Xuande’s death

Xuande’s death in the spring of AD 223, after the defeat at Baidi and the loss of his two sworn brothers, closes the founding ruler’s personal struggle to restore the Han while placing the future of Shu in Kong Ming’s care. His final hours bring together bereavement, political failure, and an unusually explicit transfer of responsibility: Xuande entrusts his heir and kingdom to his chief minister, warns him against promoting Ma Su, and leaves the restoration of the Han unfinished.## Defeat and Retreat to Baidi In the summer of AD 222, Lu Xun defeats the Shu armies. When Ma Liang reaches Baidi, he finds Xuande in refuge and blames himself for the disaster. Xuande answers that had he listened to Kong Ming, the defeat might have been avoided. He cannot bring himself to return to Chengdu; instead, he elevates his quarters at Baidi and names them the Palace of Eternal Peace. The grand title gives the retreat a formal dignity, but cannot undo the military reversal that has brought the ruler there.

The consequences of the defeat deepen the crisis. Huang Quan is cut off from the Shu army and defects to Wei. Xuande’s advisers recommend punishing Huang Quan’s entire clan, but Xuande refuses: Huang Quan, he recognizes, had no other viable course. He takes responsibility upon himself, saying that if anyone betrayed anyone, it was he who had betrayed Huang Quan. The moment establishes the judgment with which Xuande approaches his own failure: rather than make a subordinate bear the cost of a campaign’s collapse, he accepts responsibility for the circumstances that left him isolated.

By late spring of AD 223, in the Palace of Eternal Peace, Xuande’s strength is rapidly failing. The shock of what has happened to Guan Yu and Zhang Fei has, the narrative says, sapped his energy; he is no longer able in body or mind to withstand sickness. His retreat is therefore not simply a change of location after defeat. Baidi becomes the setting in which the losses of the campaign and the deaths of his sworn brothers converge with the approaching end of his own life.

The Vision and the Last Instructions

One night Xuande dismisses his attendants and lies awake alone. A cold wind moves through the room, making the candles gutter and flare. He sees two men and rebukes them for disturbing him, then recognizes Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. They tell him they are no longer living men: because they remained faithful to their oath, the Supreme Lord has made them gods, and soon the three brothers will be reunited. Xuande reaches to touch them, but wakes to find that the figures have disappeared. He immediately calls for his servants and orders them to summon Kong Ming from Chengdu, convinced that his own death is near.

Kong Ming arrives with Xuande’s younger sons, Liu Yong and Liu Li; the heir, Liu Shan, has been left in Chengdu. In private, Xuande admits that Kong Ming brought him success and that he was foolish to disregard the adviser’s counsel, thereby bringing disaster upon them. He says his heir is too weak to rule and places responsibility for the kingdom in Kong Ming’s hands. This is not merely a request for assistance: Xuande formally charges his prime minister with protecting the state and preparing the next ruler.

Xuande’s instructions are pointed as well as general. He asks Kong Ming what he thinks of Ma Su, Ma Liang’s younger brother. Kong Ming calls him one of their best men; Xuande disagrees, describing him as all talk and warning Kong Ming not to promote him under any circumstances. Xuande then dictates his will and entrusts its execution to Kong Ming. The warning gives the transfer of power a practical edge: the dying ruler seeks not only to secure his heir’s future, but to shape the appointments and judgments through which that future will be governed.

The Unfinished Restoration and Transfer of Authority

Xuande frames his death as the end of a mission left incomplete. He and his followers, he says, did their best to rid the world of Cao Cao and support the House of Han, but he is leaving before that work is even halfway finished. He asks Kong Ming to teach and protect the heir. The confession binds the immediate matter of succession to the larger political cause: Liu Shan is not simply a son to be installed, but the successor expected to carry forward the struggle Xuande cannot complete.

He also tells Kong Ming that if Liu Shan proves unable to fulfil his duties and protect the kingdom, Kong Ming must take over and become king. Kong Ming is overwhelmed, weeps, and repeatedly prostrates himself on the floor. Xuande then summons Liu Yong and Liu Li and orders them to serve Kong Ming as they would their own father. He gives the assembled officials the same essential charge, commanding them to support the minister. Authority is thus transferred through a sequence of appeals—to the regent, the princes, and the officials—rather than left as an unspoken implication of the will.

Xuande’s appeal to Zhao Zilong is more personal but serves the same political purpose. Calling him an old comrade with whom he has survived much, Xuande asks him to watch over the sons and honor the requests he has made. Zhao Zilong, weeping, promises to do so. Xuande then addresses everyone gathered, wishing them well and asking them to look after themselves and act in accord with what is best in them. He never speaks again. His last words therefore move from the unfinished cause of the Han, through concrete duties of government and protection, to a final charge to the community that must outlast him.

Death and Narrative Significance

Xuande dies aged sixty-three in the spring of AD 223. The death concludes the trajectory of a ruler whose fortunes had shaped the novel’s opening movement, but it does not resolve his central political objective. He leaves the restoration of the Han unfinished and places the kingdom, the heir, and the execution of his will in Kong Ming’s care. In this way, the death functions as both an ending and a handover: the founder’s personal authority ends, while the work of defending the state passes to the minister he had once sought out for guidance.

The scene holds political succession against the intimacy of sworn brotherhood. Xuande’s vision reunites him, in anticipation, with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, while his waking instructions bind the living—the heir, the princes, Kong Ming, Zhao Zilong, and the officials—to preserve what remains. The reunion promised by the vision is spiritual; the obligations spoken at the bedside are practical. Together they make Xuande’s death the hinge between the personal losses of the founding generation and the continued survival of Shu under a vulnerable successor.

The poem attributed to Du Fu compresses the reversal into two lines: “The Shu king covets the Wu lands beyond the Three Gorges, But in two years he’s dying in the Palace of Eternal Peace.” The contrast between ambition beyond the Three Gorges and death at Baidi makes the palace’s name bitterly resonant. Xuande’s final authority lies not in a recovered victory, but in acknowledging failure, entrusting the next generation to others, and leaving his political purpose explicitly unfinished.