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Notes -
My limited understanding of the concept is that it is definitely not that. If you lose power and the rebels are successful and start their own dynasty and govern the nation, then you lost the Mandate of Heaven for Reasons later rationalised by historians and scholars, and the new lot are now in possession of said mandate.
Like the verse says:
It's a means whereby the new Emperor claims continuity and legitimacy; he now possesses the Mandate of Heaven which passed on to him because the previous bunch were bad rulers and misgoverned the country and spent the state treasury on hookers and blow, and corrupt ministers drove the peasants to starvation etc. Thus the new dynasts have a rightful claim on your loyalty as a subject, and they certainly are not traitors and rebels.
Something like Henry VII walking out of the mess of the Wars of the Roses as last man standing and claiming legitimacy by right of descent through his mother from the House of Lancaster, something rather shaky as there were others with just as good or even better claims (in his son's reign, the Poles - because of their mother, who was one of the last remaining members of the House of Plantagenet - were still a threat to Henry VIII as possible rival claimants). Henry VII bolstered his grip on the throne by marrying Elizabeth of York and so presenting a 'union' of the two rival houses for the throne. In Chinese terms, this was his claim to the Mandate of Heaven: presenting himself as a legitimate heir and married to the legitimate heiress of the rival house.
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