Cao Shuang

His rise, and the case against him. Cao Zhen's son, raised in and out of the Palace, named Regent Marshal and Court Administrator on Liu Fang and Sun Zu's recommendation, and at first scrupulous: 'Sima Yi as well as I received the late Emperor's sacred trust, and I mean to be true.' He Yan changes that in two sentences by reminding him whose temper killed his father. He then memorialises Sima Yi into the honorific post of Imperial Guardian, which strips him of the army; gives the three Palace guard commands to his brothers Cao Xi, Cao Xun and Cao Yan; and puts He Yan, Deng Yang and Ding Mi over three boards, Bi Gui over the Capital District and Li Sheng over Henan. Then the descent: Palace patterns in his dress and table service, tribute reaching his house before the Emperor's, eighteen of the late Emperor's handmaids sent to him by Zhang Dang, a chorus of forty well-born ladies, towers and pavilions and gold and silver plate. Warned twice about the hunting — by his own brother Cao Xi and by Huan Fan — and answers both the same way: 'The whole military authority is in my hands, and what is there to fear?' Ends the chapter taking the Emperor and every one of his brothers out of the city at once.

The subject of the first half of the chapter, and its tragedy is entirely his own doing. Caught out hunting when the memorial reaches him, he 'almost fell out of the saddle', and then spends a whole day and a whole night failing to decide anything — 'sad, sighing and weeping' with his sword in his hand. Huan Fan offers him Xuchang, the Son of Heaven, the seal of the Minister of War and the forces at the South Pass, and all he says is 'How can we go to another place when all our families are in the city?' and 'Do not hurry me. Let me think it over carefully.' In the morning he throws the sword down: 'I will not fight; I will yield all; being a wealthy man is enough.' Believes the River Luo oath to the last — even the hundred carts of food sent to his locked house cheer him ('Our lives are safe in the hands of Sima Yi!') — and is put to death in the market place with his brothers, his friends and all their clans.

Named in passing only, and dead since ch107, but he supplies the chapter's two loyalties: Wen Qin 'had been a client of Cao Shuang's' and joins the revolt partly to avenge him, and Yin Damu, also of his party, is on the campaign only to look for a chance at Sima Shi.