燕太子丹 / Crown Prince Dan of Yan
燕太子丹 / Crown Prince Dan of Yan enters the wiki through 《资治通鉴·秦纪》100-1｜皇帝中的超长待机王过世了 as a young 燕国 hostage in 邯郸 in 252 BCE. The episode’s notice is compact: he is placed in the same city and age-world as young 嬴政 / 秦始皇, who is then about eight.
The page keeps him source-scoped. His role in this episode is not yet the later Yan-Qin assassination branch, but the early human connection that lets the narrative foreshadow later hostility between Yan and Qin.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》113｜李牧如何用一己之力阻秦国统一 returns to that foreshadowing. The source says Yan and Qin are still aligned enough to squeeze 赵国 from east and west, but Dan’s experience in Qin is humiliating rather than protective despite his childhood acquaintance with Ying Zheng. His escape back to Yan becomes an emotional and political setup for later anti-Qin escalation.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》114-2｜燕国刺杀秦始皇为何会选荆轲 turns that setup into the assassination-planning branch. Facing Qin pressure after Zhao’s fall, Dan rejects 居武’s slower plan to rebuild 合纵 and contact 匈奴, refuses to send away the Qin fugitive 樊无忌, and then follows Ju Wu’s referral to 田光. The episode presents his turn to 荆轲 as a mix of personal revenge, weak-state desperation, guest-protection honor, and patronage binding.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》114-3｜荆轲刺秦为何久久不行动？在等谁？ shows the cost of that choice once planning becomes execution. Dan wants Jing Ke to depart quickly after Zhao’s fall, but his earlier guest-protection honor makes 樊无忌’s head hard for him to demand directly. After Jing Ke privately secures Fan Wuji’s suicide and the 督亢地图, 徐夫人’s dagger, and 秦武阳 are ready, Dan still lacks full control over Jing Ke’s timing.
The episode therefore makes Dan a patron whose urgency turns into mistrust. His cautious question about whether Jing Ke still intends to act pushes Jing Ke to leave before the distant friend arrives, creating mistrust-triggered mission launch and leading into the 易水送别.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》115-1｜荆轲刺秦似乎有点儿草率了 judges the plan from the other side. The episode says that even if Jing Ke had killed Ying Zheng, Dan’s temperament made it unlikely that he could use Qin court disorder to rebuild 合纵 quickly enough to reverse the larger trend. Dan’s strategy therefore reads less as a reliable state-saving design than as an attempt to buy time or vent revenge after ordinary options have collapsed.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》115-2｜秦王大难不死之后干了件你不知道的事？ makes that judgment harsher after the attempt fails. Jing Ke’s dying claim says he wanted to capture the Qin king alive and force a pact to repay Taizi Dan, but the host’s practical explanation returns to Dan’s earlier impatience: sending 秦武阳 before Jing Ke’s preferred partner arrived weakened the mission’s execution. The episode closes by asking what will happen to Dan as the failed plot’s sponsor.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》116｜史上最惨太子：被父王亲手斩杀？！ answers that cliffhanger through Dan’s death. After Qin defeats the Yan-Dai force and captures Ji, Dan flees with 燕王喜 toward Liaodong while 李信 pursues. 赵嘉 then advises Yan Wang Xi to kill Dan and offer his head to Qin, so Dan’s final role becomes a heir-sacrifice appeasement payment that fails to stop Qin’s larger conquest.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》119-1｜拆解荆轲刺秦必败的秘密 adds 司马光’s explicit judgment on Dan. Sima Guang refuses to call him贤 because he cannot endure personal humiliation, answers state crisis with shallow planning, and causes Yan’s ancestral sacrifices to end. The source therefore turns Dan from a tragic sponsor into a ruler-instruction warning: private grievance and urgent courage do not meet the 仁义为本的信勇 standard for public action.
Connections
- 燕国 - polity and royal house.
- 赵国 and 邯郸 - hostage setting.
- 嬴政 / 秦始皇 - young Qin figure named as his contemporary acquaintance.
- 战国时期 - broader interstate hostage and succession environment.
- Qinji 113 and 质子外交破裂 - return from childhood co-presence to Qin mistreatment and flight.
- Qinji 114-2, 居武, 田光, 荆轲, 樊无忌, 弱国刺杀式破局, and 以死绑定的侠义压力 - rejected strategic alternatives and assassination recruitment.
- Qinji 114-3, 督亢地图, 秦武阳, 刺杀接近凭证, 疑忌触发式出发, and 易水送别 - execution preparation, mistrust, and farewell.
- Qinji 115-1, 蒙嘉, 秦国东进压力, and 耕战逻辑 - counterfactual limit on Dan’s assassination strategy.
- Qinji 115-2, 图穷匕见, and 大一统下的游侠压制 - failed attack, source-scoped causation, and the cliffhanger around Dan’s fate.
- Qinji 116, 燕王喜, 赵嘉, 李信, and 杀储求和式保祀 - flight to Liaodong, paternal execution, and failed appeasement.
- Qinji 119-1, 司马光, and 仁义为本的信勇 - final moral-political critique of Dan’s grievance-driven assassination policy.