Cao Mao

Enthroned in this chapter, and the novel takes care to show what kind of emperor it is getting. Grandson of Emperor Pi and son of Cao Lin, Prince of Donghai, chosen by the Empress Dowager over Sima Shi's candidate as 'of mild temperament, respectful, and deferential'. Met at the Nanye Gate by the whole court, he returns their salutations and, told by Wang Su that a ruler ought not to, answers 'I also am a minister and must respond.' Refuses the imperial carriage - 'Her Majesty has commanded my presence; I know not for what reason. How dare I enter the Palace in such a carriage?' - and walks to the Hall, where he prostrates himself before Sima Shi and has to be raised. Declines the throne modestly and is compelled to take it.

The emperor who tries, once, to keep a Sima at arm's length: 'By special edict Sima Zhao was ordered to remain at Xuchang so as to guard against any attack from Wu.' Sima Zhao ignores it and moves to River Luo, and Cao Mao's answer to that is Wang Su's — buy him off with a title.

Compelled to go on campaign against a rebellion raised in his own name. Asks the obvious question - 'General, you command all the armies and dispose them as you will. Why do you ask me to go?' - and is answered with a lecture about his ancestors sweeping the land clean. 'Cao Mao, fearing his minister's terrible power, consented.' The edict mobilising two hundred sixty thousand men goes out over his name.

Present and irrelevant, which is the point: 'The Ruler of Wei, Cao Mao, was lodging at this time in Xiangcheng.' Brought along on the campaign in ch111 so that nothing could shift behind Sima Zhao, he spends the fall of Shouchun lodged in a town some distance away.

Murdered in this chapter, and the courage is all his. The Lurking Dragon poem he wrote about the yellow dragon in the Ningling well — 'But coiled within a dismal well, / With slimy creatures he must dwell… Alas! Quite like myself in fact' — is the insult Sima Zhao throws back at him in open court. Told by Wang Jing to wait, he answers 'If I can bear this, what cannot I bear? But I will do something, and if I die, what matters?', takes three hundred palace men and a drum, rides out in a small carriage for the south gate gripping his own sword, and stops the mail-clad guards in their tracks with 'I am the Son of God. Who are you thus breaking into the Forbidden City? Are you come to murder your lawful ruler?' It is Jia Chong, not the soldiers, who breaks the pause — and Cheng Ji's halberd that ends it: 'the shout was cut short by a thrust from the halberd full in the breast; another thrust, and the point came out at the back'.

Named only through the crime the rebellion is justified by: Jiang Wei's advice is to denounce Sima Zhao as 'the real murderer of the Emperor', which is the ch114 killing.