I adore how they made the assasins artists though, and the collasping of the books scene, because that punched in the corruption of culture

Bigger'n that. It's Confucianism vs. Legalism. Confucius basically says that above all, be a gentleman-scholar, which means you've got to know arts and rituals and stuff like that. One must be benevolent, and concentrate on self-cultivation in order to teach by example. One must also honor the past, even if that shite doesn't make sense in a modern context, and one has the right to criticize authority that isn't behaving in a gentlemanly way. Legalism, which was the philosophy under which the First Emperor ruled, is sort of proto-Socialism. Everything is done towards the good of the state, cold practicality above all--they saw the Confucians as weak and a threat to centralized power, which in many respects it was. Major, major persecution of the Confucianists during Huang-ti's reign, and then the Confucians came back into power and badmouthed him for centures. Legalism didn't come back into style till the second half of this century (it does have some good parts to it).