Cao Pi

Eighteen, born under a day-long purple halo, a skilled swordsman and writer since age eight: when Yejun falls he brushes aside the guards at the Yuan family door, strides in sword in hand, and finds two women weeping in each other's arms - the chapter ends with the blade raised over them.

Cao Pi; takes Lady Zhen as wife when Yejun falls. The chapter's romance set piece.

Cao Pi; helps supervise the Bronze Bird Tower at Yejun.

Wins the heirship by Jia Xu's coaching: no rival panegyrics, just copious tears at every farewell — and bought praise from his father's attendants. Named heir when Jia Xu murmurs about Yuan Shao and Liu Biao.

The succession war's quieter operator: smuggles Wu Zhi into the Palace in a basket to plot, survives the search by Wu Zhi's silk-rolls counter-trick that turns suspicion onto Yang Xiu, obeys the gate wardens where his brother cuts them down — and finally bribes a servant to filch Cao Zhi's coached answer-sheets, ending the contest.

Named heir in the deathbed verdicts — 'steady and serious; he is fit to succeed me' — he weeps out to meet his father's golden coffin, and is invested Prince of Wei, First Minister, and Protector of Jizhou on Hua Xin's extorted edict. The banquet is still warm when word comes: Cao Zhang is marching from Changan with a hundred thousand.

Consolidates everything: receives Cao Zhang's army and sends him home, opens the Prolonged Wealth era with a new slate of ministers, breaks Yu Jin with painted walls, drives Cao Xiong to the noose and Cao Zhi to the seven-pace test — sparing him in tears at the beanstalk poem, demoting him to Anxiang. Tests Meng Da's defection with Liu Feng's head, parades three hundred thousand through his ancestral Qiao, mourns Xiahou Dun — and by the eighth month the omens are being read and forty officials are in the Forbidden City proposing abdication.

Ends the Han with theatre: two decorous refusals scripted by Sima Yi and Jia Xu, then the Fanyang terrace where the Emperor hands him the seal before three hundred thousand witnesses. Era: Yellow Dawn. He demotes the man he deposed to Duke of Shanyang, quips 'now I understand the story of Shun and Yu' — and is answered by a storm that snuffs the terrace lights and leaves him prostrate and ill for days, fleeing haunted Xuchang for a new palace at Luoyang.

Named in passing — the usurper Zhao Yun and Zhuge Liang would rather fight, and the threat Zhuge Jin proposes to ally against.

Reads the memorial smiling — 'because he wants the armies of Shu driven off' — takes Zhao Zi's measure with five questions and grants the kingship anyway, over Liu Ye's warning that it is 'giving wings to a tiger.' His plan is colder than either: wait until Wu and Shu are at grips, and destroy whichever survives.

Reads Liu Bei's doom off a scout report — 'he does not know how to wage war... we shall hear of it in about ten days' — and aims past the victor: refuses to strike Shu, and readies three armies against WU instead (Cao Ren to Ruxu, Cao Xiu to Dongkou, Cao Zhen to Nanjun) for the moment Lu Xun marches west.

Loses all three armies against Wu — Ruxu, Nanjun, Dongkou — and confesses 'this has come from my willfulness'; pestilence takes half the survivors home. Then Liu Bei's death revives him: over Jia Xu's caution he takes Sima Yi's grand design, five armies of a hundred thousand each — Qiangs on Xiping Pass, Mangs on the south, Wu through the Three Gorges toward Fucheng, Meng Da on Hanzhong, Cao Zhen on Yangping Pass.

Rages at the new Shu-Wu league, scorns Xin Pi's ten-year patience, and builds Sima Yi's dragon fleet — ten ships of two hundred spans, three hundred thousand men. At Guangling the fog lifts on a hundred miles of wall and warriors that turn out to be reeds in uniforms; the storm drenches his dragon robes; the word of Zhao Yun at Yangping Pass turns him around — and the retreat runs through Sun Shao's ambush and a river of blazing fish-oil reeds. 'We can do nothing against those talents of the South Land.'

Cao Pi; off-stage in the north.

The Wei half of the chapter is his whole life in miniature. Wins Lady Zhen at the sack of Yejun — Yuan Shao's second son's widow — and she bears him Cao Rui; then takes Guo Yong's daughter as Beloved Consort, and when she wants the Empress's place he believes Zhang Tao's fabricated wooden image with his own birth-date on it and forces Lady Zhen to kill herself. Names Cao Rui heir not for ability but for pity: the boy weeps rather than shoot the fawn whose mother his father has just killed — 'My son, you would make a benevolent and virtuous ruler.' Falls ill in the fifth month, reads his own death in the collapse of the Xuchang gates, and confides his son to Cao Zhen, Chen Qun, Sima Yi and the late-arriving Cao Xiu. Dead at forty after a seven-year reign; posthumously styled Emperor Pi.

Twice invoked, once in each register. Wang Lang's oration makes him the legitimate heir — 'His son and successor, Emperor Pi, was wise and warlike, adequate to the great heritage.' And in the Wei court he is the authority behind the appointment: Wang Lang recommends Cao Zhen because 'whenever General Cao Zhen was sent by the late Emperor on any expedition, he succeeded', and Cao Rui presses the command on him with 'The late Emperor confided me to your guardianship.'

Dead, and named twice as the better past: he 'regarded them with favor' in the Qiang relationship Guo Huai revives, and it was under him that Meng Da held every title and honour that Cao Rui's court then made intolerable — 'But when Cao Pi died, all was changed.'

Named at the close of the memorial's argument about the impossibility of forecast — after Wu broke its pledges and Guan Yu was defeated and Shu was checked at Zigui, 'Cao Pi assumed the imperial style'.

Named in passing only, in Wang Su's memorial, paired with his father as a precedent for turning back: 'Emperors Cao and Pi, attacking Sun Quan, reached the river, and went no farther.'

Named in passing only, in the opening genealogy, as the emperor who confirmed Gongsun Gong in the lordship of Xiangping and gave him the rank of General of the Flying Cavalry.

Named in passing only, in the anecdote of the two sweating boys: 'Emperor Pi noticed one day that the elder boy was sweating and asked him the reason... The Emperor was discerned the extraordinary ability of the boy.' The one scene in the chapter that is thirty years old.

Named in passing only, and long dead, as the grandfather whose descent makes Cao Mao eligible - the Empress Dowager's whole case for him is that he is 'grandson of Emperor Pi'.

Named in passing as the exact precedent for the abdication: 'Still Cao Pi succeeded the rule of Han. Can I not in like manner succeed that of Wei?' - and the answer, 'Cao Pi's action may be taken as a precedent to succeed an older dynasty.' Forty-five years to the day, by the mandate read on the terrace.