It was all that these millions of nameless, suffering voices could throw back against the god-like figures of a bygone age~ those lofty, pride-filled men, those dissolute women who charmed high and broke all the rules- who caused all the horrors to happen, who died too early to suffer with the rest of them, who abandoned them all without guidance in centuries of torment. Considering that untold millions of people were suddenly cast out of their prosperous lives from splendor, tolerance, and prosperity, and within a mere decade saw most of their families dead, their realm torn apart, see themselves reduced to savages and never see a future where even their grandchildren could rise again, one could forgive them for the harshness of these vengeful patchwork of testimonies. If the very simplified, overtly moralizing characterization of the three figures above sounded like shallow caricatures- ghosts to be resurrected to be denounced in stern warnings and preserved in eternal memory as object lessons, the modern reader should realize that the An Lushan rebellion laid as a membrane between a dream and a nightmare. Though this lofty number have been repeatedly challenged, even the most conservative historians still would mark the death toll at around least around 13 million, still 1/5 of the empire, and 13% of the world's population~ a figure that was only eclipsed by the global genocide of the Mongol invasions and the 2nd World War. Its all they could say to give explanation to the universal hellscape around them in what we would call the An Lushan Rebellion- a calamity that some academics have to have point out to have killed 2/3 of the Empire, a shocking 36 million people in the 750s~ or, translated to fractions: 1/6 of the entire globe at that time. That's what a layman who lived in 8th century China would have told you about the burning, dying world around them.
A foreigner who became the most powerful general in the realm, a fatal beauty who corrupted the Emperor's good senses, and the beloved Emperor whose sins incurred the wrath of Heaven.