Talk:Zhao Gao

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I've been nosing through the Qin Dynasty articles for kicks and here I find myself wondering- how did Zhao Gao force Huhai to commit suicide? There's an interesting story behind Fusu's suicide, surely there must be some dirty business behind Huhai's! —The preceding

Records of the Grand Historian (aka Shiji) says the Second Emperor (Huhai) committed suicide after being denied various requests made to Yan Yue after he stormed Wangyi Palace on Zhao Gao's plot kill the Second Emperor and replace him with Ziying, one of the Second Emperor's older brothers. Zhao was thereafter slain by Ziying, who holed up on account of "illness" since he suspected Zhao was going to kill him at the ancestral temple before he received the jade seal of office. The Qin Dynasty is crazy. -- Psyced (talk) 01:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This section says Zhao Gao had all of the officials who called the deer a deer "executed instantly", but the (weak) reference to Records of the Grand Historian p. 70 does not mention what precisely is done to them. It only says they were "brought before the law" and thereafter "the officials were all terrified of Zhao Gao".

These two parts:

1. "and had them executed instantly"; and
2. "Zhao Gao gained military power as a result of that."

are the only additions to the quotation (checking from both the 1993 and 2013 editions of Watson's translation). I seriously doubt Watson would elide this wordage if Sima Qian had actually written it in Shiji, but perhaps this is something that was lost in translation? "Brought before the law" is rather vague and certainly does not carry the weight of "executed instantly".

We need to find another reference or elide the offending wordage. -- Psyced (talk) 00:58, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What was the death penalty invoking offence that Zhao Gao had done which required Meng Yi to call the death penalty on him? Hido F (talk) 16:56, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Zhao Gao.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:52, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]