李通 / Li Tong (late Han)

Overview

李通 / Li Tong is a Cao-aligned late-Han military actor whose Hanji 1022 role centers on accepting legal enforcement against his wife’s kin rather than seeking exemption through private access.

Current Profile

Li Tong appears through a family-pressure scene. When the uncle of his wife violates the law and Zhao Yan sentences him to death, Li Tong’s wife asks him to intervene. Li Tong refuses, saying his service with Cao Cao cannot be made subordinate to private family interest. The source then presents Li Tong as praising Zhao Yan’s impartial enforcement and forming a friendship with him, turning Li Tong from a possible pressure source into a witness for Cao Cao’s law-backed camp order.

Key Characteristics

• Serves as the household-pressure side of Zhao Yan’s legal case.
• Refuses to use Cao-side access to rescue a wife-side relative from punishment.
• Converts a potential kinship exemption into public support for the magistrate’s enforcement.
• Represents a Cao-aligned military actor who strengthens organizational trust by accepting law over private pleading.
• Carries a source-scoped later military profile, including appointment in the Runan field and service against Guan Yu.

Evidence

• Household pressure: Hanji 1022 frames Li Tong through his wife’s plea for her uncle after Zhao Yan’s arrest and sentence.
• Duty over private ties: Hanji 1022 has Li Tong refuse to use his relationship with Cao Cao as a legal override.
• Enforcement legitimacy: Hanji 1022 says Li Tong praises Zhao Yan and becomes close to him after the execution.

Qualifications

This page is source-scoped. The episode’s later claims about Li Tong’s appointment and battlefield record are recorded as context, while the page’s current evidentiary weight rests on the law-over-kinship case.

What Changed

• Created this page for Hanji 1022’s Li Tong enforcement-response case.
• Linked Li Tong’s role to Cao Cao’s internal law and kinship-governance pattern.

Relationships

• 赵俨 - magistrate whose enforcement Li Tong accepts and praises.
• 曹操 - leader whose camp duty Li Tong refuses to compromise for private kinship.
• 法度压过亲缘特权 - concept illustrated by Li Tong’s refusal to plead kinship into exemption.
• 关羽 - later opponent named in the source-scoped career sketch.
• Hanji 1022 - source note for the current page.