My father’s favorite insult for me was “coward.”
Not in private, but in front of generals, servants, even my own younger brother.

He was lord of a cold mountain province. People knelt when he passed. At home, though, he was just the man who spent more time screaming at me than looking at me. My brother got the smiles, the praise, the hand on the shoulder. I got, “He should become a monk. He’s too soft for war.”

You know that feeling when you realize your own parent is more afraid of you than proud of you?
That was my childhood.

In our world, your father doesn’t just ground you. He can exile you, disinherit you, have you “disappear” on a quiet night. Rumors whispered through the corridors that he wanted to send me away as a “guest” to another clan – which really meant hostage. Out of sight, out of the succession.

So at 16, when he took us to war, it wasn’t to teach me. It was to expose me.

He gave me a small unit, far from the main command. A position that looked important from a distance but, up close, meant nothing. When the enemy resisted harder than expected, he ordered a retreat. A safe choice. A boring choice. The kind of choice cowards love to see their sons obey.

I looked at the castle, at the walls, at the way the guards changed shifts. I looked at my men, already exhausted from marching. And I realized something terrifying and freeing at the same time:

If I obey him now, I’ll die slowly for the rest of my life.

So I disobeyed.
We stayed. We waited. And that night, in the dark, we climbed.

Mud on our hands, blood in our mouths, hearts pounding so loud I was sure the enemy could hear us. We moved like shadows until we were inside the fortress. No backup, no “father’s blessing,” just our own fear and stubbornness. We struck fast, cut down their commander, and took the castle before dawn.

When my father heard, he didn’t hug me. He didn’t say “well done.”
He got angry.

But the generals… they looked at me differently. Respect is noisy when it starts; you can hear it in the way people say your name. It was the first time in my life anyone said mine without a sigh after it.

A few years later, those same men quietly removed my father from power.

No rebellion banners, no dramatic showdown. Just a “diplomatic trip” he never returned from. By the time he realized he’d been exiled, I was already sitting where he had always imagined himself dying: in the lord’s seat, the whole province watching.

I was only 20.

I could’ve become him 2.0. Higher taxes. More fear. More heads on spikes. Everyone would’ve understood. “That’s just how warlords are,” they’d say.

But I remembered the feeling of being that boy, standing in a hall full of armored men, hearing his own father say, “Useless.” So instead of repeating him, I tried something radical for a man with a sword: I tried being fair.

We dug canals so the rice fields wouldn’t flood. We fixed tax records so greedy officials couldn’t steal from peasants and blame it on me. I listened to complaints, even when they came from people who had nothing to offer except calloused hands and honest anger.

Outside our mountains, though, the world was still on fire. Other lords wanted my land, my soldiers, my head. One of them, Kenshin, became my greatest rival. People called me “the Tiger of Kai.” They called him “the Dragon of Echigo.” We faced each other again and again on the same stretch of land, testing each other like two fighters who know the other is the only one worth punching.

And here’s the crazy part: we respected each other.

When other lords tried to starve my province by cutting off our salt supply, Kenshin – the man who had spilled more of my soldiers’ blood than anyone – sent me salt from his own lands. “You defeat an enemy with the sword,” he said, “not by making his people suffer.”

Tell me that’s not the kind of enemy you secretly wish your friends could be.

In the end, it wasn’t an army that brought me down. It was my own body.
On the road toward Kyoto, planning to take the capital and maybe the whole country, I started coughing. Couldn’t catch my breath. Nights felt longer, armor felt heavier, the map on the table doubled and blurred.

I knew what it meant. I’d seen too many men fade like that.

So I did the last ruthless, protective thing I could think of: I ordered my generals to hide my death for three years. Keep the banners up, keep the orders flowing in my name, keep our enemies guessing. If the Tiger of Kai still “lived,” maybe they’d think twice before attacking my son and my people.

They obeyed.

By the time the world learned I was gone, everything had already changed. New weapons, new alliances, new rulers. My son tried, but he carried my name without my shadow. The clan fell. The mountains that once roared under my horse’s hooves belonged to someone else.

Sometimes I wonder, if you grow up with a father like mine, are you doomed to become him… or can you rewrite the script?

People call me a legend now. A “tiger.” A “Napoleon of Japan.” Statues don’t show the trembling hands, the sleepless nights, the quiet guilt. They show the armor, the fan, the horse, the roar.

But I still remember being that boy on the floor of the great hall, pretending my father’s words didn’t hurt.

So tell me, honestly:
If you were my child, would you be proud of the man I became… or would you see just another tyrant who learned how to smile while holding the knife?