Since Three Kingdoms is placed in a time of dynastic transition, "virtue" comes to the fore in the novel as the main qualification of a new ruler. This is made clear by a motif in the 1522 edition: "The empire belongs to no one man but to all in the empire; he who has virtue shall possess it."13 Mao Zonggang drops this recurring phrase because of its too-explicit slighting of lineage, but in his edition he basically preserves the theme of "virtue qualifies for rule." The following remarks, therefore, apply to both editions of the novel unless otherwise specified.
As a royal kinsman and also a man of virtue, Liu Xuande has a twofold claim to the Han throne. The value of the surname is shown, for example, in chapter 11 when Imperial Inspector Tao Qian of Xuzhou turns the province over to Xuande. This gives Xuande his first chance to exercise major political authority. Explaining his choice, Tao Qian says, "Lord Liu, a scion of the royal house, a man of broad virtue and high ability, is fit to govern." But virtue and lineage do not after all weigh equally. What distinguishes Xuande in the novel is his virtue. For if his virtue can attract men to serve him, it may ultimately attract the Mandate of Heaven itself.
To have virtue is to gain men's confidence, to win their allegiance. In his first appearance in the novel Liu Bei spontaneously forms a brotherhood with two strangers, Guan Yu (Yunchang), a fugitive, called Lord Guan in this translation; and Zhang Fei (Yide), a butcher. The three brothers pledge in faith and honor (jieyi) to live and die as one, and they consecrate their oath in a peach garden—the peach is a symbol of fidelity—by sacrificing a horse and a bull. Liu Bei is acknowledged as the elder brother (for his virtue, not his seniority, according to the Yuan drama Taoyuan jieyi), and they quickly recruit a Shuihu or outlaw type of band. A fraternal tie among the three is mentioned once in the SGZ, but the novelist has added oath and sacrifice and made the bonding of brotherhood the overture to his tale. Accordingly, the second brother, Lord Guan, and the third, Zhang Fei, are transformed from sparsely sketched figures in the SGZ into fully developed fictional characters. The brotherhood plays a major role in the novel, and the oath haunts the narrative until the pledge "to die for one another" is invoked by Lord Guan's death. Liu Xuande's fidelity to the oath becomes a trial of his worth as a brother and as a king, and the plot turns on his decision.
For what purpose is the brotherhood formed? To combat peasant uprisings led by the Yellow Scarves. What has caused the uprisings? Corruption at court. The court, too weak and divided to cope with the threat to its power, sends out a general call for militia forces to organize and come to the aid of the throne. The brotherhood is formed in response to this call. The rivalry at court takes the form of a family struggle over the succession to the throne. The brotherhood is a kind of egalitarian fraternity with an "underworld" tinge. In its solidarity, based on the principle of honor (yi), the brotherhood contrasts with the divided ruling family and also with the great regional families being torn apart by fraternal strife. As the crisis unfolds, the family itself as the dominant political institution is implicitly questioned through comparison with the brotherhood, anti-dynastic in form because it is hostile to filial right. Liu Xuande as elder brother is not a father figure, but primus inter pares. The Qing historian mentioned above, Zhang Xuecheng, expressed his misgivings about celebrating the fraternal bond when he wrote, "The most unedifying thing about the novel Three Kingdoms is that in the peach garden the oath-brothers go so far as to forget the lord-vassal [junchen] relation and simply proclaim the fraternal relation."14
The brotherhood, first formed to aid the ruling house, later becomes a means to further Xuande's ambition. Like Xuande, the younger brothers, Lord Guan and Zhang Fei, are brave and gallant heroes, but their fortunes have been mixed. After the failure of the coup against Cao Cao, Xuande leaves the imperial court and in a. d. 200 takes refuge with Yuan Shao. The next year he takes refuge with Liu Biao, protector of Jingzhou, but he is not safe. Liu Biao's wife (Lady Cai) and her brother (Cai Mao) threaten him from within, while Cao Cao, who covets Jingzhou, remains a threat from without.
In a. d. 207 Cao Cao marches on Jingzhou, hoping to annex it; Xuande is about to be overwhelmed. Xuande has come to understand that neither he nor his brothers are able to master the rapid changes in the empire, and that to become a major contender for power he needs diplomatic and military guidance. At this point Kongming enters the scene, both in history and in the novel. For many he is the protagonist of the novel, and his decision to serve Xuande as chief adviser confirms Xuande's virtue: Xuande has won his heart. Kongming appears in chapter 36. He is a young man of twenty-seven by Chinese count, twenty years Xuande's junior. He dies in a. d. 234 (chapter 104). These sixty-nine chapters form the heart of the novel.
Despite his youth Kongming proves to be shrewd and erudite as both a diplomat and a strategist. In his first interview with Xuande, Kongming presents his three-part project for restoring the Han dynasty. His immediate goal is for Xuande to join forces with the Southland in order to save Xuande from Cao Cao and to inspire the south to resist him. His intermediate goal is for Liu Bei to establish an independent kingdom in the west, the Riverlands, and to maintain the alliance with the south against the north. His ultimate goal is to reconquer the northern heartland and place Liu Bei on the Han throne. As events unfold, southern resistance to Cao Cao leads to the division of the Han empire into three warring kingdoms. Thus, at the outset Kongming's career becomes bound up with the central issue of his time.
To the forward-looking Kongming, the brotherhood is no more than a military expedient—something to utilize, not an end in itself. His larger ambition of dynastic restoration revolves around the virtuous ruler whom he serves and the orderly succession by the son of that ruler when the time comes. Thus, he values filial over fraternal love, loyalty to higher authority (zhong) over honor among equals (yi), and Xuande the benevolent patriarch over Xuande the sworn elder brother. Kongming acts for these values because he believes that the relation of emperor to crown prince (taizi) is at the core of dynastic rule and that an orderly transition depends on the security of this relation. The security of this relation ensures continuity of rule through the ruling house (guojia) and control over the forces that lead to division, independent kingdoms, and civil war—the troubles that plagued the empire during Kongming's formative years.
Thus, Kongming countenances no intervention in the father-son relation—not by the brothers, not by himself. The true vassal must never exceed his place by supplanting the son. If the worthiest minister supplants the most unworthy ruler, it will lead to disorder. Kongming's role may seem similar to that of the regent Cao Cao, but the two men stand for opposite principles. Unlike Cao Cao, Kongming never promotes his own family's position and never creates a kingdom-fief as a means for his son to supplant the house of Han. (For Kongming's refusal of the Nine Dignities of kingship, see chapter 91, n. 16. ) Following the same principle, Kongming does not want the brotherhood to take precedence over the father-son relation. Patriarchal benevolence and filial devotion—the essence of Confucian political philosophy—and not the brotherhood provide the answer to the corruption of the imperial house. But Kongming cannot teach this lesson to Xuande.
In the novel, the tension between Xuande's opposing roles of brother and emperor, between the opposing organizational forms of fraternity and guojia, between the values of loyalty and honor, and between Kongming and the brothers charges the narrative with thematic force and drives the tale to its tragic conclusion.
THE NOVEL'S USE OF SOURCES
The novel presents two paths for the Han empire to follow after the Han falls: the abdication of the last emperor to Cao Pi, who founds a new house; or the restoration of the guojia through Liu Xuande and his son Shan. In history, the house of Cao prevails. The question is, why does the novel favor the claim of Xuande? Earlier texts favored the claim of the Cao-Wei dynasty, above all the first history, Chen Shou's SGZ. Luo Guanzhong took Chen Shou as his model; why then did he not follow him on this crucial matter? The TS describes itself as "com
piled and arranged [i. e., authored] by Luo Guanzhong, Chen Shou's student-follower of later times." Yet Luo Guanzhong chose not to accept Chen Shou's verdict that the Wei dynasty legitimately succeeded the Han, and then went on to depict Cao Cao as the moral as well as the political opponent of Han's rightful heir, Liu Xuande. Why?
Much as Xuande and Cao Cao take certain mythic and historical heroes as models, Xuande and Cao Cao themselves became models—two of the most important—for the post-Three Kingdoms dynasties. At different points in the twelve hundred years between the events and the novel, various dynastic historians, officials, philosophers, and poets sided with one or the other, with Cao Cao or Liu Xuande. On what basis did they make their choices? How did such interpretations of the Three Kingdoms heroes influence Luo Guanzhong?
These questions call for discussion of the sources on the Three Kingdoms period, and also of the political situation in China during the centuries leading up to the time the novel was written. As a rule, pre-Ming northern dynasty writers tend to treat Wei as the legitimate heir to Han, while southern dynasty writers treat Liu Xuande as the true con-tinuator of Han, and Cao Cao as a usurper.
The basic source for the period is the Sanguozhi (SGZ), or Records of the Three Kingdoms. The author, Chen Shou (d. a. d. 297), served the Shu-Han kingdom and later the Jin dynasty. In a. d. 274 he collected the writings of Kongming (still extant). Then some time after a. d. 280, the year Jin reunified the empire, Chen Shou wrote the SGZ in sixty-five chapters, which consist of single or multiple lives (zhuan) of the leading figures of the age. Wei is presented in the first thirty chapters, Shu in the next fifteen, Wu in the final twenty.
The first biography is in the form of imperial annals for Cao Cao titled "Wudi ji," or "Imperial Annals of the Martial Emperor." By using the term ji instead of zhuan for Cao Cao, Chen Shou indicates, at least formally, that Wei is to be regarded as the legitimate successor.15 In contrast, Chen Shou calls Liu Xuande Xianzhu, or First Ruler (of Shu-Han), a posthumous honorific that suggests regional rather than empire-wide authority. In the "Wudi ji" Cao Cao is given his imperial temple name, Tai Zu, but in the "Xianzhu zhuan" Xuande is not called by his temple name, Zhao Lie. Otherwise, as the title Three Kingdoms suggests, the historian is basically impartial among the three kingdoms and unwilling to elevate the name of any of them as the name of the period. Chen Shou presents the least material on Shu-Han, though the figure of Kongming is well developed. Wei and Wu are treated more fully; the leader of Wu, Sun Quan, is also called zhu.
Chen Shou's approach is bureaucratic. He gives essential facts, always in the context of individual lives. But, unlike the novelist, he does not seek to move the reader by tying the fate of China to any particular character or kingdom, nor does he invest any one character or kingdom with positive or negative moral significance. Luo Guanzhong uses the SGZ for its scope and periodization as well as its information, and he acknowledges his debt by incorporating the title of the history, Sanguozhi, in the title of his novel. But he does not follow the history's method of organization, the biographical series (liezhuan). Luo Guanzhong chooses instead chronological narrative, a form best represented in China's history-writing tradition by such works as the Zuo zhuan and Zizhi tongjian.
About ninety years after Chen Shou's death, Pei Songzhi (a. d. 372-451), a scholar-official of both the Eastern Jin and Liu-Song dynasties, added a vast quantity, some say an overabundance, of material to Chen Shou's SGZ in the form of notes drawn from more than two hundred sources. Pei undertook this project at the behest of the Liu-Song emperor. His memorial to the Liu-Song emperor (included in SGZ, p. 1471) called the SGZ "a superb history for its organization and its judgments and for furnishing the reader with a glorious gardenlike preserve," but he criticized it for "brevity and occasional omissions." Some of the notes with which Pei supplemented the SGZ are of historical value, some are anecdotal and colorful though of uncertain authenticity. It might be said that Pei Songzhi became the first to attach some fictional material to the SGZ.
The Liu-Song emperor accepted Pei Songzhi's work with high praise, and in a. d. 429 an integrated text—the SGZ combined with the notes (zhu)—was established; this became the official history of the Three Kingdoms period.16 In Chinese the title is Sanguozhi zhu. These notes created a text three times longer than the original; and as they cite many works lost after the Tang dynasty, their value is inestimable.
Here is a brief example of Luo Guanzhong's use of the SGZ notes. In his SGZ biography, Liu Xuande is rewarded for his service against the Yellow Scarves with a post as prefect of Anxi county. Soon after he takes office, a district inspector visits the county seat on unexplained business. The inspector's henchmen bar Xuande from the government building, so he barges in and thrashes the inspector. Afterward, Xuande goes into hiding. The novel (chapter 2) follows this account, except that in the novel Zhang Fei commits the battery. The novel also explains that the inspector came to carry out an edict ordering a purge of all recent appointees. This explanation comes from Pei's notes. Another contribution of the notes is the character of Shan Fu, who plays a small but crucial role in the novel. He is Liu Xuande's first military adviser and the man who arranges for him to meet Kongming. Chen Shou barely mentions Shan Fu in Kongming's biography, but the notes provide the material for Luo Guanzhong's telling cameo portrait.
Turning to the question of legitimacy, we find that one of the notes' key sources, Xi Zuochi's Han jin chunqiu (The Han-Jin spring and autumn), denies the legitimacy of the Wei succession. The very title of this work excludes Wei from the great line of dynasties, deriving Jin directly from Han. Xi Zuochi treats the two emperors of Shu-Han, Liu Bei and Liu Shan, as a bridge between Emperor Xian and Sima Yan, the first Jin emperor: "Jin should bypass the intervening Wei and take its succession from the Han."17 Xi Zuochi is considered the first historian to treat the Shu-Han kingdom openly as the legitimate heir of Han. In keeping with this purpose, his work dates events by the Shu-Han reign years, which are presented as extensions of the Han up to the first reign of the Jin.18 Since the emperor functions as a personified calendar, the reign title (nianhao) projects his Heavenly authority. This is why each of the three kingdoms historically used its own reign titles.
In addition to using Shu-Han reign titles to affirm Liu Xuande's legitimacy, the Han Jin chunqiu provides an important description of Liu Bei that anticipates the Liu Xuande of the novel: "The First Ruler's trustworthiness and sense of honor shine only more brightly as he is tossed from peril to peril, never forsaking—even under the direst pressure—the true path.... He had compassion for the army... and was content to share defeat with men dedicated to honor."19 As for Cao Cao, Xi Zuochi did not, so far as we know, paint him particularly black. One negative comment of Xi's preserved in the ZZTJ concerns Cao Cao's arrogance: "The empire split into three as a result of Cao Cao's displays of arrogance."20 Another source cited in Pei's notes, the Cao Man zhuan, makes Cao Cao more of a villain, with anecdotes testifying to his cruelty and caprice. And the Shishuo xinyu of Liu Yiqing also contributed a number of stories villifying Cao Cao. Thus, by the early fifth century the Three Kingdoms tradition had a southern branch divergent from Chen Shou's history, and certain key elements of the novel's characterization of Liu Xuande and Cao Cao reflected that new tradition.21
Sympathy for Shu rather than for Wei was a political touchstone for these southern writers. Xi Zuochi is a notable example; he lived during the Eastern Jin, a dynasty that, like Shu-Han, was confined to the southeastern sector of the realm and threatened with extinction by an enemy dynasty occupying the northern heartland. In fact, every southern dynasty between Han and Sui faced a similar danger, until the Sui unification of the late sixth century and the imperium of Tang restored something of the grandeur and glory that was Han.
In the early reigns of the Tang dynasty the ruling house expressed pro-Cao sentiments. The second emperor, Li Shimin (Tai Zong, r. 627-49), who looked back to the Wei dynasty for certain institutional models, made a formal ad
dress to the spirit of Cao Cao, praising him as a "sage" who "faced a difficult destiny with heroic demeanor... [and who stood] on a par with the great ministers of antiquity." Emperor Xuan Zong (r. 713-56) referred to himself on one occasion as "Ah Man," one of Cao Cao's names. However, the noted historian Liu Zhiji (661-721) disagreed with the respectful treatment Cao Cao usually received.22 A sharp critic of Chen Shou, Liu Zhiji did not share the view that the kingdom of Wei was legitimate, and he said that the SGZ did not do justice to Kongming.
In the eighth century, the An Lushan rebellion created a split in the Tang empire that reminded many of the time when the Shu-Han kingdom struggled to recapture the northern heartland (zhongyuan) from the Wei dynasty. Zhongyuan, a term used by Kongming, refers to the two Han capitals, Chang'an and Luoyang, and the territory around them, which was known in the Han as the sili, the capital (or administrative) districts. The "inner" region of the Yellow River Basin is China's traditional political and military center. In a. d. 756, rebel forces occupied the heartland. The Tang emperor was driven westward "covered with dust" (i. e., in exile). He occupied briefly what had been in Han times the kingdom of Shu; the heartland, however, remained in turmoil for many years. Du Fu, who later became China's national poet, began to use elements of Han history to symbolize the guojia's plight. When Chang'an and Luoyang fell to the rebels and An Lushan was killed by his own son, Du Fu compared An to Dong Zhuo, who deposed Emperor Shao and was later killed by his adopted son, Lü Bu (see chapters 4 to 9 of the novel). Du Fu made his way to Chengdu and in a. d. 759 wrote a ballad called "Chengdu fu," in which he speaks of "the heartland fading away into darkest oblivion." And in another poem of this time he speaks of "gazing northward brokenhearted." In a. d. 760 Du Fu composed one of his most famous pieces, "Shu xiang" (The prime minister of Shu), to commemorate his visit to the abandoned shrine of Kongming. The poem's closing lines,
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