“It’s you who aren’t the son of Father Yisügei,” replied Begter. “Belgütei, Qasar, Qachi’un, Temüge, Temülün,, and I are all his children, but only you are different. I know it! Everyone in the settlement knew it. You’re the only one who doesn’t. Merkid blood flows in your veins. You just used Ö’elün’s body to be born into this family―that’s all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You may think it’s a rumor and no more, but go ask Mother. Your mother, the woman who gave birth to you, she knows all this better than anyone. If you can’t stomach asking her yourself, then ask yourself the question. Father Yisügei didn’t love you at all. Did it ever occur to you wonder why?”
Temüjin understood Begter’s words the moment he heard them, for he had held so very much pent up inside him for a long time. It was like a mighty rainstorm pounding around his ears.
“Why are you speaking such nonsense?” said Temüjin, rejecting Begter’s every word. His voice had lost its resounding echo necessary to coerce an interlocutor. He didn’t beliee Begter’s words, but he was indeed sharply hurt by them. They were the final blow to Temüjin.
The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan
by Yasushi Inoue
translated by Joshua Fogel
One of the world’s most ruthless warriors, Chinggis Khan conquered nearly all of Asia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, transforming the scattered and impoverished Mongols into an exceptionally proud and powerful nation. In this riveting and thoroughly researched portrait, Japan’s celebrated epic novelist drives at the root of the khan’s great desires and insatiable appetite for supremacy.
Beginning with his birth in 1162, The Blue Wolf follows the crucial alliances that led to Chinggis Khan’s great campaigns in North China, Bukhara, and Samarkand, as well as the state of Khorazm. The khan was obsessed with his ancestry, not knowing whether he was the descendent of the blue wolf (mythical progenitor of the Mongols and the noble Borjigin line) or merely the bastard son of a Merkid tribesman. For Inoue Yasushi, Chinggis’s ancestral anxiety lies at the center of his relentless push for empire. He struggled with his paternity as intensely as he fought his battles, and his victories stood as proof that the brave warrior was a true Mongol.
The question of paternity also formed the largest wedge between Chinggis and his eldest son, Jochi, a boy born in captivity and of similarly questionable heritage. Hailed for its sophistication and rich imagining of a remote world, The Blue Wolf puts a human cast on a legendary force that changed Asia and the world.