220 AD

The year AD 220 is the pivotal year in which the Han dynasty’s long decline becomes an overt change of rulers: Cao Cao dies, Guan Yu is executed by order of Sun Quan, and Cao Pi receives the imperial seal from Emperor Xian and begins his reign as emperor of Wei. In the novel, the succession is presented not as a settled transfer but as a struggle over what makes rule legitimate. The language of Han lineage, service to the people, auspicious signs, and abdication all converge around a throne whose authority is already being claimed by rival powers.

The political landscape at the turn of the year

The Han court had been weakened by the disintegration of central government and the competing power of regional leaders. Cao Cao held Emperor Xian under close control and used the emperor’s position to strengthen his own authority. In the novel’s account, Kong Ming describes Cao Cao as commanding a vast army and controlling the Son of Heaven, while advising Xuande that Sun Quan, supported by the people in the south, might serve as an ally rather than an enemy. Those strategic assessments establish a political landscape in which the emperor’s formal standing and the actual distribution of power no longer coincide.

Three leaders had emerged from the collapse: Xuande, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan. Each would become associated with a kingdom formed from the weakening Han realm. Cao Cao had taken the title of king of Wei, but it was his son Cao Pi who would claim the imperial title after Emperor Xian’s abdication. Sun Quan, whose family had ruled in the south for three generations, would declare himself emperor of Wu in 229. Xuande, meanwhile, would invoke his descent from the House of Han to present his own accession as a continuation of the dynasty rather than a repudiation of it.

Deaths and a divided inheritance

The year’s upheaval is personal as well as dynastic. In the winter of AD 220, Sun Quan orders the execution of Guan Yu and his son. His advisers argue over whether to win Guan Yu’s allegiance or eliminate him, recalling that Cao Cao had treated the captive with honors and gifts without securing his loyalty. The decision ends Guan Yu’s life at fifty-eight and places the celebrated brother of Xuande’s Peach Orchard Brotherhood among the dead in the same year that the Han court gives way to Wei.

Cao Cao also dies in AD 220, aged sixty-six. Before his death, he directs his household to prepare for the possibility that his women will be left without support, telling them to perfect needlework and make goods such as silk shoes to sell. He orders prayers for his soul at the Bronze Bird Tower and has seventy-two false tombs constructed outside Jiangwu in Zhangde County to mislead grave robbers. His death leaves his son Cao Pi to secure the family’s hold on power. Cao Pi’s advisers warn that he must take control promptly, and an imperial decree confirms him as king of Wei, prime minister, and governor of Jizhou.

These deaths sharpen the succession crisis. Cao Cao had controlled the emperor without formally replacing him; Cao Pi’s claim requires the outward transfer of the imperial office itself. At the same time, Xuande’s grief and political response connect the deaths and the fall of the Han to a competing claim of continuity. The result is not one uncontested successor but rival political projects built from the same disordered inheritance.

The abdication of Emperor Xian

Court officials present the transfer to Cao Pi as a response to auspicious signs: a phoenix, a unicorn, and a yellow dragon are interpreted as evidence that the Han mandate has ended and will pass to Wei. When the delegation asks Emperor Xian to resign, he recalls that the Han house has ruled for four hundred years and protests that he has not been told what wrongdoing justifies surrendering the inheritance of his ancestors. The signs are therefore not simply neutral evidence in the narrative: they become arguments advanced by officials seeking to make a political transfer appear ordained.

The emperor is eventually made to issue an announcement presenting his abdication as an imitation of the ancient ruler Yao, who did not favor his own son. The document declares that the Han era has ended and that fortune has moved to the Cao family, while invoking the principle that the empire belongs to everyone rather than to one house. Cao Pi is advised by Sima Yi to refuse at first, and then to refuse again, before accepting the throne at an Altar of Abdication. In the ceremony, Emperor Xian hands over the jade seal of authority before officials and soldiers, and Cao Pi begins his reign as emperor of Wei. Emperor Xian is demoted to governor of Shanyang and ordered to leave.

The ritual gives the transfer a language of consent, precedent, and universal benefit, but the circumstances make the imbalance of power plain. Emperor Xian’s earlier protest, the officials’ repeated pressure, and the staged sequence of refusals all complicate the appearance of a willing surrender. The novel places the Yao–Shun abdication precedent beside the coercive political realities of the court, asking readers to distinguish the ceremony’s claim from the process that produces it.

Omens, legitimacy, and the rival Han claim

The court astrologers’ interpretation of the auspicious creatures is not the only sign through which the novel examines the Mandate of Heaven. As Cao Pi prepares to worship Heaven and Earth after taking the throne, a violent storm disrupts the rite: the sky darkens, wind scatters dust and stones, and the altar’s lanterns are blown over. Cao Pi is frightened and incapacitated for several days; afterward, he believes the palace is haunted and orders a new palace to be built at Luoyang. The episode gives the transfer an unsettling counter-image to the court’s confident account of auspicious omens. Official interpretation supports Wei’s accession, while the storm is represented as a portent of Heaven’s displeasure.

News of the Wei dynasty and rumors that Emperor Xian has been killed reach Xuande in Chengdu and worsen his condition. Kong Ming then proposes that Xuande be crowned emperor as a way to oppose the new Wei ruler and continue the Han lineage. Xuande initially recoils from the proposal as rebellious and disloyal. Kong Ming argues that Cao Pi has usurped the Han throne and that Xuande, as a descendant of the House of Liu, has a duty to take control. Earlier, he had also urged Xuande to become emperor after his successes in Hanzhong, framing the decision as obedience to both Heaven and the people and as a means of bringing righteous rule to a divided land.

Thus the year’s change of dynasty does not close the question of legitimacy. Cao Pi’s court invokes celestial signs and ritual abdication to authorize Wei; Xuande’s supporters invoke Han descent and the language of restoration. The competing claims reveal the year’s central political contradiction: the Han emperor gives up the seal, but the Han’s authority remains powerful enough to justify a rival emperor. Within the novel’s wider account of dynastic collapse, AD 220 is the moment when that contradiction becomes an explicit division of rule.