Thus Spake Zaraholden/GoldenAgeOfTheShogunate

The Dragon-Blooded Golden Age, aka the Shogunate

The hell it is. The Shogunate portrayed in the Aspect Books is subject to fairly regular collapses and overthrows of the central government, a crumbling infrastructure too complex for them to properly maintain, and constant border warfare with the Fair Folk that ends in defeat or stalemate far too often for anyone's comfort. Not to mention piss-poor relations with Heaven bordering on active obstructionism. The Dragon-Blooded hearken back to it as some kind of rose-tinted golden age because there were way more of them back then, and there was always a war going on to march off and be a hero in, in an ironic tragedy of the commons sort of way, plus they had greater access to cool magitech weapons like Dragon Armor. The Realm has proved itself to be a far more stable and widely prosperous governmental system than the Shogunate ever was, but nobody gets to call himself "Daimyo" so it rankles.