"Sima Zhao's heart is well known to passers-by." ——Fei Songzhi's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Wei Shu, And Noble Township Biography"
As a tyrant who is equally famous for his beauty and military ability, Cao Cao's sons in this life are really not few, there are 25 sons in his own life, and counting the stepsons and adopted sons, there are a total of 28 sons. But these 28 sons all seem to have given birth to a lonely, and when the Sima family was ambitious to seize the throne, none of them came out to stop it.
But is it really Cao Cao's son who is useless and does not stop it? No, simply because of the inability to return to heaven.
Friends familiar with history should know that Cao Cao did not really claim the title of emperor, he only added Jiu Xi, a very popular subject, completely ended the rule of the Han Dynasty, and forced the Han Emperor Liu Xie to give up the throne. However, even if Cao Cao had not yet become emperor, the battle for an heir was equally cruel.
When the famous prodigy Cao Chong died, Cao Cao was very sad and said to Cao Pi: "(Cao Chong's death) is my misfortune, but it is your luck", so there has always been a conspiracy theory about Cao Chong's untimely death; Cao Chong aside, the brotherly rivalry between Cao Pi and Cao Zhi should also be very familiar to everyone, the song "Boiling beans burn beans, beans cry in the kettle." Originally born from the same root, he is too anxious to fry each other", clearly expressing the helplessness and sadness of the royal children's struggle for power and profit.
In this case, once Cao Pi ascended the throne, how could he reuse his brothers? Nature drove them all to the fiefdom. A better one, like Cao Zhang, was given the title of King of Rencheng and became a Prince of Qiao in the fiefdom; if it was the kind of person who did not have a very good personality, such as Cao Mao, the history books record that he was "Mao's temperament and was rarely favored by Taizu." It was not until Cao Rui ascended the throne that he was crowned king of Liaocheng.
In addition to these sons who were placed on the fiefdom far from the center, due to the low level of ancient medical treatment, many of Cao Cao's sons actually died young and early, including but not limited to the above-mentioned Cao Chong, at least seven or eight of them died at a young age.
Compared with these brothers in the same lineage, for Cao Pi, who had just ascended the throne, perhaps those distant relatives who did not have much qualifications to compete with themselves for the throne, or Cao Cao's adopted sons and stepsons were more at ease to use, so Qin Lang and He Yan, the two stepsons of Cao Cao, and Cao Zhen, Cao Cao's adopted son, were more importantly used.
Just when the Old Cao family was fighting with each other because of this power, the Sima family opened a model of concerted efforts from top to bottom. The Sima family's fortune was the foundation laid by Sima Yi, but the scheming Sima Yi pretended to be very peaceful at first, even if he helped Cao Pi win the victory in the capture of the reserve, he was not proud of it.
Later, cao pi died, and the Wei Ming emperor Cao Rui succeeded to the throne, compared with the expanding general Cao Zhen, the seemingly low-key Sima Yi actually secretly accumulated more profound strength.
In 238, the Wei Ming Emperor Cao Rui had reached the point of being terminally ill, and he had intended to have Qin Lang, Xiahou Xian, Cao Shuang (Cao Zhen's son), and Cao Zhao (Cao Xiu's son) assist in the administration, but was guarded by Liu Fang and Sun Zi, and finally persuaded Cao Rui to change the edict and set cao Shuang and Sima Yi to assist the government.
In ancient feudal society, the monarchy and the courtiers are not simply subordinate, or a kind of power of the trade-off, once the monarch is not enough, the capable courtiers will have ambitions to expand, and even want to replace, Cao Fang is this incompetent king. As the saying goes, wanting to make his death mad, as Cao Shuang became more and more crazy, and Cao Fang's inaction, Sima Yi understood that the time had finally come.
In 249, when Cao Fang, Cao Shuang and others went to pay homage to Emperor Ming of Wei, Sima Yi launched a coup d'état at Gaopingling, and the Sima family began to flourish. After Sima Yi's death, Sima Shi and Sima Zhao successively controlled the Cao Wei regime until 265 AD, when Sima Zhao's son Sima Yan officially established the Jin Dynasty, at which time Cao Cao's sons had already died in infighting, abolished, and no longer had any ability to turn the tide of the times.