Huo Guang paved a lot of roads for his descendants, but it is a pity that Emperor Xuan was not Cao Fang. Cao Rui lived a little longer, Sima Yi had no chance, and Sima Yi didn't do anything wrong during the Three Rebellions in Huainan. It shows that Sima Yi's image at that time was positive. Gao Pingling At that time, everyone was disgusted with Cao Shuang . It doesn't matter whether the position is correct or not. The Sima family was able to conquer the world because the general trend ultimately chose their family. The same goes for and Cao Cao . Sima Yi almost never appeared as the first assistant minister, and it was still not as good as Zhuge Liang.
Huo Guang's wife killed the queen, and Huo Guang protected her; while Zhuge Liang's crony Ma Su disappeared from the street pavilion, causing the first attack to fail, but Zhuge Liang directly killed him and even devalued himself. Both have extremely high power. One ignores the law and the other abides by the law. The gap is relatively large. If he didn't protect this, this crime would be enough to destroy the entire clan. Even if Emperor Xuan didn't move him, his enemies and the descendants of his former political enemies would kill him. Do you still remember the witchcraft case during Emperor Wu's time? He was the one who witnessed it.
Huo Guang's only fault was that he over-indulged his family. When I read Hanshu , his wife was so bold and she was so stupid. Maybe it was because he was too focused on the country and neglected his family. Sima Guang said that he was uneducated and secretive than Dali, which meant that he protected his family. However, it is said in the Han Dynasty that Huo Guang was so frightened that he wanted to take action and could not bear it, so this incident should not have reached the point of annihilating the entire clan. In fact, I think this is a problem caused by the chronicle style and the history book style .
I personally think that the actual process should be that Ma Di died in prison, and then Zhuge Liang said that he fought with tears. In fact, I think beautification of the biography exists, but vilification of the biography also exists. A large part of it is actually due to the need for accuracy and publicity. There are some things that historians dare not say, but if they want to say it, they can only write it in other biographies. There are also some issues that people at the time were not clear about. Huo Guang himself couldn't fight, and his dandy was even less capable. The revenge for killing his wife can last for three years until the children of the Huo family can no longer bear it.