曹睿——魏明帝

Lady Zhen's son, and the last Wei emperor to actually govern. He held the western frontier through five of Zhuge Liang's northern expeditions and broke Liaodong in the northeast, but he spent his later years building palaces, and he died at thirty-four leaving an adopted boy on the throne and Sima Yi as one of two regents.

The military record is better than his reputation suggests: the generals he trusted — Sima Yi among them — contained Shu in the west and Wu in the south for thirteen years without losing territory. The domestic record is the palace construction at Luoyang that his own officials warned him the treasury could not carry.

The succession is what mattered. With no surviving son he adopted Cao Fang, and on his deathbed he named Cao Shuang and Sima Yi to govern jointly. Ten years later Sima Yi removed Cao Shuang in a single morning, and the dynasty his father had founded belonged to someone else.

Xiang Li paints his two empresses on one silk: Empress Mao, raised from a weaver's family and ordered to die in 237 after a slight at a palace banquet, and Empress Guo, who outlived him and was empress dowager through the whole Sima takeover.