Xin Xianying

She tells her brother to go, and her reasons are the chapter's clearest moral statement. She reads the coup correctly first — 'I do not think so. He only means to slay Cao Shuang, his rival' — and predicts the outcome — 'Cao Shuang is no match for Sima Yi.' Then, asked whether to join Sima Yi: 'You know what a true man should do. When a man is in danger, there is the greater need for sympathy. To be of Cao Shuang's people and desert him in an emergency is the greatest of evils.' A poem closes on her: 'You call him lord and take his pay, / Then stand by him when danger nears.'