Text: Tachiaki Idle Man (Shigeba Shinichi Original Team Member)
The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms is one of the highest-rated "First Four Histories" in the Twenty-Four Histories. In the sixty-five volumes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is divided into three parts: the Thirty Volumes of the Book of Wei, the Fifteen Volumes of the Book of Shu, and the Twenty Volumes of the Book of Wu. Among them, the first volume of the Book of Wei is the "Book of Wu", a biography of Cao Cao; the first in the Book of Wu is "The Legend of Sun Breaking the Prisoner", which is about Sun Quan's father and brother Sun Jian Sun Ce. However, the first volume of the Book of Shu is not a biography of Liu Bei himself, nor a biography of Liu Bei's father or brother, but a biography of Liu Ermu, a biography of Liu Yan and Liu Zhang's father and son.
The relationship between Liu Bei and Liu Yan's father and son could not be beaten by eight poles, and there was never an intersection with Liu Yan (in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Yan took the initiative to recognize Liu Bei as a nephew. The intersection with Liu Zhang is nothing more than Liu Bei's anti-guest, replacing Liu Zhang and occupying Yizhou. For this reason, the most superficial relationship between Liu Bei and Liu Yan's father and son was the same surname, the surname of the Han Dynasty "Liu"; the deepest relationship was Tongzong, which was at best a descendant of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao. However, when Chen Shou wrote the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, the history of the jichuan style, he placed the inheritance of Liu Yan and Liu Zhang's father and son in the first volume of the Book of Shu, and its real intention was nothing more than three.
That is, the fame of Liu Yan Liu Zhang.
Liu Yan and Liu Zhang, although not as famous as Liu Bei, were also one of the heroes of the late Eastern Han Dynasty. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is recorded that Liu Yan was a descendant of King Gong of Hanlu. Liu Yu, Prince of Hanlugong, was the fourth son of Emperor Jing of Han. Liu Zhang, liu yan's fourth son. The emperors of the Eastern Han Dynasty were all from liu fa, the sixth son of emperor Jing of Han, the ding king of Changsha in Han. For this reason, Liu Yan Liu Zhang's Ermu, a down-to-earth imperial relative, and a righteous and eight-time Han dynasty patriarch. In the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, it is also written that Liu Bei was the queen of Zhongshan Jing. Liu Sheng, King jing of Zhongshan, was the ninth son of Emperor Jing of Han. However, Liu Sheng liked wine all his life, and in his fifty-three years of career, he actually gave birth to more than one hundred and twenty sons. Thus smearing a layer of mysterious color on Liu Bei's identity as a "Han dynasty relative", letting his debut be a peddler and weaving mat, and his bloodline is Liu Bei, who claims to be self-round, and his identity is true or false, which is a bit difficult to say. In any case, historians have both theories, but they cannot be determined. It was only when Liu Bei established the Shu Han regime and became emperor of Han Zhaolie, that his fame overshadowed Liu Yan's father and son.
Second, the status of Liu Yan Liu Zhang.
In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Yan, who held a high position in the official Taichang, suggested to Emperor Ling of Han that he "choose a prominent minister to think that He was a mubo and a town of An Fangxia", and "asked for help from Yan Mu and wanted to take refuge in the world", but later changed it to Yizhou Mu because the attendant Guanghan Dongfu privately told Liu Yan that "yizhou has a heavenly son of heaven in the wilderness". For this reason, Liu Yan was the first state pastor at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the first person to go to Yizhou in the true sense to engage in independence. After Liu Yan's death, Liu Zhang led Yizhou Mu. Therefore, Liu Yan Liu Zhang can be regarded as the founder of the Shu Han regime that Liu Bei later founded. In addition, Liu Yan, Liu Zhang, and Liu Bei not only had the same surname, the surname of the Eastern Han Dynasty; they also held the same position, Yizhou Prefecture Pastor. Therefore, according to the order of serving as the pastor of Yizhou, Liu Yan's biography of Liu Zhang ranked before Liu Bei, which not only reflected the legal theory of the inheritance of the Yizhou regime, but also diluted the color of Liu's mutual inclination with the same sect.
Third, the author Chen Shou's wishes.
Chen Shou, a native of Anhan County, Bashi County, spanned the Shu Han and Western Jin dynasties in his lifetime, and was a Shu Han in the first half of his life, personally experiencing the Shu Han division regime initiated by Liu Bei; in the second half of his life, he was a Western Jin dynasty and personally experienced the unified dynasty of the Western Jin Dynasty realized by Sima Yan. When Chen Shou wrote the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, he was in the Western Jin Dynasty, placing Liu Yan Liu Zhang in front of Liu Bei and not giving Liu Bei the status of Cao Cao and Sun Jian, with the intention of lowering Liu Bei's ranking and evaluation, which was conducive to Chen Shou's survivorship and the survival of the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms. Moreover, when Liu Yan was in charge of Yizhou, he ruled Yizhou with the benevolent government of "taking care of the rebellion and practicing leniency"; when Liu Zhang was in charge of Yizhou, he saved the people of Yizhou from the destruction of war with the benevolent deeds of "the people attacked and fought for three years, and the people of Yizhou were plastered and the grass and wild". When Liu Bei occupied Yizhou, he fought every year, and the people were miserable. Especially during the Battle of Hanzhong, Yizhou appeared to be "men in battle, women in luck". To this end, Liu Yan's practice in Yizhou won the respect of the people of Shudi. Therefore, it is not surprising that Liu Yan and Liu Zhang's two Yizhou pastors were ranked before Liu Bei.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Yan's biography of Liu Zhang is placed at the beginning of the fifteen volumes of the Book of Shu, which not only conforms to the conventions recorded in the history books, but also conforms to the Confucian meaning of the Spring and Autumn Period.
Author's Note: Strange, refers to the unusual special; strange and special. Liu Yan lived in the Eastern Han Dynasty all his life and served as an official in the Eastern Han Dynasty for a lifetime. However, in the end, Liu Yan's biography appeared in the first volume of the Book of Shu in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which was completely different from the first volume of the Book of Wei and the Book of Wu. Liu Yan's biography, the reason why it ranks ahead of the biography of Liu Bei, the founder of the Shu Kingdom, highlights the unusualness of Liu Yan's life. As the saying goes: Extraordinary people must have their own extraordinary places.