[Zhang Fei]

[Not in Russia. Russians are religiously conditioned to sacrifice their very lives to advance the policies of their Tsars. They even have a famous opera about it.

https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/repertoire/opera/susanin1/]

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Imperial cults are organized and funded by ruling houses in hopes of legitimizing and prolonging their rule. Roman rulers were semi-divine, as were the ruling houses of Alexander and China’s First Emperor, at least in the way they depicted themselves to the hoi polloi. Their falls from power were no less spectacular or bloody. Effusive expressions of loyalty under duress or via material inducements are different from what people do when unbound.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

Imperial cults are organized and funded by ruling houses in hopes of legitimizing and prolonging their rule.

You've just described the Mongol empire, the paradigm which Moscow copied to overcome all the other cities in the forest zone of what had been Kievan Rus. In 600 years it hasn't changed all that much.

Look into this "Eurasianism" cult that is influencing Putin now.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”They even have a famous opera about it...

Roman rulers were semi-divine, as were the ruling houses of Alexander and China’s First Emperor, at least in the way they depicted themselves to the hoi polloi.”

Some legends are so powerful they are recycled.
The Man Who Would Be King by Kipling 1800s.

The Man Who Would Be King, movie 1975.

That Roxane must have been a looker, with good teeth.