Cao Cao: Evil Genius or History’s Biggest Troll?

Stone-cold killer, shrewd political strategist, world-class troll. Throughout history, the ancient warlord Cao Cao, thus known as the antagonist of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, has been depicted as a number of different things, and most of them evil. I mean, the Chinese equivalent of speak of the devil is 说曹操曹操到, speak of Cao Cao and arrives. Can't get much worse than that. But who was he really? Was he really that bad? Was he really that funny? Today, we'll look into one of the most vilified figures in Chinese history and see whether it's true that you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. Cao Cao was born into a wealthy minister's family in 155 AD at the tail end of the Han Dynasty. He was extremely smart and loved learning, but was also a free spirit, spending most of his time roaming about, hunting and living his life by his own principles rather than chasing the rat race of conventional society. Basically, he was like that really clever kid who drops out of college because they can't stand the system and the status quo. That said, he couldn't be a rebellious teen for forever. He ended up following in his father's footsteps and became a civil servant at the ripe young age of 19, rising in the ranks as both a local official and military officer of the Han Empire. He established a reputation as a man of no BS, whistleblowing corrupt ministers to the emperor, calling out the rich for being spoiled brats, and standing up for the fair and unbiased rule of law. A lawful neutral in the strictest sense. Try as he might though, most of the government was already rotten to the core. And at 32, he gave up, resigned, and moved to the countryside to live a quiet life of reading and hunting. The end. But everything changed when the Fire Nation, sorry, I mean Dong Zhuo attacked. It was that government corruption which led to the rogue general, Dong Zhuo, taking over the Han Imperial court, setting into motion a series of events that would lead to an era of chaos called the Three Kingdoms Period. Which you can learn about here. They say hard times create strong men. So what would these hard times do to Cao Cao? You see, he once convinced a famous philosopher to basically give him a personality test. And was told that in times of peace, he would be a shrewd official. And in times of chaos, a treacherous hero. Would our principled nonconformists become a hero of the age and unite a fractured empire? Or was this the beginning of his villain arc where he would rather watch the world burn? For better or for worse, it was a little of both. Cao Cao was called back to the capital to help maintain order. Only to be helpless against a court already rife with conspiracy and debauchery. He watched as sinister eunuchs schemed and amoral officials assassinated. Until finally, Dong Zhuo marched in and turned the emperor into his puppet. And the empire into his personal regime. The world was already burning. You'd think at this point, Cao Cao might be too fed up to care anymore. But he hadn't given up yet. He was going to do everything in his power to fight those fires and restore peace to the realm. And so, he dug into his family's fortune to assemble an army against Dong Zhuo. Many other warlords shared the same sentiment. And soon, a nationwide alliance of militias was formed in the name of justice, righteousness, and the restoration of the emperor's rightful place in power. Over the course of this tumultuous age, Cao Cao would grow from leading a ragtag militia fighting for justice, to commanding a massive army waging war for supremacy over a dying empire. Establishing permanent control over the entirety of northern China by being ridiculously smart and incredibly sensible. Running the closest thing to a true meritocracy China would ever see. He knew budding potential when he saw it, and he knew good advice when he heard it. Rewarding the truly capable with appropriate positions and status. This earned him loyal subordinates and able advisors who helped him expand and strengthen his kingdom to become the preeminent power in a divided China. He may not have been able to reunify the empire in his lifetime, but the successes he did achieve made him one of the biggest names in Chinese history. So, he was big. But how was he bad? Unfortunately, in his rise to power, he also became notorious for being appallingly treacherous and absolutely ruthless. He famously said, I would rather betray the world, than let the world betray me. That sounds more like an edgy teenager who just read Machiavelli's The Prince for the first time. How did an upstanding, by the books, lawful neutral turn into a cruel and chaotic one instead? What started his villain arc? In that case, we'll need to backtrack to one of the most infamous stories of his savagery, because it was also the first of such stories. Which means that maybe this unfortunate event was the straw that broke our once lawful Cao Cao's back, the villain origin story that turned him into a Machiavellian monster. Dong Zhuo was deposed a few years after the alliance against him was formed, but the remaining warlords were more interested in using the emperor for themselves rather than restoring his rightful power. Cao Cao, on the other hand, had no such traitorous ambitions and settled his army down in what was the then Yan province during this period of uneasy peace. His dad had just retired and was moving his fortunes back from the neighboring Xu province to be with Cao Cao. On that journey though, Xu troops murdered his father and his brother and stole all of their valuables they had with them. Cao Cao was incredibly unhappy. He blamed the governor of Xu and invaded the province with his army, twice. Even though neither invasion succeeded, his rampage destroyed a dozen cities and killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers. But that wasn't the worst part. Unable to avenge his dad, he wiped out everyone and everything on his way out, including at least 100,000 civilians and refugees, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because he was mad at the world. Truly, he would rather betray the world than let the world betray him. Machiavelli, eat your heart out. From then on, his conquests only became more and more heartless. He would backstab for his own benefit, terminate anyone remotely traitorous with extreme prejudice, and even steal the wives of defeated generals for himself. There was no justice in this rotten world anyway. Might as well transform it to his liking and become judge, jury, and executioner of an empire of his own by any means necessary. As a result, later evaluations of Cao Cao by historians, scholars, and even emperors all agreed that while he was an ingenious commander and a brilliant leader, he was definitely a vicious, self-centered, two-timing, paranoid jerk with an utter disregard for human life other than his family and those absolutely loyal to him. Hard times really do create strong men. But given the right conditions, those men can also become extremely dangerous. And that makes you wonder, what would he have been like if the times weren't so hard? You see, although he was an iron-fisted official and a barbaric warlord, somewhere deep behind that Machiavellian exterior, he was still a free spirit at heart. He was frugal, friendly, and a ferocious learner. He didn't like spending money on himself and rewarded his soldiers instead. He was cordial, chatty, and loved a good joke and a good laugh. He could be found reading anywhere and everywhere and made his officers do the same, to the point where even his enemies looked up to him as a role model for lifelong learning. This paints a picture of a man that maybe, just maybe, could have remained a really good dude in a different, more peaceful timeline. And the most compelling evidence of that was his poetry. Cao Cao was a generous patron of the arts, but he was also a deeply insightful creative in his own right. Even when in the middle of a military campaign, if he reached a scenic lookout point, he would sit down to write poetry and then recite it with music whenever he got a chance. But not only was he an avid poet, he was actually a really, really good one. Despite acting like a tyrannical despot with a disgustingly broken moral compass, many of his works were modest, simple, and even moving. Of course, he wrote some stupid and silly ones too, but when they hit, they hit hard. For example, here are the first four lines of one of his most famous poems, or Short Song Style, written in the year 210. To my wine I sang, who knows of life's span? Life is like the dawn's dew, past days many, and futures few. This languor that I lament, comes from cares I can't forget. How can I undo these woes of mine? There is but only the God of Wine. Hot dang, that's deep. Not content with simply writing well, he also modernized and revitalized this drab and old-fashioned four-character per-line style from over a thousand years before his time. And if that wasn't enough, he also pioneered and popularized a new five-character per-line style that became the backbone of the Tang Dynasty's celebrated poetry 400 years later. To illustrate, here are the last few lines of How Li Xing, or A Walk Among Artemesias. A walk among artemises, Suits of armor overrun with lice, Upon ten thousand devoid of life, Sun-bleached bones left out in the wild, No roosters heard for a thousand miles, Once home to hundreds, there is now but one, A gut-wrenching thought that I do shun. Another one that hits hard. Cao Cao, along with his sons, would collectively lay the groundwork for an entirely new generation of Chinese poetry called the Jian'an style. Jian'an means establishing peace and was the name of the last real era of the Han Dynasty, the very era that they lived and fought and killed in. Oh the irony. Much like the name of the era, Cao Cao was a man of contradictions, a very complicated man, thrust into very complicated times. A smart guy that started off wanting to do the right thing and stand by the law, but when he saw that it was useless against the ugliness of human nature, decided he might as well fight chaos with chaos. If these second-rate strongmen were going to play dirty anyway, he'd show them what playing dirty really meant. Maybe under better circumstances, he could have been the hero that a struggling populace needed, but the cutthroat reality he lived in made him into the anti-hero that the corrupt country deserved. Cao Cao died in 220 AD with no pomp and no circumstance. His kingdom never became an empire. His warmongering amounted to little more than a blip on the long march of history, but he did leave behind a legacy, one that is both compelling and controversial. And so I raise the question to you, what's your opinion of Cao Cao? Was he a lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, or a true neutral? What other fascinating figures deserve a thorough analysis? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and no matter what times are ahead, I hope you can be strong and righteous.