Lord Changping


Lord Changping was a general and lord of Qin, but later seceded from Qin and died as the last king of Chu in the last days of the Warring States period of ancient China.

Accounts in the Records of the Grand Historian

The deeds of Lord Changping was mainly recorded in Vol. 6: Annals of Qin Shi Huang of the Records of the Grand Historian.
In 238 BC, in the State of Qin, a pseudo-eunuch Lao Ai became intimate with Queen Dowager Zhao and plotted against King Zheng of Qin :
The king found out this fact and ordered the chancellor to let Lord Changping and lead soldiers and attack Lao Ai. They battled at Xianyang and killed hundreds . they all received the peerage. Also, all eunuchs who battled received one higher peerage than before.

Although Lao Ai fled from this battle, he was ultimately captured and executed.
In 226 BC,
Lord Changping moved to Ying.

In 224 BC, King Zheng of Qin ordered Wang Jian to conquer Chu, and he captured its king and capital. The remnants, however, continued to resist by adopting Lord Changping as their new king:

, general of Jing, adopted Lord Changping as the king of Jing and resisted against Qin at Huainan. In the 24th year, Wang Jian and assaulted Jing and defeated the Jing army. Lord Changping died and Xiang Yan finally put an end to himself.

To the contrary, Vol. 40: House of Chu records Fuchu as the last king of Chu and does not mention Lord Changping. Furthermore, the order of events is utterly reversed compared to the accounts in Vol. 6; the army of Qin killed General Xiang Yan in 224 BC and then captured Fuchu in 223 BC.

Other references

His name was not recorded but some archaeologists associate him with a prime minister Shao of Qin.
According to the modern historian Li Kaiyuan, his given name was Qi, his ancestral name Mi and his lineage name Xiong were those of the kings of Chu. He was the son of King Kaolie of Chu. Lord Changping's three predecessors were all his brothers: King You, King Ai, and Fuchu. He died from an arrow wound.

In popular culture

In the manga series, Kingdom, he is the commander-in-chief of the army in the court of Qin later became a Minister of the Right then became a Prime Minister after Lu Buwei's disgrace, providing some assistance towards the unification of China.
In Yasuhisa Hara's one shot manga written before Kingdom was serialized, he was referred as a former Qin official and prime minister, until he snapped and defected to Chu when his former homeland was going to be invaded and he cannot pass any tactics to Ying Zheng. He was killed when his former friend, a Qin general fought him.