Home / Dynasties / Division and Reunion / Three Kingdoms
Three Kingdoms三国
220 – 280
Wei, Shu and Wu contend for the realm — later romanticised in fiction and opera.
States of this period
The 3 states this heading covers, in rough date order.
- 魏Wei 220 – 266
- 蜀Shu 221 – 263
- 吴Wu 222 – 280
魏 · Wei220 – 266
- Emperor Wen of Wei Cao Pi, 187 – 226 · founding emperor of Wei Cao Pi was the second son of Cao Cao who took the step his father never dared take, accepting the abdication of the last Han emperor in 220 and founding the state of Wei. In seven years he codified the law, created the nine rank system for selecting officials, and bound the imperial clan so tightly that no prince could defend the throne when a regent's family took it; his three campaigns against Wu all failed, and on his deathbed he left the regency to three men of whom the ablest was a Sima.
- Emperor Ming of Wei Cao Rui, 205 – 239 · emperor of Wei Cao Rui, emperor of Wei from 226 to 239, was the last ruler of his house to hold power in his own hands: he held the passes against every northern campaign of Zhuge Liang, annexed Liaodong, rebuilt the law and reformed the rites, and spent as freely on palaces as his father had tried to save. Dying at thirty-six with his sons dead before him, he entrusted the regency to Cao Shuang and Sima Yi, and the armies he had spent his reign holding became the inheritance of the house of Sima.
- The Prince of Qi Cao Fang, 232 – 274 · third emperor of Wei Cao Fang was the adopted son of Emperor Ming of Wei, set on the throne at the age of eight, and for fifteen years he watched two regents fight over the government of the north until one of them shut the gates of the capital in 249 and took it. His reign ended in 254 when that man's son deposed him, and he lived twenty more years as a prince and then as a duke.
- The Duke of Gaogui Cao Mao, 241 – 260 · fourth emperor of Wei Cao Mao was a grandson of the founding emperor of Wei whom the regent Sima Shi put on the throne at the age of thirteen, and who spent his six years as a scholar-emperor in a court that no longer belonged to his family. In 260 he took a few hundred palace servants and went out with his own sword against the troops of the regent Sima Zhao, was killed in the street by an officer named Cheng Ji, and had his imperial title taken from him; the histories remember him, without any posthumous name, as the Duke of Gaogui.
- Emperor Yuan of Wei Cao Huan, 246 – 302 · last emperor of Wei Cao Huan was the last emperor of Wei, a grandson of Cao Cao who was fetched from the northern city of Ye and set on the throne at fifteen in 260, and who reigned for five years without once deciding anything himself. In 265 he yielded the throne to Sima Yan and took the title prince of Chenliu, living on another thirty-seven years at Ye as a guest of the Jin.
蜀 · Shu221 – 263
- Emperor Zhaolie of Shu Han Liu Bei, 161 – 223 · founding emperor of Shu Han Liu Bei was a poor descendant of the Han imperial house who spent forty years as a soldier without lasting territory, trading on lineage and a reputation for decency until he took Jing and Yi provinces and made himself king of Hanzhong. When the Han was usurped in 220 he declared himself its rightful emperor under the name Han, ruled one province for two years, and died in 223 after a ruinous campaign against Wu.
- Emperor Xiaohuai of Shu Han Liu Shan, 207 – 271 · second and last emperor of Shu Han Liu Shan was the second and last emperor of Shu Han, who took the throne at seventeen and reigned forty-one years by handing the government to one minister after another, to Zhuge Liang, then Jiang Wan and Fei Yi, then Jiang Wei and the eunuch Huang Hao, each transfer reasonable when made and each leaving his small state weaker. He surrendered to Wei in 263 without a battle, was made Duke of Anle in Luoyang, and is remembered for one line, that this place was pleasant and he did not think of Shu.
吴 · Wu222 – 280
- Emperor Da of Eastern Wu Sun Quan, 182 – 252 · founding emperor of Eastern Wu Sun Quan inherited the southeast from his murdered elder brother at nineteen and held the lower Yangzi for fifty-two years, bending to Wei while bending served him and taking the imperial title last of the three founders, as the Great Emperor of Eastern Wu. He built his state on the loyalty of the great families, hereditary military commands and a river navy, and the same cold calculation that kept it alive turned in his last years on his own sons and hounded his greatest general to death.
- The Prince of Kuaiji Sun Liang, 243 – 260 · emperor of Eastern Wu for six years Sun Liang was the second ruler of Eastern Wu, set on its throne at the age of ten in 252 and taken off it at sixteen, and he is known by no imperial title at all: the histories remember him by the demoted princely rank he held when he died, the prince of Kuaiji. Through his six years the government lay in the hands of three regents in succession, Zhuge Ke, Sun Jun and Sun Lin, and the one act the record gives him on his own account was a failed attempt to kill the last of them, which cost him the throne and, within two years, his life.
- Emperor Jing of Eastern Wu Sun Xiu, 235 – 264 · third emperor of Eastern Wu Sun Xiu, the sixth son of Sun Quan and third emperor of Eastern Wu, was a bookish prince in Kuaiji when the regent who had deposed his predecessor set him on the throne in 258. Within two months he destroyed that regent and his clan, and in six years he did what few rulers of Wu attempted, founding an academy, appointing erudites of the Five Classics, and lightening the land taxes; he died at thirty in 264, leaving a child heir and a government run by two favourites.
- The Marquis of Guiming Sun Hao, 242 – 284 · last emperor of Eastern Wu Sun Hao was the last ruler of Wu and the last of the Three Kingdoms' three emperors, a grandson of Wu's founder who took the throne in 264 as a young man praised for his mercy and died in 284 in the capital of the power that had destroyed him. He reigned sixteen years, and turned a state that had outlived both its rivals into one its own court could not defend, killing or driving out the ministers and commanders who might have saved it, so that he is remembered both as the emperor who opened his granaries and as one of the most notorious tyrants in Chinese history.
Contemporary regimes
States that existed at the same time as the Three Kingdoms, in whole or in part.