Sun Hao
孫皓
“The last of the Three Kingdoms, and the worst of them”
Cruel even by the standards of a period that had seen a great deal, he emptied the treasury, terrorised his own officials and lost the river in a single campaign. When the Jin fleet came downstream in 280 the chains stretched across the Yangtze were burned through, and the Three Kingdoms ended.
Brought to Luoyang and given a mocking title, he is said to have answered the Jin emperor's needling in kind. The unification he lost lasted barely thirty-six years before the north was lost again.
His empress is among the women on the Eastern Wu silk.
The empress of this reign
Painted on silk in gemstone mineral pigments by Xiang Li.
About this page
Written for this site to place Sun Hao's reign around the paintings. For the full biography, the dynastic histories and the scholarship behind them, start at Wikipedia.