This book centers on the War of the Eight Princes in the Western Jin, reconstructing in full one of the bloodiest imperial family power struggles in Chinese history. In 280 AD, Sima Yan conquered Wu and united the realm. Yet this unified Western Jin collapsed after just 37 years, undone by a chain of civil wars sparked by the imperial princes' struggle for power.
The story unfolds in three volumes:
· It begins with Emperor Wu of Jin, Sima Yan, gravely ill and the succession in dispute, revealing the currents of power among the imperial court, the empress's relatives, the imperial clan, and the great clans beneath the Western Jin's prosperous surface.
· Jia Nanfeng uses others to eliminate Yang Jun, and the Eight Princes enter the fray one after another, repeatedly seizing power and fighting among themselves in a contest of political intrigue involving forged edicts, coups, using others to kill, and framing their rivals.
· The princes turn on one another in a brutal free-for-all, and the Western Jin's order collapses completely, ultimately triggering the Upheaval of Yongjia and plunging Chinese civilization into three centuries of division and darkness.
Using official histories as its framework and historical anecdotes as its lifeblood, the author makes the complicated infighting of the Sima family clear and accessible. The book brings historical details to life while unpacking the logic of power, laying out the entire course of the Western Jin's swift fall from unification to ruin.
