Through the intervention of Hesperia, the novel explores the ramifications of empire and colonialism. To a lesser degree, the novel also explores this theme via the Federation of Mugen, who colonize the Nikara mainland after Rin destroys their home, the Longbow Island. The clash of empires in The Burning God parallels real world conflicts in Asia during World War II, and the novel functions as a loose allegory for this period in world history. Hesperia is analogous to Britain and France, while Mugen is analogous to Imperial Japan. Rin’s Southern Coalition correlates to Mao Zedong’s Communist Red Army, while Vaisra and Nezha’s Republicans correlate to the Nationalists, who attempted to work with the European colonists that Communists considered imperialists. While The Poppy War delved into Mugenese invasion and The Dragon Republic showcased Hesperia’s colonial strategy, The Burning God is about how people in a colonized country interact with their oppressors, as they are forced to reckon with colonial violence and cultural erasure.

In resisting Hesperian imperialism, leaders in Nikan sometimes become oppressors in their own right. People like Rin and Daji will sacrifice anything to resist the Hesperians, who come from a distant land and view themselves as superior to everyone in Rin’s world. However, as part of the Trifecta, Daji ruled over the annexed tributary state of Speer, seeking to subjugate them just as the Hesperians seek to subjugate all of Nikara. Daji created a false narrative about the Mugenese committing a genocide in Speer as part of their imperial efforts, to cover up how Riga was actually responsible for the event.

Rin likewise rightly sees Hesperia as the threat to Nikara culture. However, she perpetuates the same dehumanizing rhetoric toward the Mugenese that the Hesperians perpetuate toward her. Rin is conflicted and angered by Hesperia’s claims toward racial and religious supremacy, especially she knows her Pantheon really exists, in contrast to the distant, conjectural god of the Hesperians. Rin craves a more nuanced view of multiculturalism than the Hesperians provide, but she perpetuates the same rhetoric when discussing the Mugenese. When killing them she convinces herself that it doesn’t matter that “they were nothing, nothing like the monsters she had once known” because she is fighting “war of racial totality” that demands black and white categorizations (23). To morally justify her own actions, Rin generalizes all Mugenese, not unlike the way Hesperia generalizes all Nikara or all shamans. She recalls Altan saying they were “Half-breed brats. Beastly freaks. Stupid savages” (22). While being critical of Hesperia’s dehumanization of the Nikara, she uses the same dehumanizing rhetoric against the Mugenese. Eventually, Rin believes her true war “wasn’t civil” but “global” (580): she wants to “bring down the west” to free Nikan (580). Rin’s complicated relationship to colonialism and racial supremacy show the degree to which colonialist ideologies are multidirectional and multifaceted. Her actions raise questions about who is complicit in colonial violence and whether such violence justifies further violence. 

People like Vaisra and Nezha work with Hesperia to a degree, though they do so for different reasons. Vaisra is so desperate for power that he works with Hesperia to be instituted as a puppet ruler. He exploits the Mugenese impulse toward colonization for the same purpose, letting them “coloniz[e] the south in a matter of months” while he fought Daji to “undercut his own allies in a long-term ploy to strengthen his own grasp” on Nikan (13). In doing this, Vaisra reenacts the exploitative strategies of a country like Hesperia, perpetuating colonialism in his own country. Vaisra’s method of interacting with Hesperia is one of the only strategies the novel definitively positions as wrong rather than morally ambiguous or complex.

Nezha, by contrast, tells Rin that he knows Hesperia wants them to be “another slave society for them to exploit” and he “will not see this land ruled by foreign hands” (101). However, in order to do this, he wants to “make concessions” and “stay in their good graces” (602), something Rin is unwilling to do. This is the primary impetus for their conflict, as Nezha continuously tries to recruit Rin to his side and she resists, causing the civil war that leads to millions of Nikara casualties.

Moments before dying by suicide, Rin tells Nezha that “the only way forward” is for him to tell Hesperia he killed her: “Tell them everything they want to hear. Say whatever you need to to get them to trust you […] Fix this” (613, 614). In her final moments, Rin faces the bleak truth: The West’s technology and impulse to colonize the East is so overpowering and relentless that colonization is unavoidable, and the type of resistance she was attempting only succeeded at killing her countrymen. The novel does not make prescriptive assertions about how to resist colonization. Rather, it points out the impossible choices people are forced to make when doing so.