Xiahou Mao

Volunteers for the western command out of a grievance: 'My father died in Hanzhong, and to my bitter resentment his death is unavenged.' Xiahou Yuan's son, adopted young by Xiahou Dun, married to Cao Cao's daughter Princess Qinghe after his father fell to Huang Zhong — an Imperial Son-in-Law with great deference at court, a military commission, and no day ever spent with an army. Impulsive and notably miserly. Sneers Wang Lang's objection down with a boast to never see the Emperor's face again unless he takes Zhuge Liang, and leaves for Changan to gather two hundred thousand western troops. The chapter's closing couplet asks whether a lad with callow lip can play the leader.

Takes Han De's eighty thousand Qiang as his van and loses them in a day; admits he had thought the Dangyang story fabricated and now believes it. Adopts Cheng Wu's ambush and directs it from the hilltop with rolling timber and rocks — his one near-success — then breaks entirely, fleeing to Nanan with a hundred horse while his leaderless army 'scattered like rats'. Shuts himself in, endures a ten-day siege, agrees to Yang Ling's counter-ruse, and is in a prisoner's cart by nightfall: taken by Wang Ping at the south gate of Nanan at the very end of the chapter, with nothing done with him afterwards.

The instrument of the feint rather than its target. Asked 'Are you afraid of death?', he prostrates himself, accepts the condition, and is given clothes and a horse and let go unfollowed — carrying the manufactured story that Jiang Wei offered to surrender to save him. Lost on roads he does not know, he is fed the same lie by planted refugees, reaches Tianshui and repeats it, and flatly rejects Liang Xu's correct reading that the surrender is a pretence: 'Where is the pretence when it is a fact that he has surrendered?' Then orders Yin Shang and Liang Xu put to death, which is what makes them open the gates. He does not return to Wei — he flees west by the gate with Ma Zun and a hundred men to shelter with the Qiang. Zhuge Liang's verdict closes the sequence: 'I let him go as I would release a duck. In my friend Jiang Wei I recognized a phoenix.'

Named in passing only, as Cao Rui's cautionary example when Sima Yi asks for four Xiahous at once: the Dynastic Son-in-Law who lost his army in ch92 and 'is still too ashamed to return to court'. Sima Yi's answer is flat - 'They are not like Xiahou Mao in the least.'