After The End Of The 3 Kingdoms

[crystak]

So, first it was Shu to be defeated by Wei. Afterwards, Wu fell to the hands of the Sima clan? (Is this considered as Wei as well or is Wei only associated with Cao Cao?).

I know that in 280, the 3 kingdoms ended after the fall of Wu, but what happened from then on? Did Sima Yan, who was the one to end Wu lead the whole of China? This part is a bit confusing .

[Outofin]

Technically, Cao Cao didn’t establish Wei. He was the Prime Minister of Han, but was the de facto ruler. You got most of things right. Yes, the Sima clan founded Jin dynasty and unified China. Jin usurped Wei. We often put the 2 names together and call them 魏晋.

Such intense competition in the Three Kingdoms era unfortunately didn’t create the smartest and strongest survivors. The result was quite opposite: the meanest won. Decades of wars exhausted men and resources. Jin was a weak dynasty. In this sense, the Three Kingdoms was a tragedy.

The great politicians Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang both set up a system to attract talents regardless of one’s birth, and ignore the interests of aristocrats. Jin set back the progress of history and went back to aristocracy. The backward wasn't corrected until Tang.

[rob07]

Such intense competition in the Three Kingdoms era unfortunately didn’t create the smartest and strongest survivors. The result was quite opposite: the meanest won.

The great politicians Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang both set up a system to attract talents regardless of one’s birth, and ignore the interests of aristocrats.

The part of the novel that made the greatest impression on me was where one of Liu Bei's Tiger generals risked his life to save Liu Bei's baby son. Liu Bei (Zhuge Liang's boss) explained to the Tiger general that as far as he was concerned, nothing was more important than the sense of brotherhood he felt with his fighting men. By comparison, his son meant nothing to him, so the TIger general should not have risked his life. To emphasise how little his son meant to him, he picked up the infant and physically threw him away.

In time the son grew up and inherited Liu Bei's kingdom of Shu. The son turned out to be an idiot (probably brain damage sustained from a blow to the head as a result of being thrown away as a baby). Shu kingdom collapsed almost straightaway.

I guess the moral of the story is that while it is obviously a good thing to have a system to attract talents regardless of one’s birth, and ignore the interests of aristocrats, inflicting brain damage on the heir to the throne is probably going a bit far to coddle talent.

[Willxdiana]

Liu Chan wasnt that bad, going by novel he was but if you read san guo zhi the officially biography he was actually okay.

[xianu]

to get back to your question, the Jin was pretty cohesive from 265 to 290, but after the first Sima died, major upheaval and internecine struggle took place. You are a little confused because it is a little confusing. Basically there were too many brothers and cousins vying for control of the throne, and Jia Nanfeng, the empres, was a bit of a tyrant, too, and wanted to put the Jin under Jia control. There was one son, I forget his name, who was described as being very simple, which probably meant he was developmentally disabled in some way, and so made for a great puppet. In the early 300's the Southern Xiongnu under ... I forget who - Liu Ao? - who had grown up in the Jin court, decided to sort of "take back the night" and with the support of his Xiongnu advisors started organizing and attacking sometime around 307. He chose the name Liu because to legitimate his claim to the throne as a descendant of the Han Dynasty Liu clan through marriage of one of the Han princessess to the Xiongnu way back when. By 311 the Xiongnu had taken Luoyang, and sent the Jin aristocracy running (Guo Pu has some great poems about it), and by 316, they had taken the then Jin emperor who was I think only about 13, captive. in 317 a Sima cousin, I think it was Sima Rui, decalred himself Jin emperor, and the Eastern Jin was established in the south at present-day Nanjing, but even then there were a lot of upstarts and rebellions. Wang Dao? in around 324, I think, and Sun or Su somebody? I get the names confused. The Jin stays nominally in control until somewhere around 420(?) when the next dynasty (the Liu Song?) comes in.