Chinese Luzon: To hear the Lim Royal Family tell it, Limahong was driven to piracy because his critique of Ming corruption drove him out of polite society, and into a life of banditry. But surely, the illustrious Limahong was a well-read, well-educated Chinese man; how else can one explain his conquest of Manila Bay, where he rallied Chinese merchants and local Ilocano peoples to build a fortified state which could resist Chinese naval attacks? Oh sure, mistakes were made, such as the massacre down to the last man of Spanish prisoners when their expeditions first arrived to the region, but surely this was the result not of Limahong's leadership but of his savage Ilocano allies, who would soon peacefully acquiesce to Sinification in the interest of creating a heavenly harmony in Limahong's kingdom.
Certainly the Lim family loved China, for when the Famine Wars in the south and the Imjin War in the north caused the destabilization of the Ming in the 1590's which sent them into a fatal downward spiral, did they not send out fleets to fight rebels and the Japanese? Of course, mistakes were made, and some towns were razed and the population robbed and enslaved, but the fog of war causes such unfortunate miscommunications to occur where one gets confused about who the enemy is. Indeed, in the greatest show of loyalty, was it not the Lim family that sent their ships to the Yangtze to stop the foreign invaders there, thus saving the Ming dynasty in the south? And was it not the Lim family who pledged their men as bodyguards to the last Ming princes? And when these last Ming princes kept accidentally falling down stairs and onto knives, spears, and pistols thus ending the Ming Dynasty, was it not Lim Chen who stepped up, restoring order to southern China and claiming the mandate of Heaven for the Chinese?
Yes, it must be that the Lims were ordained by Heaven for their goodness and righteousness, saving southern China from foreign domination and granting the pearl of the South China Seas, Luzon, to the Chinese cultural sphere. It cannot be that they were a clan of desperate pirates who failed upward onto the Imperial Throne over heaps of corpses. That would just not do.
