Background
Sun He's tragedy began in the same year eight years earlier — in the fifth year of Chiwu, when he was designated Crown Prince, that same August saw Sun Ba enfeoffed as Prince of Lu with treatment equal to the Crown Prince's. From that point on the Nanlu Party Strife festered for years, until in the thirteenth year of Chiwu Sun Quan finally resolved to simultaneously depose the Crown Prince and force the death of the Prince of Lu, breaking up both the old Crown Prince faction and the Prince of Lu faction at a stroke, while pushing the young son Sun Liang onto the throne as heir. Sun He was first exiled to Guzhuang; on the eve of Sun Quan's death in the second year of Taiyuan (252), Sun He was enfeoffed as Prince of Nanyang and moved with his household to Changsha. This arrangement appeared on the surface to be a dignified way out for the deposed Crown Prince, but it actually exposed Sun He to the sights of the next round of palace power struggles — any incoming strongman could easily view this member of the imperial clan, once designated heir to the throne, as a potential threat [c:16700].
Key Figures
One of the central figures in this episode is not Sun He himself but Sun Jun. Sun Jun, having seized power after the killing of Zhuge Ke, urgently needed to eliminate potential rivals in one sweep. The attack vector he chose was not any actual conduct by Sun He but rather a popular rumour circulating that "Zhuge Ke had wanted to welcome Sun He back to restore him" — this technique of "exploiting rumour to charge and punish" is a path commonly taken by later strongmen for settling scores: the target need not have done anything; being locked in the crosshairs of rumour is sufficient grounds for disposal [c:16700]. Sun He throughout this process is virtually passive; after the envoy arrived, both he and his principal consort Lady Zhang took their own lives. He Ji is another key figure: rather than following her husband in death, she made the pragmatic judgement that "if we all die following him, who will raise the orphans?" and took upon herself the responsibility of raising Sun Hao and his three brothers [c:16700]. This decision was reactivated more than twenty years later when Sun Hao ascended the throne — without He Ji's long years of endurance, the posthumous elevation of Sun He to emperor would never have come to pass.
Core Issues
This case highlights two core issues. The first is "inadequate security mechanisms for deposed heirs" — though Sun Quan had deposed Sun He, he designed no stable political isolation zone for him. Once central power underwent violent reshuffling — as when Zhuge Ke was killed — the next strongman would almost instinctively view the former Crown Prince as the next figure to be purged. The second is the problem of "governing through rumour" — Sun Jun needed no evidence whatsoever to launch an order of death on the basis of a single phrase of "popular rumour," reflecting the extreme fragility of judicial and political process in mid-to-late Sunwu: the personal safety of imperial family members depended entirely on the inclinations of whichever strongman was in power at the time. These two issues together constitute the dual predicament of Sunwu's politics — "imperial authority highly concentrated yet extremely vulnerable to seizure by strongmen."
Political Consequences
Sun He's death was in the short term a clearing-out by Sun Jun to consolidate his power; in the medium term, this killing severed the one branch of Sun Quan's line that had received the most complete Eastern Palace education, and the subsequent emperors Sun Xiu and Sun Hao both lacked any systematic political training; in the long term, after Sun Hao ascended the throne he conferred on Sun He the posthumous titles "Emperor Zhaoxian" and later "Emperor Wen" — in essence using ritual compensation for the inhuman treatment his father had suffered in life [c:16700] — but this post-hoc addition could not repair the structural damage that had already been done to Wu's political system in the intermediate period. The He Ji clan (He Hong, He Jiang, He Zhi) consequently enjoyed enormous influence at Sun Hao's court, further producing the new problem in the later period of "the He clan acting presumptuously, their sons and brothers running amok."
Counterfactual Analysis
Had Sun Quan not designated both Crown Prince and Prince of Lu in the fifth year of Chiwu, and had Sun He smoothly ascended the throne after a number of stable years as Crown Prince, Sunwu might have possessed a Confucian-educated, politically mature emperor for its middle period, and the entire Ergongzhizheng would never have occurred. Taking a step back: had Sun Quan, after deposing Sun He, resettled him in a peripheral commandery far from Jianye and outside the sightlines of any strongman — such as Jiaozhou or the remotest reaches of the Jiangnan region — rather than Changsha, which was still relatively close to the capital, the probability of Sun He being purged by Sun Jun on a manufactured pretext would have been lower. Taking a further step back: had Sun Hao not ascended the throne more than twenty years later, Sun He's story might have been compressed by history into that of an ordinary "deposed Crown Prince," and even the posthumous title "Emperor Wen" would never have appeared. At the broadest level this episode reminds us: in an autocratic structure without institutional safeguards, a former heir to the throne can almost never lead a normal second half of life — his very existence is a factor of political instability, and he will inevitably be consumed by the next cycle of power struggles.