An old man of Juchao, the strategist behind Xiang Yu's throne. Read Liu Bang's abstinence as ambition, and cursed the feast afterwards.
You cannot make plans with that boy. The one who takes the lord of Xiang's realm will be Liu Bang, and we shall all be taken by him.Fan Zeng of Juchao after Liu Bang had slipped out of the banquet at Hong Gate, 206 BCE; Shiji, juan 7, Basic Annals of Xiang Yu
Appears in
Relations
- Xiang Yu commander — He was the planner beside Xiang Yu's chair, raised to the place of Second Father, and he read Liu Bang's new abstinence as appetite with a lid on it and told him to strike without delay.
- Liu Bang enemies — He broke his own jade cup on the ground over the escape and named the man who would take the realm; Liu Bang's later account of winning it has one clause about him.
Myth vs record
Fan Zeng stormed out on the night of the banquet, and from Hong Gate onward Xiang Yu was a general without a plan.
He stayed seven years longer and was still in the camp when Xiang Yu closed on Xingyang; his exit is the record's own, but it comes late and it is Xiang Yu's doing. Gold and a counterfeit embassy — Chen Ping's counter-intelligence, told in Chen Ping's hereditary house, Shiji, juan 56 — made the overlord suspect the elder and slowly take his authority away; Fan Zeng then asked to be sent home as a common soldier, saying the empire's business was settled and his lord might run it by himself, and before he reached Juchao a carbuncle broke on his back and he died, in 204 BCE (juan 7). Liu Bang's own summing-up, in the annals of Gaozu, is one sentence long: Xiang Yu had one Fan Zeng and could not use him, and that is why he was caught (juan 8).