, and does not think he is: but he does have this particular Christian virtue, even if there was a mundane reason why he has it. This is something Kublai and the Mongols have never seen before, it's not something their culture encourages or teaches: but they understand that it's something to admire and try to replicate.
Ahmad is the perfect foil to Marco, because Ahmad parodies this trait. Ahmad appears to be gracious, easily helping people who have hurt him and being kind to people who have tried to be mean to him. But underneath the controlled exterior which has fooled everyone, Ahmad is seething. He's furious, so much so that he has dissociated: until the day when his real identity and the one that the Khan constructed for him collide. It happens when he unwittingly has sex with his mother. She has become a prostitute, the only way for a woman alone to support herself in those days, and he happens to encounter her in a brothel. The realization that he slept with his mother is too horrific, he goes into a psychotic rage and kills all the women including her. And then the rage calms, but the psychosis doesn't.
Yet, Ahmad has a good heart: he doesn't like the violence he is now capable of, the killer he has become. It's the ultimate recipe for making a killing machine: take a boy and strip him from his family, pamper him like a pet but never treat him as an equal. It's what the Ottomans did to the Janissaries, and before them the Persians did to the Immortals. Only Kublai Khan accidentally pointed the weapon he'd created at his own heart. Ahmad's internal conflict fuels his fetish: he wants to be tied up so he can be sure he won't hurt anyone, he wants to be dominated so as to be reassured that there isn't anything wrong with his dark desires. His masochism only enables his ruse, indeed it's the only way such a thing could work. When the Khan compliments him and gives him gifts, Ahmad reacts with genuine happiness. But the problem with reactions is that you can't actually tell what the person is reacting too: just whether or not it's genuine. Ahmad isn't lying, he is truly happy: he's just taking perverse pleasure in being humiliated and dominated rather than reacting out of true love. Ahmad can be patient in conditions that would have broken other peoples' resolve, because he isn't in constant pain. But he is furious and vengeful. The one thing Kublai does not understand about himself is that his love for Ahmad is born out of guilt for what he did to the people he conquered. Raising Ahmad is a way for Kublai to rationalize his Imperial ambitions in a paternalistic way, to see himself as bringing the light of civilization to other lands.
There is a lot to be said for the hybrid Mongol-Chinese culture that has grown up at the court in Cambulak: but the merits of this culture do not inherently justify imperialism. People should choose to take it on, not have it forced upon them. Kublai does genuinely love Ahmad, but his failure is in understanding that Ahmad can never reciprocate his love. Ahmad nearly tears apart the society that Kublai has worked so hard to build up. He made one simple mistake, and that was enough. He believed Mei Lin loyal to him, he believed she hated the Khan and was loyal to the Song Emperor. She wasn't. She only wanted her daughter. Mei Lin ended up helping to kill Ahmad: ah, excuse me, Jia Meilin, sister of Jia Sidao.
The show doesn't need to demonize Ahmad in order to tell this story, nor does it need to demonize the Jias. It doesn't even need to demonize Prince Nyan: the reformed pedophile brother of Kublai. Prince Nyan and Ahmad are good men who have desires they don't like: they deal with these things in different ways. In many ways Nyan illustrates precisely what is wrong with Ahmad: he does not have any way to release his true feelings. Nyan's method is gruesome, but on both a physical and emotional level highly effective: he stabs his own hands, mimicking the Stigmata or wounds of Christ. Yep, he's Christian: having converted after being confronted with the damage his behavior was causing. His self-torture would in fact be effective at restraining his desires, and perhaps even works as a kind of Pavlovian conditioning (although this type of conditioning has only limited effectiveness in organisms of human-level intelligence). When you experience pain the brain releases cortisol, which counteracts any dopamine that might happen to be in your system. This stimulates the fight or flight response, which shuts down the sexual response really quickly. Because Nyan does this every time he feels the desire to molest a child, his brain would soon begin to associate the pain with the desire. This would be effective at restraining him from acting on the desire, and indeed he would probably react violently to the suggestion that he should act on it. But, the desire is only repressed, not vanished. Dogs can't repress their desires: they're incapable of lying about how they feel. But humans can repress their desires: they can act in a way that opposes how they feel sometimes without anyone being able to realize that.
Which brings me (I know, finally) back to Marco. When Marco kills the wolf that is about to rip Kublai's throat out, he's doing something he has every reason not to do. When he stabs Kaidu, Marco is doing something he has every reason not to do. When Marco saves Jingim, he's doing something he has ever reason not to do. But Marco knows that in each case he's doing the right thing. Or, as Kublai says, "the hard thing". This is Kublai's greatest strength as a ruler. He's willing to do whatever is the right thing, regardless of how personally painful for him in might be. But for him, this is something learned: a duty that he is bound to because he is the Khan. For Marco, it's natural: Marco doesn't care if the people around him are morally good, he doesn't care if those people even like him. All he cares about is that they won't abandon him: because that's the one thing he can't stand the thought of. Marco needs a society, a community, and he'll do anything or overlook anything to get it. He'll brand his own father, stand by as his friend is hacked to pieces, fight to protect a man he doesn't like, betray a woman he loves, build a machine to destroy a city, rat out his mentor, etc. Kublai just by being Khan offers Marco what he needs: a supportive authority figure, a father figure. There's a reason we call kings "Sire", and it's because they're supposed to act this way towards their country.
Of course, it doesn't always happen that way: and that's the key problem with monarchy as a system of governance. It's not because all kings are bad but because nobody has the power to stop a bad one. Empire isn't bad because all Emperors are bad: but because Empire-building destroys people's lives and puts cultures at risk. The most benevolent and enlightened rulers in the world can't change that. There is no need to spin a false narrative that all absolute rulers are evil in order to criticize the idea of monarchy. There is no need to demonize every conqueror in order to criticize the idea of conquest, every emperor in order to criticize the idea of Empire.
