Part 12: Endorph's Romance of the Three Kingdoms Corner #1 - Sun Quan and Shangxiang

I'm gonna nerd out about the three kingdoms and none of you can stop me.

Wu

Wu's foundation was laid by a man named Sun Jian. Sun Jian was a man of no particular family name from the Wu commandery in Yang province. He got a minor government post and would have probably lived out his life there, but then when he was about 17 he saw some river bandits hassling some merchants, so he went to the shore of the river and started making motions as if he was ordering soldiers around. The bandits got spooked and fled, and a minor army official saw this and recruited him. Sun Jian saw a lot of service during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, as well as Dong Zhou's uprising, and formed a band of loyal followers. However, he died in battle when he was only 36. The buck passed to his nephew, Sun Ben, for a time, before being taken up by his eldest son, Sun Ce. Sun Ce conquered some notable territory and recruited several notable generals, but ultimately was ambushed while hunting and died at only 25 years of age. Due to this, the rule of the territory Sun Ce had conquered passed to

Sun Quan

Sun Quan was Sun Ce's younger brother, and noted as a scholarly but somewhat timid man. After his brother's passing, he wept for days, and even Sun Ce himself said to Sun Quan on his deathbed that 'In warfare and strategy, you are not my equal. In finding able men and calming the people's hearts, I am not your equal,' or thereabouts. Sun Quan outlived all of his rivals and ruled for over 50 years, dying at over 70 years old - outliving his father and brother put together. Wu's strategy of favoring defense and negotiation over offense was probably born of two things

1) Sun Quan's personality.
2) Each of the Three Kingdoms had a legitimate 'claim' to ruling their territory. Wei's argument was that the Han Emperor had legally abdicated the throne to Cao Cao, and thus Cao Cao and his descendants were the legitimate emperors. Shu's argument was that Liu Bei was a distant relative of the Han, and since he was the only member of that bloodline still vying for territory, China belonged to them. Both of these claims justified conquering other parts of China, and indeed, taking trips beyond the border into 'barbarian' lands to expand their empires. Wu, however, argued that the southern Chinese were not only culturally different from the northern Chinese, but ethnically different from them, so it should be its own country with its own separate power. And that's a fine argument for consolidating the south, and defending your territory, but it doesn't really justify expanding your territory. Wu still made occasional excursions, but realistically they just didn't want to rule all of China.

Sun Quan was a fair, evenhanded man who found exceptional talents and boosted them to greatness - Lu Meng was a skilled general who understood things well, but was almost illiterate. Sun Quan encouraged him to expand his mind and read, and Lu Meng went from just another strongman to one of the greatest minds in Wu. But Sun Quan lived a long time, and as he got older, all of his most trusted friends and advisors - his bodyguard Zhou Tai, the aforementioned Lu Meng, and his favored concubine, Lianshi, just to name a few - started to die off, and Sun Quan in his later years was pretty, uh, crazy. "Sending 10000 men to go find actual heaven' levels of crazy. You don't have to paint a broad psychological profile to get the idea the guy was pretty terrified of death, either his own or those of the few trusted friends he still had.

He was so senile (or perhaps just depressed) by the end of his days that he pretty much left running Wu to a bunch of corrupt advisors and bootlickers, and the end result was that when he died Wu got caught up in insane power struggles. It was such a bad place to live by that point that when Wei finally came through and conquered it, the common people were grateful.

It's why a lot of Three Kingdoms adaptations where he's just 'Liu Bei's sidekick' are kind of boring, since Sun Quan's one of the most interesting guys, in a psychological sense, in the entire Three Kingdoms period. He's got a very complicated and sad story.

Sun Shang Xiang
Sadly, not much of her life is recorded, but the bit about her and Liu Bei being married and her not being very fond of the arrangement is pretty accurate. Hilariously, Liu Bei was outright terrified of her - she used to walk around with dozens of armed handmaidens. Some of Liu Bei's advisors were even worried that she was sent by Sun Quan in order to spy on them and start an internal rebellion timed with some attack or another. She left Liu Bei when he made it clear he didn't intend to honor his alliance with Wu forever, and that's all that's written about her in anything that isn't ancient Chinese fanfic.