田子春 / Tian Zichun (Western Han)

Overview

田子春 / Tian Zichun is presented as a Qi political broker who turns 刘泽’s payment and an indirect palace-access route into a two-stage enfeoffment plan: first help 吕雉 place 吕禄 in a kingship, then use the resulting resistance to justify Liu Ze’s own royal title.

Current Profile

Hanji 202 part 2 introduces Tian as a Qi itinerant persuader who accepts a reported two hundred jin of gold to plan Liu Ze’s advancement from marquis to king. After two years of visible inactivity and a warning from Liu Ze, he goes to Chang’an, rents an impressive residence, cultivates elite visibility, and places his son under a palace insider trusted by Lu Zhi.

Hanji 203 completes the episode sequence. Tian uses a high-status banquet and the prospect of a marquisate to enlist that intermediary, then frames Lü Lu’s kingship as the fulfillment of Lu Zhi’s family goal through a ministerial petition. After the grant provokes resentment, he refuses a share of the intermediary’s reward and proposes Liu Ze as the Liu-family counterweight whose title can calm ministers and royal kin.

The same source attributes execution discipline to Tian. He immediately urges Liu Ze to leave Chang’an with the decree because Lu Zhi may reconsider; the reported recall arrives after Liu Ze has departed. This makes Tian’s profile one of access construction, incentive diagnosis, sequential policy design, and timing, while his private motives and the historical precision of the account remain unresolved.

Key Characteristics

• Paid Qi itinerant persuader who accepts a large reported fee to seek Liu Ze’s promotion.
• Patient or delayed operator who acts only after two years and pressure from his client.
• Access builder who uses elite display, his son’s placement, and accumulated trust rather than a direct petition.
• Incentive reader who links the ruler’s family objective and the intermediary’s ambition to his client’s goal.
• Sequential broker who makes one enfeoffment create the political rationale for a second.
• Execution-focused adviser who rejects an immediate payoff and prioritizes Liu Ze’s departure before possible recall.

Evidence

Payment, delay, and access construction:

• Hanji 202 part 2 says Tian accepts Liu Ze’s gold, delays for two years, then builds visibility and a son-mediated route to a trusted palace insider.

Two-stage political design:

• Hanji 203 attributes to Tian the linked plan to promote Lü Lu through ministers and then present Liu Ze’s kingship as reassurance to the Liu house and court.

Reward refusal and timing:

• Hanji 203 says Tian refuses half of the intermediary’s gold reward and sends Liu Ze out of Chang’an before Lu Zhi’s attempted recall.

Qualifications

Both notes are structured summaries from one popular-history sequence. Tian’s home region, status, fee, reason for delay, use of the money, son’s identity and office, intermediary’s identity, banquet display, threats, private calculations, exact petitions, rewards, influence over the grant, prediction of regret, and timing of departure and recall require comparison with transmitted histories. Success in the episode does not establish that the arrangement was lawful, stable, or equally beneficial to all parties.

What Changed

• Replaced the earlier unfinished-access judgment with the episode’s completed two-stage kingship maneuver.
• Added Tian’s refusal of an immediate reward and his timing of Liu Ze’s departure as parts of the current profile.
• Kept identities, motives, dialogue, and causal precision source-scoped.

Relationships

• 琅邪王刘泽 - paying client whose kingship Tian reportedly secures.
• 吕雉 - ruler whose family objective and later concern structure the plan.
• 吕禄 - first beneficiary whose enfeoffment creates the rationale for the compensating Liu grant.
• 内廷通道攀附风险 - access mechanism built through display, family placement, and palace trust.
• 多方利益嵌入式政治经纪 - two-stage strategy attributed to Tian in the completed account.
• 齐国 - Tian’s reported home region and the larger territorial setting affected by Liu Ze’s grant.