No.5 is a mature politician with political ideals. No.5 had deep insight and high sensitivity to most political struggles in history.

No.5's constant patience and obedience led to worse and worse situations. And the result is that the people paid for it. No.5's remedy was only to ensure the existence of the ruling class, so he is a selfish man. The more pragmatic No.5 was in such a perilous situation, the more he prolonged the duration of the movement and the more he wreaked havoc on the people. Ironically, he was one of the sources of the problem, yet he had to fix the problem. Without No.5, the 10-year disaster would not have lasted so long.

No.5 never dared to resist. One of the few times No.5 resisted was to protect his political life, and it was only for that reason that he would dare to protect his political allies. The two things No.5 kept thinking about in the last moments of his life were actually about preserving his political reputation. Compare to No.5, Lin dares to resist if necessary (even if Lin ended up fleeing, but that's a form of resistance). As someone said, perhaps their infighting is the only way for the people to get out of this mess.

From the people's point of view, No.5 is very irresponsible, but if you look at it from the point of view of the continuation of a ruling party, his behavior makes sense—it's the future of the ruling party that he's trying to protect.Also to be protected is his own reputation. The people, however, were only the last consideration.No.5 and his wife were the finest performing artists on the stage in history and had misled many people.

But why? Why did a lot of politicians like No.5 become like this? This reminds me of a book review of ‘How the Hongtaiyang Rose', which is entitled "How Ideals Are Lost." They had been deeply influenced by the May 4th Movement.They used to advocate democracy and science; almost all of their key members were idealists. However, the Lenin-style parties themselves did not have a good system of transferring power; they never tolerated different political views, and purge became a habit of the Lenin-style parties to deal with dissenting views. The Big Brother's Rectification Movement eliminated healthy democratic forces and dissenting factions (although, as it turned out, The Big Brother's political views at that time ensured the party's growth), which led to a situation in which individuals within the party could only survive and promotion by obeying and touting The Big Brother.This also means that almost all of them had lost their ideals.

Of course, I'm not saying that politicians in a democratic political system are equivalent to idealists. The good thing about the modern democratic political system is that there will be a bunch of rules to limit the power and minimize the damage to the people when the power does evil, while the Monarchy cannot.No.5's fate revealed the tragedy of every minister in a bottomless political struggle and also the tragedy of all the people of this land.

The author's writing skills are not as good as Gaohwa, while some of the historical information lacks the presentation of sources, as well as too much subjective speculation (Jin Chongji said so). But considering who the author used to be (which means that the author's sources of information are the secret documents he has access to), I think most content in the book is fairly objective.