In the first year of emperor Taikang of the Jin Dynasty (280), with the surrender of the last emperor of Eastern Wu, Sun Hao, to the commander of the Western Jin army Wang Hao with a sheep-leading salute, Eastern Wu officially declared its demise, from the first year of Yankang (220) when Cao Pi forced Emperor Han to sacrifice emperor Chan to establish the Cao Wei regime to the complete destruction of Eastern Wu by the Western Jin Dynasty, and the first year of Taikang (280), which lasted for sixty years, the Three Kingdoms era, which lasted for sixty years, came to an end. Thus was born the last last emperor of the Three Kingdoms era.
When we focus our attention mainly on the three last emperors of the Three Kingdoms, we will be surprised to find the fact that Cao Wan, the last emperor of Cao Wei, who was directly usurped by the Western Jin Dynasty, not only was not cut down by the Sima family, but he was also the last emperor of the Three Kingdoms era with the best treatment and ending.
First of all, why is it said that Cao Huan was the last emperor of the Three Kingdoms with the best treatment and ending? This is in contrast to the other two last emperors of the Three Kingdoms era, one of the last emperors of the Three Kingdoms is Sun Hao, the last emperor of Eastern Wu mentioned above, and the other is Liu Chan, the lord of the Shu Han Dynasty, who is well known to all of us.
In terms of treatment, after Liu Chan surrendered to Deng Ai, he was moved to Luoyang, the capital of Cao Wei, and was given the title of Duke of Anle County. Although Liu Chan lived a very happy life after the fall of the country, he was not without crises. We can actually know from the allusion of Le Bu Si Shu that Sima Zhao did not allow Liu Chan to return to Shu land after the destruction of Shu Han, but always let him live in Luoyang, and even tested Liu Chan's determination to restore the country many times, but
Because of Liu Chan's honesty and kindness, they all avoided the test of Sima Zhao's implicit killing machine.
The eight years of Liu Chan's life in Luoyang were like caged birds, seemingly happy, but they could only grow old in luoyang like a cage. And the treatment of Sun Hao of Eastern Wu was not much different from that of Liu Chan, Sun Hao was not even as good as Liu Chan, only received the title of a marquis, and died early four years after the destruction of Eastern Wu, only forty-two years old, while Liu Chan died at the age of sixty-five.
Compared with these two people, Cao Wan's treatment was very different, cao Yi was not only crowned by Sima Yan, the emperor of Jinwu, as the king of Chen Liu, eating thousands of households, but also arranging his palace room in Cao Wei's former capital, Yicheng, compared to the other two last emperors who never left Luoyang for the rest of their lives, which was already quite preferential. Not only that, Cao Huan could still use the Tianzi Banner, prepare the five-hour deputy car, carry out the Wei State Zhengshuo, and the suburban ritual system of heaven and earth were imitated the system of the early Wei State, and he could also write a letter without being a subject, and be commanded not to worship.
It can be said that Sima Yan gave enough respect and courtesy to Cao Yan, the last emperor of Cao Wei, and this treatment can be called one of the best even among the kings of the entire ancient history. In the second year of Xianxi (265), after being forced to take the throne by Sima Yan, Cao Huan actually lived until the first year (302) of the Jin Hui Emperor Tai'an(302) before he died in Chen Liu's fiefdom, and the Western Jin Dynasty also gave him the title of "Yuan", which was also a rare beauty given by the king of the fallen country in the subsequent dynasties. Among the three kings of the fallen kingdom, he was the one who lived the longest after the fall of the country, and the first two died less than ten years after the fall of the country, but Cao Yan lived for nearly forty years, even longer than Sima Yan.
Then, why did the Western Jin Dynasty only give such preferential treatment to Cao Yi, the king of Cao Wei's fallen kingdom, in the Three Kingdoms? This brings us to a long-term heart disease of the Sima family regime - the country is not right. The Sima family, as one of Cao Pi's important vassals before his death, seized the power of Cao Wei's power by virtue of the gaopingling change after Cao Rui's death, and even did such an extreme disloyalty and injustice as sending people to stab Cao Wei's emperor Gao Guixiang Gong Cao in public, so that the Sima family's descendants, emperor Of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Emperor Jinming, could not help but hide their faces and sigh after hearing about what their ancestors had done, lamenting how the Sima family's world could last long.
Sima Yan naturally understood the actions of his family before seizing power, which were easy to give people to handle, so in order to prove the legitimacy of his regime, Cao Yan was an indispensable existence. The reason for the Western Jin Dynasty's access to power was clearly from Cao Wei's Zen concessions, and although we all know that this kind of Zen concession was a persecutory act, the Sima family had to put this Zen concession's face project in place, and he had to make his behavior stand up, without leaving a pretext for future generations to launch a rebellion. Therefore, in order to reflect that the Western Jin Dynasty was indeed able to gain power in this ancient virtue of Zen, Cao Yan's treatment must be good.
Sima Yan wanted his existence to prove to the world that the Sima family was not forcing Cao Wei to hand over the power, but that Cao Wei had willingly ceded the world to his Own Sima family, and that his own Sima family had also repaid Li for giving Cao Yan the treatment of an ordinary last emperor, which was a concession of power full of the light of ancient virtues, not a power seizure full of intrigue and trickery.
Therefore, in order to maintain the legitimacy of his own regime, in order to show the characteristics of the Western Jin Dynasty as a regime that inherited the legitimacy of Cao Wei, it is reasonable that Cao Huan's treatment in the Western Jin Dynasty could not be bad, because this was a major matter related to the stability of the regime, and as for Shu Han and Eastern Wu, the Western Jin Dynasty, as conquerors, naturally did not need to consider these issues for them, so there was no need to give the same treatment to the last emperors of Shu Han and Eastern Wu.