plunged wrote:三年,為譙王。五年,改封譙縣。
"In the third year [of Huangchu], he was made King of Qiao. In the fifth year ... Qiao county"
Can someone help me with this? Im having some difficulties with finding the right English words for 改封. I guess it means something like "change of an administrative unit".
This might be more complicated than it looks.
譙縣 (Qiao County) had been an administrative district through the Han, and had originally belonged to 沛 Pei. Han had this weird thing where some of the mid-sized districts below the level of province were called commanderies (郡), but when they were assigned as a prince's fief they were known as states (國). Pei was originally a state but by the late Han it was no longer a fief, so it went back to being Pei Commandery. Anyway, some time either during the Jian'an years or when Cao Pi ascended the throne, a new commandery, Qiao, was created, and Qiao County was the seat of administration.
So when Cao Lin was first made Prince of Qiao, he presumably had the whole commandery as his fief, with a bunch of counties under it (I've seen 15 and 5; cf.
http://www.e3ol.com/library/html/2008-1 ... 1932.shtml). However, it seems like Cao Pi decided to reduce basically everyone's fiefs to just counties/cities at some point. So, poor Cao Lin went from being the Prince of Qiao (State/Commandery) to Prince of Qiao County. This is what this line is about.
And no I don't know the English for this either. Probably "stingy-assholery".