虞延 / Yu Yan (Eastern Han)

Overview

虞延 / Yu Yan enters the wiki as the Eastern Han Situ whose disbelief of an early private warning about 楚王刘英 becomes personally fatal when 汉明帝 rebukes him after the rebellion case is exposed.

Current Profile

Hanji 739 supplies Yu Yan’s core role. Someone privately tells him before the exposure that Liu Ying is plotting rebellion, but Yu Yan dismisses the report because Liu Ying is the emperor’s close royal kin. Once the case is exposed, Mingdi sees Yu Yan’s earlier disbelief as a grave failure and rebukes him harshly; Yu Yan then commits suicide in 71 CE.

Hanji 740 keeps Yu Yan inside the opening sequence of the Chu-prison case, mentioning his death before Liu Ying’s suicide and the multi-year search for hidden accomplices. His durable wiki function is therefore not a full ministerial biography but a warning case: kinship assumptions and fear of accusing royal relatives can make early information unusable, while ruler anger can turn a missed warning into fatal shame.

Key Characteristics

• Eastern Han Situ tied to the opening of Liu Ying’s rebellion case.
• Minister who discounts a private warning because the accused is Mingdi’s close royal kin.
• Figure whose failure becomes visible only after the accusation field changes from unlikely to politically urgent.
• Suicide case showing how treason panic can punish not only alleged rebels but also officials judged to have misread danger.
• Source-bounded witness to the beginning of the Chu-prison cascade.

Evidence

• Early warning: Hanji 739 says someone privately tells Yu Yan about Liu Ying’s rebellion before the case is exposed.
• Disbelief: Hanji 739 says Yu Yan does not believe the report because Liu Ying is the emperor’s brother.
• Rebuke and suicide: Hanji 739 records Mingdi’s anger and Yu Yan’s suicide in 71 CE.
• Case sequence: Hanji 740 keeps Yu Yan’s death in the early Chu-prison sequence before the wider implication cascade.

Qualifications

The source does not show whether Yu Yan’s disbelief was negligence, reasonable caution, fear of false accusation, or reluctance to accuse royal kin without evidence. The page therefore treats him as a source-bounded case of failed early-warning handling, not as proof of cowardice or complicity.

What Changed

• Created this page to normalize 虞延 from Hanji 739 and the Hanji 740 case sequence rather than leaving him as an unlinked name inside Mingdi’s profile.

Relationships

• 楚王刘英 - accused royal figure whose case exposes Yu Yan’s earlier disbelief.
• 汉明帝 - ruler whose rebuke after the case is exposed precedes Yu Yan’s suicide.
• 刑讯攀引扩大 - related case field because Yu Yan’s death is part of the opening pressure before the wider cascade.
• Treason Accusation Trap / 谋反指控陷阱 - adjacent danger because rebellion reports become risky both to ignore and to act on without strong evidence.