was Mulan’s tactical masterstroke on the mountain actually a strategic miscalculation? she fires the cannon and deliberately misses Shan-Yu in order to trigger an avalanche that wipes out his army, but he actually survives the disaster along with enough soldiers to mount a covert attack on the imperial city that almost succeeded in decapitating the emperor and hence the empire.
and that’s just it: why defeat the army if you can just defeat the leader? if Mulan had taken out Shan-Yu with the rocket, the Hun/Mongol/Xiongnu army still presented a formidable threat, but leaderless they would likely not have proceeded to attack the capital, and might have even collapsed into infighting or retreated to their home territory to elect a new leader.
Is Shan-Yu’s army an army that belongs to Shan-Yu, which is bound together and led by him, or is it an army that he happens to be in command of and which has an established chain of command with fallbacks and a coherent strategy? A mob led by a charismatic leader may lose cohesion and splash against the rocks of the imperial moat, but a well-trained army, having lost its head, will grow a new head to overcome the imperial strategy.
difficult to say as the story never clearly establishes the time period or the nature of Shan-Yu’s rule. I was thinking of the tension following the death of Genghis Khan and more significantly his son:
The empire began to split due to wars over succession, as the grandchildren of Genghis Khan disputed whether the royal line should follow from his son and initial heir Ögedei or from one of his other sons, such as Tolui, Chagatai, or Jochi. The Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued among the descendants of Tolui. A key reason for the split was the dispute over whether the Mongol Empire would become a sedentary, cosmopolitan empire, or would stay true to the Mongol nomadic and steppe-based lifestyle. After Möngke Khan died (1259), rival kurultai councils simultaneously elected different successors, the brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai Khan, who fought each other in the Toluid Civil War (1260–1264) and also dealt with challenges from the descendants of other sons of Genghis. Kublai successfully took power, but civil war ensued as he sought unsuccessfully to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families.
what the fuck are you even talking about
well it’s a nerd thing innit, to take a flimsy premise and discuss it with unnecessary seriousness as if it was an important event in the real world and not merely fiction written for maximum drama; much like the cliched question of whether the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars could defeat/escape the Enterprise from Star Trek, it’s less about the actual issue under debate and more about giving people an opportunity to pontificate and grandstand and demonstrate their command of the subject matter and the ability to drag in seemingly unrelated facts from other fields in a form of friendly yet competitive nerd peacocking japery.