Sun Ce

Sun Ce conquered the whole southeast of China in about five years and was assassinated at twenty-five, leaving it to his younger brother. He was the eldest son of Sun Jian, a warlord killed in an ambush in 191, and inherited nothing but his father's reputation and a few hundred men. He served Yuan Shu, borrowed troops from him against the Imperial Seal his father had found in the ruins of Luoyang, and then crossed the Yangtze on his own account in 195. Between then and 199 he took the commanderies of Wu, Kuaiji, Danyang and Yuzhang, mostly by speed and by persuading defeated commanders to serve him instead of executing them. He was called the Little Conqueror after Xiang Yu. He broke with Yuan Shu when Yuan declared himself emperor, which cost him his supply of troops and gained him legitimacy. In 200, while Cao Cao and Yuan Shao faced each other at Guandu, he was hunting alone and was ambushed by retainers of Xu Gong, an official he had executed; he took an arrow in the face and died of the wound within months. He told his brother Sun Quan that in open battle Sun Quan was no match for him, but in holding what they had and employing good men he was the better, which proved correct. He and Zhou Yu were the same age and sworn friends, and married two sisters known as the Qiao girls, a detail Chinese poetry has never let go of. He fought Taishi Ci hand to hand at Shenting and then took him into his service, which is the episode most often used to show his method. He is said to have been planning a raid on Cao Cao's capital to seize the emperor when he was attacked. When Sun Quan finally declared himself emperor of Wu in 229, he gave his dead brother only the posthumous title Prince Huan of Changsha rather than an imperial one, and historians have treated the slight as deliberate.

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