King Weilie of Zhou

Also known as Ji Wu

King Weilie of Zhou, personal name Wu, was the son of King Kao and, according to the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), succeeded him after a fifteen-year reign. By his time the Han, Zhao and Wei clans had divided most of the state of Jin among themselves, leaving its duke only Jiang, Quwo and a few other towns. In 403 BCE, the twenty-third year of his reign, the nine sacred cauldrons were said to have shaken, and that same year he formally invested Wei Si, Zhao Ji and Han Qian as ranked lords, turning ministers of Jin into its equals. He died the following year and was succeeded by his son Jiao, King An. Sima Guang began the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian) with this investiture and opened the work with a comment that the Son of Heaven's first duty was to uphold ritual, which he judged the king to have abandoned.