Chapter 9: Love Triangle Politics
After the incident in his garden, Dong Zhuo bumps into his advisor, Li Ru, who finds out what happened with Lu Bu and Diaochan and responds, "Well, shit. Listen, you have to let Lu Bu have the girl because you need to keep that boy on side." Dong Zhuo isn't a thousand percent convinced about making good with his mightest warrior, because, you know, he thinks the girl is pretty good-looking. But he eventually does talk to her, letting her know, hey, I think I have to give you to Lu Bu.
At which point Diaochan holds a goddamn knife to her own throat, claiming that that savage dog had harassed her in the garden and likely would have forced himself upon her if Dong Zhuo hadn't shown up to save her, and that she'd rather die then be given to Lu Bu.
So Dong Zhuo says, yeah, I was just kidding, haha, funny joke right? And he takes her away to his private palace he recently had constructed outside the city.
Wang Yun runs into Lu Bu, who's watching the carriage go off, and Wang Yun "learns" that Diaochan never made it to Lu Bu's care.
And Wang Yun is flabberghasted.
"What! He took her for himself! Why, that's an insult to both of us! I mean, I'm an old man, so I guess I'm just going to have to take this one on the chin; but a guy like you shouldn't have to suffer this sort of indignation!"
Lu Bu reasonably replies, "Yeah! I should end him! But I won't. He has been kind of a father to me. And we live in an age where filial piety is one of our hallmarks. People would look unkindly on me if I did that. Ignoring the fact that I already killed my first adopted father for a horse."
But Wang Yun tells him, "Hey, that guy ain't your real daddy. He even chucked a halberd at you, remember?" To which Lu Bu exclaims "Holy shit I forgot about that! That's it! Dong Zhuo is donezo!" That is a historically accurate quote.
The two of them do some scheming, ultimately sending a messenger to Dong Zhuo telling him to get back to the capital because the emperor is standing down and they're going to make him emperor instead. Dong Zhuo figures, this is great, I'd love to be emperor! However, Dong Zhuo's 90-year-old mother tells him, actually I've had a lot of anxiety lately, are you sure this is actually a good thing? But Dong Zhuo retorts, nah, you're just a senile old woman, let's get this party going!
All sorts of things keep happening on the trip back to the capital that are a thousand percent signs that bad things are gonna happen very specifically to Dong Zhuo, but the messenger (who's in on the scheme) keeps explaining them away. The explanations do get less and less convincing as the parade marches on, but whatever. I guess Dong Zhuo was just too excited to notice.
Anyway, instead of getting to be emperor, he just gets a halberd in the face. So that's him dealt with.
And after that's done, Lu Bu goes, "It's okay people, the emperor told us to do this, and absolutely nobody else is to pay for Dong Zhuo's crimes. Anyway, he was aided by his advisor, Li Ru! Let's go kill that guy too!" But I digress.
One more little problem: Dong Zhuo left his personal army back at his palace. Somebody asks Wang Yun if they should grant amnesty to the generals of this army, and Wang Yun replies, nah, don't see why we should.
This is probably the absolute last decision that could have saved the Han.
But, word gets back to the generals that they're not off the hook, so they decide, hell with it, we have this army, we might as well rebel anyway if the alternative is being executed for treason. So they do that.
Lu Bu takes some troops out to fight them, but here we start to see some of his failings as a commander. He will plow right through you in a straight fight, but he's pretty easy to mislead and trick. To make matters worse, his people will desert him if he's on a losing streak, because they're all frightened of his wrath. The rebels know all this since they used to work with him, and Lu Bu gets overwhelmed by their forces pretty quickly. Ultimately, he flees to go take refuge under Yuan Shu of all people.
After that, the rebel generals breach the city gates with some help from a few remaining Dong Zhuo loyalists on the inside, and with no way out, Wang Yun calmly allows himself to be put to the sword. So uh, yep. The capital's in the hands of Dong Zhuo's generals now. You may notice I haven't given them names, which surely indicates plenty of entertainment to come yet.