Professor Andrew Meyer

This duke is able to return from exile, and when he comes to the throne, he decides, okay, I'm going to put some of Confucius's ideas into practice.

So I, as duke, am going to decide that my friend

who I consider very learned, even though he's very low in status, I'm going to make him one of my prime ministers.

Yeah, he makes Zaiwa prime minister, but he makes him one of two prime ministers.

The other man that he makes prime minister is this figure, Tian Chang, who is very famous, notorious throughout the Chronicles of the Warring States.

Tian Chang was undisputedly the most powerful of the regional nobles in the state of Qi.

He had, in effect, engineered the succession of this duke to the throne.

When the duke's father was murdered, Tian Chang had punished the murderers of the duke's father and seen to it that the same line would remain on the throne.

So the duke, he knows he owes his position to Tian Chang, but he wants to assert his own authority.

So he makes Tian Chang and Zaiwa both prime ministers at the same time.

And, you know, this is one of the first sort of very robust...

institutional responses to the crisis of the deterioration of the Zhou dynasty.

This is someone trying to turn back the clock and say, well, I'm going to assert the power that the ducal house once had.

And it doesn't work well.

Tian Chang predictably hates Zaiwa, feels that Zaiwa has absolutely no business sharing equal power and status with them.

And civil war erupts, and the end is predictable.

Tianzhan, I should say, and his brothers, they storm into the ducal palace.

They take the duke, in effect, hostage.

They kill Zaiwa.

By the time it's all over, the duke is dead, Zaiwa's dead, a young child, one of the youngest sons of the duke is put on the ducal throne by Tianchang.