Li Ru

Dong Zhuo's son-in-law and adviser: has him legitimize the march with a memorial, urges the deposition banquet ('put all opponents to death, and your prestige is settled'), defuses the Ding Yuan confrontation when he spots Lü Bu glowering behind him, and blesses the bribe - 'one cannot grudge a horse to win an empire.'

Checks Dong Zhuo's sword at the banquet's end, reads the deposition document aloud, and personally carries out the murder of the imperial family - offering the poisoned cup, throwing Empress He from the window, strangling Lady Tang, forcing the wine down the boy's throat. Then he engineers the empire-wide manhunt for Cao Cao.

Relays the emergency to Dong Zhuo and, after Hua Xiong's death, argues that with Yuan Shao heading the coalition and his uncle Yuan Wei inside the capital, the Yuans must be exterminated and the Prime Minister must take the field himself - both of which Dong Zhuo does.

Turns the street-children's couplet 'a Han on the west, a Han on the east' into the argument for abandoning Luoyang; advises confiscating the rich householders' property as 'rebels'; and designs the layered Yingyang ambush - let the pursuers pass, then close behind them - that breaks Cao Cao.

Li Ru; pushes Dong Zhuo to issue the truce decree so Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan continue weakening each other.

After Dong Zhuo banishes Lü Bu from the sickroom, Li Ru warns that alienating the general will cost him the empire, and has him recalled and soothed with three hundred ounces of gold and twenty rolls of brocade - patching, for now, the crack Diao Chan is prying open.

Li Ru; arrested at home with Dong Zhuo's other supporters; turned over by his own household and beheaded in the marketplace.