War of the Eight Princes: Background 八王之乱

The new Total War Three Kingdoms DLC involves intense infighting between 

the royal uncles and princes of Jin dynasty (265–420) 

It began as a harem drama, of a paranoid empress trying to exterminate all of her rivals. It erupted into a realm in flames. Of clashing armies and brothers spilling brother's blood. For those who lived and still vividly remembered the last beats of the chaotic Three Kingdoms period, it was a perverse echo returning. What had been whole again was broken in less than a single generation. What had once thought to be the end notes of a long, storied turmoil had in fact turned out to be the fatal plunge right before China's Dark Age.

Art by Ming Qi

It ended with nearly all of the central characters dead or defeated and the heartland that had been the home of the Chinese people for thousands of years, the birthplace of the Chinese culture, where the very first of Chinese dynasties were born from was utterly conquered by hordes of whole foreign peoples. So little did all the fighting men converging into this crucible know, they were inadvertently igniting their very homeland to burn. The endless strife that they would lit upon a unified China would not stop burning for the next three centuries.

Iron Horses: The Jin (265–420) would see some of the first true heavy cavalries in China. The development of heavy cavalry in China corresponded with the invention of 

double stirrups. To this day, some of the earliest heavy horse armor were dated to the Jin dynasty. Iron faulds also began to appear in large quantities during the Three Kingdoms period and Jin dynasty. 

THE CORE CONFLICT: EMPRESS VS PRINCES
THE PURGES OF THE EMPRESS

The War of the Eight Princes began almost like a Shakespearean drama. After uniting the broken realm for only a generation, the warrior emperor Sima Yan,- or Emperor Wu of Jin died, leaving the whole realm at the hand of a developmentally disabled son: Sima Zhong, or Emperor Hui. Due to the disability of Emperor Hui, actual power of the realm laid in the hand of his ambitious wife Empress Jia. During the whole reign of Emperor Hui he would be overruled by a procession of regents and never had much actual power. Thus- whoever was able to act as Hui's Regent effectively became the steerer of the ship of state.

Jia was an ambitious woman, and proved to be both a savvy power-monger who understood the intricate levers of politics as well as someone who excelled at maneuvering through the bureaucracy to accomplish her goals. In order to secure her sole grip of power over her husband she had his other concubines framed then sentenced to death in order to deny their children from the line succession. Not only did she proved to be formidable in the harem but she also excelled in ruling through her husband in court by writing edicts in his name and exterminating all who criticized her.

Her ruthlessness in manipulation was shown when she orchestrated the imprisoning the Empress Dowager Yang (her chief rival) and the extermination of 3000 members of Yang's entire clan. Empress Dowager Yang too was starved to death in her captivity. After exterminating many royal concubines, ministers, at last she laid her yes upon the lingering threats to her power, the other scions of the imperial Sima clan.

THE EIGHT PRINCES

Though Jia was right in viewing the princes of the Sima clan as rivals. Before we proceed it is better to understand why they were so powerful and why she would see them in this manner. For when the Jin dynasty finally reunified the realm, its founders were keenly aware of the failures of the last days of the Han dynasty. To prevent a fall like that of the Han, they attempted to formulate an alternative to secure their hold on power.

Royal Princes and Nobles: Counterweights to Ancient Failures

In analyzing the frailty of Han's final rulers, its scheming eunuchs, and processions of ambitious military governors that ultimately cannot be trusted (remember that Cao Cao and many of the most powerful warlords had once been men of such stripes, including the ancestors of the Sima clan himself: Sima Yi) the Sima clan decided that to create an enduring alternative- they would instead look toward their own family.

Thus: Jin- in contrast to the bureaucratic quagmire of the preceding Han would instead make the ruling of the kingdom a family enterprise. The imperial uncles and princes 王- "Wang" (lit. King, but in the post- Qin world largely meant "Duke"), who in the past has always enjoyed some privileges as provincial governors (See the like of Liu Biao and many other such figures in the Three Kingdoms period) were now further empowered to rule the key provinces of the empire as their private domains. They were further empowered with sets of legal autonomy and privileges to have immense local powers at their disposal.

The nobility of the Jin were also entrenched in power- by having many of the high offices of the realm made hereditary. Thus it could be said that by the start of this conflict, the Jin was not merely an empire with several armies at odds against the imperial court, but several hostile provinces loyal solely to their respective Princes. At each cardinal direction was a province at the disposal of one of the royal princes or uncles. And it was in this mine field, this set of dominoes- that Jia escalated her purges.


1 UNSTOPPABLE FORCE Vs 8 IMMOVABLE PRINCES
Prelude in Luoyang, Purge of the Emperor's Regents

Attire of a Jin- Northern dynasty Prince. Nobles of northern China were

frequently depicted sitting on a raised wooden dais in the centuries that followed

the collapse of Jin dynasty. 

Dramatics aside, the entire conflict was not an immediate realm wide battle royale but rather- in the first phases of the war a series of calculated purges. In fact, 2 of the 8 princes would be slain very early in the conflict and most of the remaining conflict would later play out between sequences of competing princes.

At first Empress Jia sought to cleverly manipulate the key princes one by one and maneuver them to act on her behalf. In fact they had been instrumental in her consolidation of power and in wiping out all of Emperor Hui's inner circle that threatened Jia's rule.

The powerful and unruly Prince of Chu: Sima Wei would prove to be one of her first allies in her consolidation of power. He was Emperor Hui's brother and was a man of action. When Emperor Hui ascended the throne in 290 AD, power largely resided in the hands of his stepmother: Empress Yang's clan, Hui's key regent was Yang Jun, and it was through him that the state conducted it's affairs.

However, Empress Jia enlisted Sima Wei's help and launched a coup against the imperial regent. Sima Wei's army promptly had many of the Yang clans arrested. In time, Yang Jun, the Empress Dowager Yang, and the rest of the Yang clan were all massacred.

The First Prince Purged

The first explosion of violence between the royal princes happened between the statesmen of two different generations. The new regent- Sima Liang, a dutiful elder statesman was very weary of the power held by his grand nephew Sima Wei. Having witnessed what the youth did to his predecessor Yang Jun, Liang was right to be fearful of being treated in a similar manner.

The year was 291, The Yang clan was thoroughly exterminated. In Yang Jun's wake, another official, Wei Guan was entrusted as the new regent of the realm along with Emperor Hui's granduncle Sima Liang. Wei Guan and Sima Liang tried to get the government on track, but Empress Jia continued to interfere with governmental matters. Thus, in the summer of 291, Jia had manipulated Emperor Hui to draft an edict to Sima Wei ordering him to remove Sima Liang and Wei Guan from their offices.

His armored forces swiftly entered into Luoyang without any resistance from the city's guards and surrounded Sima Liang and Wei's mansions. While both men's subordinates recommended resistance, but each declined and was captured. But despite instructions from the edicts, both men were slaughtered along with their heirs and many members of their family. It was a critical matter, for Sima Liang was not just anyone but an imperial prince himself. His father was none other than Sima Yi himself.

This proved to be the point of no return, for blood had been shed and for each crime there needed to be a criminal that must be punished. Or this is how Empress Jia framed it.

Liability- The Second Prince

Immediately after the slaying of both Sima Liang and Wei Guan, Sima Wei and Empress Jia must have both realized that in the gaping vacuum of the imperial regents, there lies a void that must be filled. Jia likely also realized that a powerful military man (known wide and far for his brash unruly temper) could not be contained and in the coming days would only be a lurking liability. In this crackling, tense filled atmosphere Sima Wei's advisers too had pointed to him the danger of a powermonger like Jia- and recommended to him that to stave off danger he should assault the palaces and slay her so he could take the crown for himself so as to restore the realm to rightful rule. However Sima Wei rejected this suggestion.

It would be his undoing. Empress Jia immediately pounced on the matter and framed that Sima Wei had forged the edict and acted on his own (illegal) initiative in the slaughter of the 2 regents. Thus Sima Wei was arrested and then publicly executed as a traitor. In his death: the true conflict was set.


THE BATTLE ROYALE: PRINCES VS PRINCES

Though Empress Jia had installed herself as the undisputed mistress of the entire court and had shown the realm what she is capable with a legacy of blood. 2 of the imperial princes- Sima Liang and Sima Wei had died in blood. Now it would be a realm of weary princes who stood against her. When one of the senior princes: Sima Lun arrested Empress Jia and forced Emperor Hui to retire in 300, many of the princes marched against him with their whole armies.

What had started as a series of escalating coups around the imperial city of Luoyang would soon erupt into a greater conflict involving some of the most dangerous and most entrenched men in the empire. And behind each was a full army ready to beckon the call.

Sima Ai, the Prince of Changsha could perhaps be remembered as the Hamlet- like lone tragic hero in this story (and the lone prince spared by the scrutiny of many historians.) Handsome, friendly, dutiful, and humble, he was thrusted into the prince's knife fight when he was only 16. Despite his age he proved to be one of the most dangerous generals among the princes. During the entire war he supported several of his uncles who ended up turning on him. 

Despite these betrayals, however, he was able to resoundingly defeat several of his foes. Including cutting down Prince Sima Jiong and his army in a full 3 day battle within Luoyang. When he did held power he treated his uncle Emperor Hui with respect and tried reform the realm- including pardoning many who had warred against him. If he was not again betrayed, he would have done much more. 

Rather than the slow ramp up of the Three Kingdoms period, each of the Princes would have a large imperial army at their disposal. What followed would be 16 years of coups and wars between the princes themselves.

Whole armies would clash against each other in the combustible atmosphere of war across Jin, and in this great attritional death spiral of men and arms, more and more men are fed into this rapacious whirlpool- including tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries from beyond Jin's northern frontiers.

THE HOLLOW THRONE

Neither history nor the attitude of the later historians cared much for the hollow winners of this hollow war. For in the rapacious war between the princes- as they themselves weakened and slaughtered each other, the only winners was their nomadic mercenaries.

Each prince that was knocked out, some nomadic northern tribe- be it the Xiongnu, Xianbei, or the Qiang soon took up whole swaths of northern Jin as their own and created their own states there. At the tail end of the conflict, when the last prince emerged victorious and having outlasted the death of Emperor Hui: the nature of the conflict had been fundamentally changed.

By that time, northern China was blanketed with a series of small kingdom each controlled by a northern horde, initiating a period of total war called the Sixteen Kingdoms across northern China- during which tribes spilled into China proper and fought for supremacy as the sole power of northern China.

Jin empire in 316 AD. By that time, northern China was blanketed with a series of small kingdom each controlled by a northern horde, initiating a period of total war called the Sixteen Kingdoms across northern China- during which tribes spilled into China proper and fought for supremacy as the sole power of northern China.

A REALM EXILED: REALMS VS REALMS

None of them won, for they all lost. The so called Five Barbarians- and their descendants would become so powerful that they would eject the last Jins from the imperial capital of Luoyang and force millions of refugees to migrate south for protection. Northern China would be lost to the northern invaders for the next 300 years- irrevocably leaving their marks into the Chinese identity.

In the end, nearly all of the principle actors of this conflict would lay dead, the memory of them and all that they fought for would be swept away. What began so similar to a Shakespearean drama, or so reminiscent of a plotbeat from Game of Thrones, of Queen Cersei snipping away her threats one by one, facing off against a whole riled up realm would end in biblical scale of change for centuries to come.

For this story has no end, the punishment has no end for its actors, no solace of meaning as a refund of storybeat achievement for the participants, or Deux Ex Machina to save them from their foes and choices. For this is real history, this all happened.

The punishment provoked by the actors and endless wars they instigated will not stop in northern China even ages after their fall. When at last northern China was reunited under the Northern Wei dynasty, northern China had seen nearly 130 years of wars. Whole cities had been completely destroyed and abandoned, whole provinces depopulated, and whole administrative systems had collapse. Commerce was ruined to such an extend that in many areas only a barter system remained. A whole people was made into a thin shadow of what they have been.

Ironically, in this Dark Age, it was up to the descendants of one of the invading peoples- the Touba clan of Xianbei nomads to pick up the pieces.

"WEI"

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