Chapter 9: Love Triangle Politics
After the incident in his garden, Dong Zhuo runs into his advisor, Li Ru, who finds out what happened and is like, "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 this, because, you know, he likes her. But he still talks to her, being like, hey, I think I'ma 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 goes, yeah, I was just kidding, haha, funny joke right? And he takes her away to his private palace he just had built 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, he's insulted 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 the indignation!"
Lu Bu responds, "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."
So Wang Yun goes, "Hey, that guy ain't your real daddy. He even chucked a halberd at you, remember?" To which Lu Bu says "holy shit I forgot about that! That's it! Dong Zhuo is donezo!" That is a historically accurate quote.
The two of them send 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. And Dong Zhuo is like, this is great! 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 is like, nah, you're just a senile old woman, let's get this party going!
But all sorts of things keep happening on the road 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. Although the explanations 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 that 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's like, yeah, I don't think so.
This is probably the absolute last decision that could have saved the Han.
But, word gets out 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. 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 easy to mislead and trick. On top of that, his people will desert him if he's on a losing streak, because they're all scared of his anger. So he gets overwhelmed by the rebel forces pretty quickly, and 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 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.