Background
From a modern political-history perspective, the First Memorial on the Expedition (Qianshu Shibiao) is not merely a document of military mobilization; it is a governance testament — an institutional framework that Zhuge Liang built for Shuhan to function "while Zhuge Liang is absent from the capital." In the fifth year of Jian'an Xing (227), Shuhan had completed its southern campaigns, its armor and soldiers were sufficient, and Sima Yi had been demoted on account of a slander [c:16290] — for the first time, external conditions had opened a window for the northern expedition. But before Zhuge Liang could personally lead the main force out on a distant campaign, he had to resolve a fundamental problem: when Shuhan's de facto administrative center (the office of the Chancellor) left Chengdu and moved north with him, how would the regent Emperor Liu Chan and the civil and military establishment maintain stability? This is the fundamental reason the Memorial was written — it is in essence the "governance operating manual" that Zhuge Liang laid out for the young emperor before departing Chengdu, with each recommendation corresponding to a specific institutional arrangement.
Principal Figures
The several "Privy Chamberlains and Attending Officers" named in the Memorial — Guo Youzhi, Fei Yi, Dong Yun — and "General Xiang Chong" were not chosen at random; they were the governing core team Zhuge Liang had carefully selected [c:16292]. Guo Youzhi, Fei Yi, and Dong Yun carried weight in three directions respectively: palace deliberation, diplomacy, and remonstrance. Xiang Chong commanded the Imperial Forest Army, holding the highest security force in Chengdu [c:16297]. Together this combination constituted a complete "Zhuge Liang surrogate structure" — Guo Youzhi to keep palace deliberations flowing; Fei Yi to handle foreign affairs; Dong Yun to manage inner-court remonstration; Xiang Chong to hold the military floor. Zhuge Liang also arranged for Chen Zhen as Privy Chamberlain, Jiang Wan as Staff Officer, and Zhang Yi as Chief of Staff to manage the affairs of the Chancellor's office [c:16297] — a reserve backup for the entire chancellery administration he was leaving behind. Jiang Wan's later succession to the post of Chancellor had its institutional foundation precisely here. In short, the Memorial's surface address was to the Emperor, but its real announcement was to the entire court: "This is the governance structure I am establishing for my absence. Anyone who disrupts this structure is undermining the foundations of the state."
Core Issues
The core issue was the balance between centralized authority and representative governance. Zhuge Liang was acutely aware that Emperor Liu Chan lacked the capacity for independent decision-making, yet he could not openly strip him of authority. The compromise he chose was "let the inner court and the outer court be of one body" [c:16291] — placing the internal affairs of the imperial palace and the administrative affairs of the Chancellor's office under the same personnel and the same standards, with the Attending Officers carrying real executive power. This arrangement was of major significance in the history of Chinese official institutions: it preemptively dissolved the tension that a "separate inner court vs. outer court" arrangement might have created, allowing the entire Shuhan regime to continue operating as "one team" while Zhuge Liang was on distant campaign. The second core issue was the personnel principle of "keep loyal ministers near, keep petty men at a distance" [c:16293] — by contrasting the flourishing of the Former Han with the decline of the Later Han, Zhuge Liang elevated a specific personnel principle to the status of a law governing the rise and fall of heaven-ordained dynasties, supplying the Emperor with a criterion of judgment that could be applied mechanically without requiring understanding. The third core issue was the fulfillment of a commitment made at the time of being entrusted with the throne: "The late Emperor knew that I was cautious; it was for that reason that he entrusted me with great affairs at the moment of his passing" [c:16294]. This single sentence anchored Zhuge Liang's personal political legitimacy entirely to Liu Bei's deathbed testament, ensuring that any voice opposing the northern expedition was implicitly opposing the late emperor's will.
Political Consequences
The most immediate consequence was that the Diyicibeifa proceeded smoothly, and the Chengdu government maintained stability during the expedition. There were two medium-term consequences. First, the civil officials Guo Youzhi, Fei Yi, and Dong Yun thereafter became the core of Shuhan politics; the succession system in which Jiang Wan succeeded Zhuge Liang and Fei Yi in turn succeeded Jiang Wan — the so-called "four chancellors of Zhuge Liang, Jiang Wan, Fei Yi, and Dong Yun" — had its institutional foundation in precisely the personnel framework fixed by the Memorial. Second, "keep loyal ministers near, keep petty men at a distance" became the highest standard by which the court judged political direction throughout the reign of Emperor Liu Chan; the reason eunuchs like Huang Hao dared not openly interfere in government in the early period lies here. In the long term, however, the Memorial also introduced a latent problem: it bound the Shuhan regime too tightly to Zhuge Liang's personal political prestige, so that once Zhuge Liang died and his successors gradually thinned out, without the personnel core he had personally designated, the Huang Hao faction was able to rise. This means that the Memorial was simultaneously the bedrock of Shuhan's mid-period political stability and a harbinger of the talent attrition that would come later.
Counterfactual Analysis
What would have happened if Zhuge Liang had chosen not to lead the campaign personally, but to remain in Chengdu and instead send Wei Yan or Zhao Yun as the northern expedition commander? The most probable outcome: the expedition's execution capability would have declined (no one else could match Zhuge Liang's ability to coordinate strategy, diplomacy, and internal governance simultaneously), but the Chengdu government's stability would have been higher, and the talent attrition problem of Shuhan's later period might not have been as severe. But Zhuge Liang chose to lead in person, with the fundamental reason being not distrust of his subordinates but his conviction that only by personally holding all military and political authority could he create, in a state whose national power was far weaker than Caowei's, any window of opportunity for the northern expedition. A second counterfactual: if the Memorial had not explicitly designated Guo Youzhi, Fei Yi, Dong Yun, and Xiang Chong as a specific team — if it had left the matter "for the Emperor to decide as he sees fit" — then the caretaker government of Shuhan might have fallen into factional strife during the very first northern expedition. By fixing the personnel through a written memorial, Zhuge Liang forestalled this risk. But the cost was that Emperor Liu Chan never genuinely learned to make autonomous decisions, and the political cultivation mechanisms of Shuhan in its middle and later periods accordingly stagnated. This was the dilemma of Zhuge Liang's "exchanging concentration of power for stability"; in the San Guo context there may well have been no better solution, but its long-term effect on Shuhan was bidirectional — laying the foundation for mid-period stability while planting the seed of later-period rigidity.