楚王刘戊 / Liu Wu, King of Chu (Western Han)

Overview

楚王刘戊 / Liu Wu, King of Chu enters the current wiki as the Chu ruler whose declining respect for inherited advisers precedes his participation with 吴王刘濞 in the Rebellion of the Seven States.

Current Profile

Hanji 232 contrasts Liu Wu with his predecessor Liu Jiao. Liu Jiao’s repeated accommodation of 穆先生 represents durable respect; Liu Wu first continues and then neglects the practice, which Mu reads as evidence that the inherited moral relationship has ended.

The episode then moves from signal to coercion. Liu Wu becomes increasingly violent, ignores or punishes remonstrance, joins Wu after Chu loses territory, humiliates advisers who oppose rebellion, threatens his uncle Liu Fu, and reportedly kills Chancellor Zhang Shang and Tutor Zhao Yiwu. His profile therefore joins deteriorating treatment of counsel to open princely revolt without claiming that one forgotten courtesy caused the rebellion.

Key Characteristics

• Successor whose abandonment of an inherited courtesy becomes a small sign of changed court relations.
• Ruler who answers repeated anti-rebellion remonstrance with humiliation, threat, or killing in the episode’s account.
• Chu participant whose territorial grievance and alliance with Liu Bi turn internal coercion into open rebellion.

Evidence

Relationship deterioration:

• Hanji 232 contrasts Liu Jiao’s sweet-wine accommodation with Liu Wu’s later omission and Mu’s withdrawal.

Suppression of remonstrance:

• Hanji 232 reports the humiliation of Shen and Bai, the threat against Liu Fu, and the killing of Zhang Shang and Zhao Yiwu.

Rebellion:

• Hanji 232 says territorial reduction precedes Liu Wu’s alliance with Wu and the joint attack on Liang.

Qualifications

This profile rests on one popular-history episode. The exact succession, offense and reduction, chronology, courtesy, adviser identities, punishments, threats, deaths, speeches, and division of initiative between Chu and Wu require comparison with transmitted records. The courtesy episode supports a narrative of deteriorating respect; it does not establish a universal predictive rule or a direct causal path from etiquette to rebellion.

What Changed

• Established Liu Wu as a ruler whose treatment of counsel links the episode’s early-warning story to its rebellion narrative.
• Distinguished the missing courtesy as a signal of relationship change rather than the cause of later violence.

Relationships

• 穆先生 - former adviser who withdraws after reading a small breach of inherited respect as a danger signal.
• 见几而作式风险退出 - judgment pattern illustrated by Mu’s response to Liu Wu’s changing conduct.
• 吴王刘濞 - allied king with whom Liu Wu joins forces against the center.
• 七国之乱 - uprising in which Chu becomes a principal participant.
• 梁孝王刘武 - loyal prince whose kingdom the Wu-Chu force attacks.
• 晁错 - central adviser whose reduction program and public targeting frame the conflict.