How able was Sun Liang?

[lorindir]

Most of the people usually linked the Wu's kingdom name to his long lived first emperor, Sun Quan (or those before him, Sun Jian and Sun Ce), but as everyone know, Wu was the kingdom who lasted long between the three (Shu was conquered by Wei and Wei was replaced by Jin) but even so, why there is so little attention to the other three Wu's emperors? (Sun Liang, Sun Xiu and Sun Hao) I would like that you shared your knowlodge about Sun Liang in special.

[lorindir]

Ok, I am all alone then....

(maybe the Wu kingdoms is only interesting until Sun Quan s' death anyway).....

I will post all that I found about this (is exactly what you are reading, I have made the question and I will answer ).

After Sun Quan's death, the Wu Kingdons was left at the hands of his youngest son, Sun Liang (he was only 10 at the time). But the wise Sun Quan choose the best and most able man serving Wu at the time, Zhuge Ke (ok, maybe he was the most able, but he wasn't the best, that is for sure! if you doubt that, search what his father thought about him...). Taking advantage of the situation, Sima Shi (the true power in Wei) launched an invasion against Wu, but Zhuge Ke (in fact, most of the merit was for Ding Feng) defeated them at the battle of Dongxing (that was only one of the many military loses of Sima Shi, he was really a bad comander in my humble opinion).
However, the old Zhuge Jin words proves true, his son was a monster and only his first merit was enough to awake the "darkness inside his heart". He then began to ignore everyone opinion (when I said ignore, I mean ignore even more because he never cared about anyone opinion anyway...) and decided to make a counter attack against Wei (and anyone who disagree, die!). The battle lasted for a long time, but Zhuge was almost breaking the enemy walls, but the cunning Zhang Te lied to Zhuge Ke (even wih Ding Feng counsels, Zhuge was fooled, as I said, he simply don't care about what others said) and Zhuge gave him 10 days to "surrender", but, as expected, it was a lie and Zhang used that time to rebuild the walls and Zhuge became very mad (more than normal...). Zhuge than orders a full attack against the city with his sick soldiers and they were badly defeated. After that, his soldiers begged him to go back home, he again ignored everyone and decided to continue the fight (the massacre, if you prefer), only when one of the high ranking Wu's comander defected to Wei with all his troops, Zhuge decided to retreat.

[lorindir]

Back at the Wu kingdom, Zhuge refused to accept his faults and began to cut off others heads because of this. The people became fearfull of him (even the emperor himself), and soon a plot to cut off the head of the true culprid was made... the "hero" was Sun Jun, a member of thre ruling family and a good friend of the old Sun Quan. The place of the "execution" (of the plan, of course) was a banquet (if I lived at Wu and someone invited me to a banquet, I woudn't go, because in a Wu s' banquet, you eat, you drink, you have fun then... you die!) and Zhuge went, and never came back.
Then the descendent of Sun Jing seized power over the Wu kingdom, our little "Dong Zhuo" took control of everything (so, why the kingdom need an emperor anyway?). He even started a plan to attack Wei, but he died before could carry on (nobody was sad because of that...).
His cousin Sun Chen took his position and make himself the same question I made before, so he deposed the emperor Sun Liang (his only blame was start to think for himself, we don't need a puppet emperor who thinks, do we?) and put his brother Sun Xiu on the throne, Sun Xiu was so gratefull who killed him soon after (with the help of our great hero Ding Feng, of course), finally, the kingdom of Wu was free of the usurpers and "Dong Zhuos", now, everyone will destroy the kingdom (why just place that job at the hand of one man? lets everyone do this together!).
Sun Xiu was a very scholar man (but wasn't very clever), he have some interest for martial arts (but wasn't a good fighter either), so, he knows a little of everything, and was a little emperor who depend heavily upon Zhang Bu and Puyang Xing (boths people who knows a little of their jobs...), and with that, the administration begun to crumble, the corrupt begun to rise and the kingdom begun to fall...

[lorindir]

But, he wasn't a bad emperor after all, he was tolerant and know to listem others opinions. But, he died too young and left the kingdom without a leader in the most important moment, his "good friends" Zhang Bu and Puyang Xing ignored his emperor's wishes and placed at the throne an older emperor, "to save the kingdom", our famous Sun Hao. As thanks, Sun Hao killed then some time later, and killed a lot of people only because they did their jobs (if you have a bad boss, thanks to god, because Sun Hao was the worst boss ever...). He ignores everyone counsels (and kills them), he burned all the kingdom s' money and had a thousand women, his guards were the terror of everyone and even the son of the hero Lu Xun, Lu Kang, couldn't do anything about this...

So that is the end, Sun Hao was the last emperor of Wu, the people of Wu was very happy when he finally surrendered, because the life in Wu was a hell. So the good Sima Yan united the glorious China under Jin.

I almost forgot, the answer for my own question: How able was Sun Liang?
For what I have read, Sun Liang was a very able emperor, but he had little opportunity to show his potential. First because he was too young, second because the three tyrants (I mean, regents ) that totally overshined our emperor's glory. If he had reigned more time, I am sure Wu wouldn't have fallen how it did.

I thanks everyone for the attention and the help for post this (or not ).

[chinesecannibal]

They weren't popular because they weren't in Dynasty Warriors lol.

Sun Hao, he go eat the FAT roast pork, then he go funk, then he go sleep, then wake up and do it all over again!
I tell you, that's a good life.

[DragonAtma]

Maybe Sun Liang was able. Maybe he wasn't. It's hard to tell, seeing as he was 15 when he was deposed and forced to commit suicide two years later. Just keep in mind that Zhang Bu and Puyang Xing thought that picking Sun Hao would be a good choice for Wu...

[Jordan]

Sun Hao, he go eat the FAT roast pork, then he go funk, then he go sleep, then wake up and do it all over again!
I tell you, that's a good life.

What?

I seriously don't know what this is supposed to mean.

Sun Liang was a decent-ish Emperor but Wu just suffered a great deal of political instability after Sun Quan's death. Sun Xiu was an even better one but the time he took power, Wu had undergone some serious rot from the constant seizures of power by military dictators.

I find your interpretations of Zhuge Ke to be rather flawed, though. Zhuge Ke was a far more able leader than the man who assassinated him and took power. Some of your other statements are fallacious as well. Calling Sima Shi a bad commander because of the battle Zhuge Ke won, for instance, makes no sense. Sima Shi wasn't even involved in that particular campaign. Blame for the defeat mostly fell on Sima Zhao and Zhuge Dan. While I don't really think Sima Shi was a good commander anyways, I think that the evidence you provided to support that conclusion is very weak.

[DragonAtma]

Zhuge Ke was able, but arrogant. Unfortunately, being arrogant causes problems -- especially if you screw up (which pretty much everyone will do eventually).

[Jordan]

Zhuge Ke was able, but arrogant. Unfortunately, being arrogant causes problems -- especially if you screw up (which pretty much everyone will do eventually).

I don't disagree with that. It's a much more balanced view.

However, to take the written record at complete face value, actually believing that Zhuge Jin long believed his son would turn out to be a disaster (for example) is not really critical thinking. Neither is believing that Zhuge Ke was a monster and despot.

The former is a cliche in Chinese history that I've always been skeptical about. It appears repeatedly in the histories of the three kingdoms and eventually it becomes hard to take seriously. Am I really supposed to believe that for every single thing that went wrong or right, there was some person who predicted with 100% accuracy the result? Because this is what the histories often [dubiously] seem to convey. Rather than coming across as factual, it ends up seeming rather much like hindsight bias or/and a didactic, albeit not entirely objective, style of history writing. "[Insert error] was predicted by a sage and could have been prevented, but tragically it was not. This is something we can learn from."

I personally am skeptical of the notion that Zhuge Jin knew his son would lead his family line to disaster. If it were true, he didn't seem to do anything about it and, quite the contrary, it seems like for the most part Zhuge Ke was reared to become an official like his father.

The latter is difficult to take seriously because there isn't an incredible amount of evidence to show that Zhuge Ke was more tyrannical than either his predecessors or successors. In addition, it is possible that there was some tainting of Zhuge Ke in the official Wu histories due to historical events in Wu. Further, he was never fully rehabilitated in the same manner as other "fallen from grace" figures like Deng Ai.

Arrogant, full of pride, lacking in skill as a commander-in-chief and leader compared to other heroes of the age: All of these are decent descriptions of Zhuge Ke. But calling him a monster and putting full faith in slander I find a little bit hard to swallow.

[DragonAtma]

Zhuge Ke DID lead the family to disaster, so much that they imported a Zhuge from Shu (Zhuge Liang had adopted one of Zhuge Jin's sons).

And predicting a human failing is nowhere near unheard of. Waaaaay back in 1952, my father (then just a kid) and his father were watching an up-and-coming politician on TV; my grandfather turned to my father and said, "There's something about him I just don't trust." Who was he talking about? Why, VP candidate (and eventual president) Richard Nixon. If my grandfather could predict something like this happening twenty years in advance, then surely one of Wu's finest minds could make this prediction about his own son a mere decade in advance.

As for Zhuge Ke, he wasn't tyrannical until his major failure; his failing was that he absolutely refused to take blame for his loss, and punished people who insisted that he was at fault. As for not being rehabilitated, he lost many Wu soldiers on a failed attack on Wei; although Sun Xiu had him reburied with honors, he turned down the idea of giving Zhuge Ke a monument.

So no, Zhuge Ke was not a monster. But no, he wasn't willing to take the blame for his disaster either, and that was his downfall.