History Characters / RavagesOfTimeSunClan

%%* {{Bishonen}}

%%* PeekABangs

* ShipSinking: By arranging the marriage between Sun Shu and Liu Bei at Zhang Fei's prodding, he sinks any hope of a re-ignited passion between Sun Shu and her former fiance Zhao Yun.

%%* BladeOnAStick

* ArrogantKungFuGuy
* BadassCrew
* BadassFamily

* DoomedMoralVictor

** GoodIsDumb: He didn't trust the Yuan clan regarding the Imperial seal, but that didn't stop him from obeying them in ''every other matter''. In fact, he marched on his fatal campaign against Liu Biao on the order of Yuan Shu, who was very likely ''the'' Yuan brother who tasked his men to retrieve the Seal while Luoyang burned in the first place[[note]]Yuan Shao later confessed to Yuan Fang that he tried to save Emperor Liu Bian to deter Yuan Shu from claiming the throne, so it wouldn't make sense for him to claim the Imperial Seal for himself[[/note]].

* PosthumousCharacter

* AFatherToHisMen: His last request to Liaoyuan Huo before taking on an entire vengeful army was to help his subordinates get away.

* TheReveal: His identity and the BodyDouble plan dawns on Liaoyuan Huo when he hears Ling Cao's last words: "I'm sorry, my Lord... My failure has killed a friend.."

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: In charge, and is the best fighter of his clan.

* FoeTossingCharge

** PeacefulInDeath:When Sun Ce finally dies after three months of suffering, Zhou Yu sees his spirit gradually returning to his child form and running back to his father's arms.
--> Sun Jian's spirit: He's tired. Let him rest.

* MagneticHero

* PeekABangs

* YoungAndInCharge

* YouthfulFreckles

* BreakTheCutie: During Sun Ce's hundred-day period of suffering from a poisoned arrow, especially when Sun Ce mistakenly calls him "''Yu Ji''".
** It got even worse in ''Bofu'', where at one point "''his brother in his madness had taken him as Ling Cao, how he had hugged his thigh sobbing and groveling on the floor, ceaselessly kowtowing on the floor begging for his forgiveness.''"

* YoungAndInCharge

* ActionGirl

* PluckyGirl

* TheBusCameBack: She disappeared after the Luoyang arc, then returned briefly to announce her engagement with Liaoyuan Huo as a ploy to gain Sima clan's supports for the Sun clan's return to the Eastern regions. After Huo left to find Xiao Meng, Sima Yi told Zhang Lei to cancel the engagement and send her home.
** Then it came back ''again'' when she reappeared a decade later in the Sun clan while the Sun and Liu clan forces were meeting up. And then she tries to beat Huo -- now Zhao Yun -- with a stick for 'abandoning' her, whereas she'd waited over ten years for him.

* {{Tomboy}}

* OldSoldier
* TheMole :He pretends to be brainwashed by Yu Ji and kill Sun Ce as an excuse to the backstage. Once he's out of Yu Ji's sight, Cheng Pu swiftly wipes out Yu Ji's troops and insiders without arousing suspicion.

* FourStarBadass

* YouKilledMyFather: Subverted in that he knows his father's sacrifice was needed to revive the Sun clan and harbors no resentment towards Sun Ce or whoever has a hand in the 'fake Sun Ce' plan... but the deliberate desecration of Ling Cao's tomb is a different story.
** The subversion even applies to his father's killer Gan Ning, who defected to the Sun camp before Chibi - he will never stop hating the man's guts, but as long as they both fight for the Sun family they're brothers-in-arms and Ling Tong would risk his life and limbs for him like he'd to any other, and and after protecting Gan Ning from Zhang Liao, Ling Tong makes a show of helping him back to his feet -- a gesture that Gan Ning accepts with tears of either gratitude or shame.

* GeniusBruiser

* BladeOnAStick

* HotBlooded

* UndyingLoyalty: His response to Sun Ce trying to recruit him after he trashed Liu Yao's army and led to his death was, not surprisingly, telling him to suck it. Sun Ce had to make a show of demonstrating the transient and hypocritical nature of loyalty in this CrapsackWorld setting to break his resolve and make him switch sides.

* {{Bishonen}}

* YoungAndInCharge

* TheStrategist

* [[spoiler:KilledOffForReal: After being exposed as a mole, Kan Ze's corpse is seen tied to a floating pole in the path of the Sun navy to shake their morale and warn Lu Xun that the couterespionnage strategy was completely derailed.]]
** [[spoiler:FakingTheDead: It turned out that Zuo Ci used his medical skills to fake another corpse to be his, and Sima Yi later secretly released Kan Ze to the Sun to take back Hua Tuo, as part of his deal with Zhuge Liang.]]

* ChristmasCake: When she meets Huo again in Chibi arc, it turns out she's been waiting for him ever since their engagement was cancelled. When he (rather bluntly) [[ObliviousToLove asks her why she isn't married yet at that age]], [[BerserkButton she isn't happy]].

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: A variation which leads to IAmWhatIAm-esque moments. Sadly, the last one he has gets him too high and and off-guard, leading to his death.

* GoOutWithASmile: He's reunited with his friend Sun Ce when he dies at Zhang Liao's hands during an ambush prior to the main battles of Chibi.

* ReverseMole :He pretends to be brainwashed by Yu Ji and kill Sun Ce as an excuse to the backstage. Once he's out of Yu Ji's sight, Cheng Pu swiftly wipes out Yu Ji's troops and insiders without arousing suspicion.

* WoundedGazelleGambit: He takes the fall for Taishi Ci's death and asks Sun Quan to beats him until his legs can no longer walk, all to get inside Cao Cao's ranks and becomes a ReverseMole for Sun army. [[spoiler:Xun You doesn't buy it one bit and sees through his act before he even sets foots on their ship]]. Fortunately, [[spoiler:Huang Gai fooled the Cao army doctor into thinking his condition worse than it actually was, so Huang Gai nevertheless overpowered the Cao marines and escaped to shore, having scouted the Cao navy formation.]]

* FourStarBadass
* NumberTwo

* NumberTwo: On the advisor side, after Zhou Yu.

* [[spoiler: TheHeroDies: Sun Jian, Sun Ce, and as of the latest chapters, Zhou Yu. Given that all of them are figureheads of Sun clan, the Suns are notedly the team which has gone through most changes in leadership of all three factions]]

* AFatherToHisMen: [[spoiler:His last request to Liaoyuan Huo before taking on an entire vengeful army was to help his subordinates get away.]]
* BackToBackBadasses: With Liaoyuan Huo [[spoiler:when they were ambushed by Gan Ning and a rogue army.]]
* [[spoiler:BodyDouble]]: He's the [[spoiler:"''someone taller''"]] to [[spoiler:Sun Ce's ExpectedSomeoneTaller]].
* [[spoiler:DueToTheDead]]: [[spoiler:In a deliberate aversion, Sun Ce wrecked his tomb and blamed it on Liu Yao to raise army morale. It worked like a miracle, but Ling Cao's son Tong understandably wasn't impressed.]]
* [[spoiler:HeroicSacrifice]]: [[spoiler:He pretended to be Sun Ce in public throughout the clan's vassalage to Yuan Shu specifically so that whenever Ling Cao met his end, the Sun clan's forces -- and the real Sun Ce -- could slip out.]]
* GuileHero: He saw through every bit of Yuan Shu's FauxAffablyEvil PR spins but still played along. [[spoiler:Even more so when you realize that he could act as Sun Ce convincingly enough that neither Yuan Shu nor his advisor discovered his identity until after he died.]]

* LegacyOfService: On both sides of this trope: [[spoiler:his father Ling Zong served Sun Jian, and his son Ling Tong would serve both Sun Ce and Sun Quan]].
* {{Mukokuseki}}: A factor in [[spoiler:his being picked as Sun Ce's body double]].
* ObfuscatingStupidity: It didn't fool Yuan Shu and his advisor though. [[spoiler:That is to say, they could tell that "''Sun Ce''" is only pretending to be dumb... they just couldn't tell that he wasn't Sun Ce.]]
* [[spoiler:SecretIdentity]]: [[spoiler:Posthumously revealed as Ling Cao, subordinate of Sun Ce.]]
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:"I'm sorry, my Lord... My failure has killed a friend.."]]

[[spoiler:With Pang Tong's aid, the Sun clan manages to defeat Yu Ji and annihilate his influence in their home base. However, in volume 39, another leader of Taiping called Zuo Ci shows up and sends assassins after Sun Ce to avenge Yu Ji. Their ambush takes him by surprise, and he dies of a poisonous arrow to the head after three months of struggle and insanity induced by extreme agony.]]

* AmbitionIsEvil: His father Sun Jian was a famous Loyalist who sacrificed his life to protect the Imperial Seal from falling into the hands of wannabe usurpers, while Sun Ce only wants to restore his clan's reign in the Eastern region and extricate it from any obligatory ties with the imperial clan, which practically means declaring the eastern region autonomous at best and a separate country at worst. His objective is thus relentlessly denounced by opponents, who[[note]]such as Gan Ning and Cao Cao[[/note]] also like to remind him what a terrible son he is for not upholding his late father's "loyalty and righteousness". It causes him to develop self-doubts, exacerbated by his daddy issues, [[spoiler:which later return to haunt him amid the bouts of delirium he suffers in his deathbed.]]

* BatmanGambit: The Battle at Shenting Peak, second round. Which more or less relied on [[spoiler:his men getting sufficiently enraged at Liu Yao's desecration of Ling Cao's tomb (and not finding out that it was ''Sun Ce'' who intentionally did it) to trash Liu Yao's army despite their massive difference in number]]. [[CrazyEnoughToWork And it went off spectacularly]].
* BodyDouble: [[spoiler:He pulled an epic one with Ling Cao, with Sun Ce playing younger cousin "Sun Fu", and everyone not in on it was fooled.]]
* BreakTheBadass: A horrifying and heartbreaking example in [[spoiler:"A Hundred Days of Pain"]].
* BreakTheHaughty: As the YoungConqueror he's broken a good number of badasses in his warring days. But he himself also gets this every time people tell him he fails as a son of the Loyalist Sun Jian, and Cao Cao takes it even further by warning that he will not receive Heaven's blessings; this latter one strikes a big chord with Sun Ce since he's always believed that he is so successful with the conquest of the Eastern region because Heaven is on his side.[[spoiler: This trope is played ''terrifyingly'' straight during the hundred-day period of agonizing pains he suffers from an assassin's poisoned arrow, which culminate in him seeing himself flat-out condemned by his father in a dream for being a renegade who betrays Imperial Han, rather than a dutiful son his father'd wished him to be. [[TearJerker The entire scene is tear-jerking to behold.]]]]
* BreakThemByTalking: To Taishi Ci. Of course, this is after he botched Taishi Ci's entire retaliation siege by [[spoiler:luring him into an alliance with turncloaks who were charged with keeping siege weapons]] and subjected Taishi Ci and his entire troops to heat stroke. His ArmorPiercingQuestion was the final touch.

* CallBack: [[spoiler:Just like Ling Cao 19 volumes earlier, Sun Ce meets his end with an arrow to the head, and the last sane thought passing through his mind is also the narration line hanging in Ling Cao's death scene]]. Moreover, the one who [[spoiler:indirectly caused him to drop his guard and thus be vulnerable to that arrow]]? None other than [[spoiler:Ling Tong, Ling Cao's son, to whom Sun Ce had even said, "If there is justice, when Heaven reprimands, pray that I suffer a hundred days of pain before I die!" after desecrating Ling Cao's tomb and blaming the enemy for the act.]]

* CombatPragmatist: When it's him versus a horsed fighter, he aims for the horse and it works. [[spoiler:When it's him on a horse versus Zhang Liao, he ''knows'' Zhang Liao would aim for the horse and gives Zhang Liao a sound ass-kicking.]]

* DidntSeeThatComing: He thought getting rid of Yu Ji would be the end of his problems with the Southern Taiping sect...[[spoiler:but then comes assassins from Zuo Ci, Northern Taiping cult leader and their ambush.]]

* FakingTheDead: [[spoiler:Once against Yuan Shu's assassination attempt, twice against Yu Ji's.]]

* GenerationXerox: [[spoiler:Just like his father who died being shot full of arrows, Sun Ce also met his end with a poisoned arrow to the head.]]

* ImprobableAge: He leads the Sun army on a swift conquest of the eastern region, defeating and outwitting men twice his age, and established the foundation of the Sun clan in eighty-one states in five years. Historically he's only in his mid-twenties [[spoiler:when he dies.]]
* ItsPersonal: [[spoiler:As he tearfully admits in his deathbed]], his unyielding opposition to Yu Ji's Taiping cult in Eastern region and continual siege on Jiangxia (Liu Biao's province) against his advisors' cautious reservations are motivated by his desire to finish his father's works (in battling the Taiping sect) and avenge him (as he was killed by Liu Biao's general Huang Zu).
* [[spoiler:KilledOffForReal]]
** [[spoiler: PeacefulInDeath]]:[[spoiler: Implied. When Sun Ce finally dies after three months of suffering, Zhou Yu sees his spirit gradually returning to his child form and running back to his father's arms.]]
--> [[spoiler:Sun Jian's spirit]]: [[spoiler:He's tired. Let him rest.]]
* KingIncognito: [[spoiler:No, he's not that burly, manly warrior with funny hairstyle and cool headband. See his cousin, the nondescript, laid-back, unassuming guy who is sent to take charge of Yuan Shu's asylum and has a good time with it with Liaoyuan Huo? Yeah, that's Sun Ce.]]

* MeaningfulEcho: [[spoiler:What was spoken by Ling Cao at his moment of death dawns on Sun Ce when he's shot in the head, similar to how Ling Cao died.]] And how could we forget [[spoiler:"A Hundred Days of Pain"]]?
* {{Mukokuseki}}: Blond hair, freckles and all, though this is actually a plot point, being [[spoiler:both a factor in Sun Ce's jealousy of his younger brother and why his body double is Ling Cao]].

* RuleOfThree: [[spoiler:He avoids death at the hands of Taiping cult's assassins twice. He's not so lucky on the third time.]]
* SchmuckBait: Sun Ce is going out with very few escorts to visit his subordinate [[spoiler:Ling Cao]]'s grave, unguarded and trapped in the high mountain for the first time, sure let's bring out your entire army to surround the tomb and leave your base defenseless! WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong, right Liu Yao? The irony is that he ''almost'' avoids it too, but Sun Ce's fight with Taishi Ci ends up longer than expected and he eventually falls for the bait all the same.

* SparingTheAces: To Taishi Ci and Zhang Liao after handing their respective asses to them. [[spoiler:In the later case, it turned out to be a bad move for his camp posthumously: in Chibi, the spared Zhang Liao couldn't have the rematch with Sun Ce that he wanted, so he settled for his next best bet - Sun Ce's friend Taishi Ci. Taishi Ci was killed in this fight.]]
* StepfordSmiler: Shows signs of this in the manhua whenever it comes to the subject of his father and [[spoiler:during his nightmare in "A Hundred Days of Pain"]]. The novel plays it straight, where his carefree facade hides a world of unspoken self-esteem issues, including but not limited to his desire for his strict dad's approval and his jealousy of Sun Quan for being the main focus of Sun clan's adoration and Sun Jian's fatherly love.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler: The "Sun Ce" that Gan Ning killed was actually Ling Cao, who acted as a bait to fool Yuan Shu into thinking Sun Ce was dead, so that the real Sun Ce (so far disguised as a distant cousin) could escape safely from servitude to Yuan Shu.]]
* WalkingSpoiler: It's hard to post any picture of him without spoiling [[spoiler:the 'fake Sun Ce' plan.]]

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: A variation which leads to IAmWhatIAm-esque moments. [[spoiler:Sadly, the last one he has gets him too high and and off-guard, leading to his death.]]

* BreakTheCutie: [[spoiler:During Sun Ce's hundred-day period of suffering from a poisoned arrow, especially when Sun Ce mistakenly calls him "''Yu Ji''".]]
** It got even worse in ''Bofu'', where [[spoiler:at one point "''his brother in his madness had taken him as Ling Cao, how he had hugged his thigh sobbing and groveling on the floor, ceaselessly kowtowing on the floor begging for his forgiveness.''"]]

* DespairEventHorizon: He must have crossed it once when Sun Jian died, but it doesn't make the blow any less easier to take when [[spoiler:his brothers Sun Ce and Zhou Yu die one after another.]] The circumstance of [[spoiler:Zhou Yu's]] passing [[spoiler:(slowly dying by illness and then secretly passing away in a great fire he set up to take Cao Cao with him, with very few high-ranking generals privy to his death, leaving Sun Quan with no chance to properly mourn him)]] takes a great toll on his mentality - he's shown to have taken to drinking, which is a Foreshadowing of his (historically infamous) alcoholism in his twilight years.

* LookingForLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces: Her first love is Yuan Fang, who is almost obsessively loyal to the memory of his dead girlfriend; the novel version indicates that she's not unaware of his love for Xiao Cha but falls head over heel for him anyway because it just makes him a more romantic figure in her eyes. Her second paramour is Liaoyuan Huo, who maintains a close relationship bordering on romantic with Xiao Meng; she continues to pursue him because she's confident she wouldn't lose to Xiao Meng. [[spoiler:And sure enough, Huo ditches the engagement once Xiao Meng is supposedly dead.]] Years later, we find out she still holds onto her affections for him despite the long wait and her recent engagement to Liu Bei, his master. Given his character, no one's surprised that he rejects her the second time out of loyalty to Liu Bei, [[spoiler:to say nothing of Xiao Meng's death]].

* RelationshipSabotage: In the eyes of [[ShipperOnDeck many in-universe characters]] and the fandom, Huo and Xiao Meng were an item in all but name, until Shu [[TheBusCameBack comes back on a bus]] and gets engaged to him to foster an alliance between Sun clan and Sima clan. Huo readily agrees on Sima Yi's order, but Xiao Meng's heavily implied to be driven across DespairEventHorizon with this turn of event, [[spoiler:which might have factored in his decision of HeroicSacrifice in volume 18]].

* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:Yu Ji is convinced he's got Cheng Pu under this and orders him to attack Sun Ce, but as it turns out, Cheng Pu isn't. WordOfGod suggests that he had just been playing along, and such form of mind control doesn't work on people like him.]]

* ReverseMole [[spoiler:He pretends to be brainwashed by Yu Ji and kill Sun Ce as an excuse to the backstage. Once he's out of Yu Ji's sight, Cheng Pu swiftly wipes out Yu Ji's troops and insiders without arousing suspicion.]]

* WoundedGazelleGambit: He takes the fall for [[spoiler:Taishi Ci's death]] and asks Sun Quan to beats him until his legs can no longer walk, all to get inside Cao Cao's ranks and becomes a ReverseMole for Sun army. [[spoiler:Xun You doesn't buy it one bit and sees through his act before he even sets foots on their ship]]. Fortunately, [[spoiler:Huang Gai fooled the Cao army doctor into thinking his condition worse than it actually was, so Huang Gai nevertheless overpowered the Cao marines and escaped to shore, having scouted the Cao navy formation.]]

* MyMasterRightOrWrong: When he's sent to supervise Yu Ji's actions, Yu Ji implants this idea in his mind to get him argue with Sun Ce [[spoiler:and possibly weakens his loyal mindtrack enough for the hypnosis to slip through.]]
* WhatTheHellHero: [[spoiler:When Sun Ce desecrated Ling Cao's tomb, gave Liu Yao's army his memento headband and blamed it on the enemy to inspire his troops, Ling Tong was the first to notice and call him out on this.]]
* YouKilledMyFather: Subverted in that he knows his father's sacrifice was needed to revive the Sun clan and harbors no resentment towards Sun Ce or whoever has a hand in [[spoiler:the 'fake Sun Ce' plan]]... but [[spoiler:the deliberate desecration of Ling Cao's tomb is a different story]].

* BuffySpeak: When discussing war strategies, Lu Meng preferred vulgar and simple metaphors to using the proper military textbook terms. [[spoiler:Becomes a thing of the past after he devotes himself to study.]]

** [[spoiler:By the time of Sun Ce's death, he's shown to be a much more eloquent and studious man, and eight years later during a naval battle with Liu Biao's forces he's no longer spouting scatalogical insults.]]

* ClusterFBomb: His speech can get liberal with a huge amount of scatological vocabulary, to people's exasperation. [[spoiler:He no longer drops these after he bothers to read books.]]
* [[spoiler:CulturedWarrior]]: [[spoiler:After Sun Ce's death]].

* SirSwearsalot: [[spoiler:Used to be.]]

* HeroKiller: Though it never really goes the way he intends: He killed 'Sun Ce' only for that to turn out to be [[spoiler:Ling Cao]], and the one time he actually went against Sun Ce he managed to give Ce a hard time at best. When he fights Zhang Liao in the Chibi arc, he boastingly declares himself this to Zhang Liao's face as before giving him a knife on the sides, but Zhang Liao just shrugs it off and proceeds to kick his ass before Ling Tong jumps in.

* [[spoiler:GoOutWithASmile]]: [[spoiler:He's reunited with his friend Sun Ce when he dies at Zhang Liao's hands during an ambush prior to the main battles of Chibi.]]

* {{Irony}}: [[spoiler:He's killed by Zhang Liao, the man whom seven years earlier his late friend Sun Ce had spared and challenged for a rematch.]]

** Ironically, [[spoiler:his death scene]] is accompanied by a monologue mocking loyalty, quoted from Sun Ce the day he surrendered to him: "''Loyalty is a method; with false words the men of letters can send ignorant to their deaths. It is a despicable method by a lord to protect his own interest''."

** A friendly exchange of souvenir soon after had him bring back Ling Cao's headband (which he was led to believe was Sun Ce's) and Sun Ce in possession of his weapon. Sun Ce later combined them into an even deadlier BatmanGambit [[spoiler:by sticking them onto Ling Cao's tomb that Sun Ce himself vandalized to raise his army morale]], which delivered the finishing blow to Liu Yao's force.

* ArrogantKungFuGuys

* ArrogantKungfuGuys

* DespairEventHorizon: Sun Jian's death was one for them, since it brought about the clan's near collapse and left Sun Ce with little choice but to kowtow to Yuan Shu, the instigator of his father's demise. [[spoiler:Later, Sun Ce's death.]]

* [[spoiler: TheHeroDies: Twice (thrice if you count Ling Cao)]]

* SiblingYinYang: With Sun Ce, but only in terms of their expertise - Ce is a warrior whose duty is to conquer more land and people for his clan, Quan is an administrator whose job is to manage the Eastern region's internal affairs. And they manage to balance the roles perfectly. (Afterward, Zhou Yu takes his oath-brother's place and by extension is also Quan's oath-brother as well.)

* OldFlame: Zhao Yun is one to her, as shown when they meet again in Chibi arc. However by that time he's ceased to have any lingering feelings for her, either because of Xiao Meng or her subsequent engagement to his master Liu Bei.

** [[spoiler: It turns out he also keeps a personal hit squad - the White-Clothed troop (a nod to the historical Lu Meng's victory over Guan Yu [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BC_Meng#Invasion_of_Jing_Province when he ordered his troop to disguise as merchan in white clothes to sneak into Jingzhou]]. In Xiangyang, this troop pulls the wool over the defense officer's eyes and breaches the fortress' defense. Sima Yi's troops are swiftly annihilated and Sima Yi himself is also seriously injured himself. Lu Meng nearly becomes a HeroKiller right then and there, if not for San Chuan sacrificing himself to help his master escape.]]

%%* BadassCrew
%%* BadassFamily

%%%* DoomedMoralVictor

%%* FoeTossingCharge

%%* OneManArmy
%%* PeekABangs

%%%%* FourStarBadass
%%* NumberTwo
%%* OldSoldier

%%%* FourStarBadass
* OldSoldier: He can take on younger fighters with relative ease due to his long experience, and he can instruct the Sun siblings./

%%%%* BadassAdorable

[[folder:[[spoiler:Gan Ning]]]]

* CombatPragmatist: He's not above using hidden weapons in close combats. Also, guy deserves credits for his creative way of putting arrows to good use in a fist fight...

* BadassCrew
* BadassFamily

* DoomedMoralVictor

* [[spoiler:BrainwashedAndCrazy]]: [[spoiler:Yu Ji is convinced he's got Cheng Pu under this and orders him to attack Sun Ce, but as it turns out, Cheng Pu isn't. WordOfGod suggests that he had just been playing along, and such form of mind control doesn't work on people like him.]]
* FourStarBadass
* NumberTwo
* OldSoldier
* [[spoiler:ReverseMole]]: [[spoiler:He pretends to be brainwashed by Yu Ji and kill Sun Ce as an excuse to the backstage. Once he's out of Yu Ji's sight, Cheng Pu swiftly wipes out Yu Ji's troops and insiders without arousing suspicion.]]

* BadassGrandpa: He can take on younger fighters with relative ease. Bonus points for acting like a real grandpa to the Sun siblings, having watched over the three of them from infancy to adulthood. This trope pretty much peaks at Chibi, as mentioned below.
* FourStarBadass
* OldSoldier

* BadassAdorable
* [[spoiler:BrainwashedAndCrazy]]: [[spoiler:After some direct contact with Yu Ji, he fell under the influence of his hypnosis and tried to take out Sun Ce.]]
* [[ShesAllGrownUp He's All Grown Up]]: In 207 AD.

* {{Badass}}: He could cleave a man in half just by hurling his halberd. And crush Lu Kang's defense and take his heads in a matter of days, to the point Yuan Shu proclaimed him 'Lu Bu on water'. [[spoiler:Small wonder he got chosen to play Sun Ce.]]
** BackToBackBadasses: With Liaoyuan Huo [[spoiler:when they were ambushed by Gan Ning and a rogue army.]]

** BrokenAce: Yet is also a [[TheResenter resenter]] with [[WellDoneSonGuy daddy issues]] and deep-seated insecurities about the righteousness of his belief.

* '''{{Badass}}''': What do you expect from the guy whose animal motif is the tiger?
** AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: In charge, and is the best fighter of his clan.
** BadassBoast: "Heaven... you still protect the Sun clan."
** CombatPragmatist: When it's him versus a horsed fighter, he aims for the horse and it works. [[spoiler:When it's him on a horse versus Zhang Liao, he ''knows'' Zhang Liao would aim for the horse and gives Zhang Liao a sound ass-kicking.]]
** CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Happens every time he charges alone into the enemy line and lives (which is, eh, all the time). The awesomeness is cranked up in one occasion, [[spoiler:where he grounded [[OneManArmy Zhang Liao]], then played the usual LeeroyJenkins card in his usual kickasstitude and screwed up the formations of Cao Cao's very well-organized army, ''then'' stormed through Cao Cao's famous Tiger and Leopard cavalry ''with his bare fists''. Shortly thereafter, [[OhCrap he got himself a weapon and chased after Cao Cao]]. Granted, the awesomness was cut short with Guan Yu appearing and scaring him off, but who isn't scared off by [[ThePaladin Guan Yu]]?]]
** CurbStompBattle: Not quite on Lu Bu's level yet, but ''holy shit'' this guy is pretty close. No one pulls a proud warrior (or a proud cavalry ''battalion'' for that matter) off of his high horse like Sun Ce.
** DualWielding: Two halberds, but he also has a curious tendency to [[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks slip his hands]] with [[ImprobableAimingSkills deadly accuracy]].
** FoeTossingCharge
** GeniusBruiser: As Zhou Yu puts it: "A Lu Bu with Sun Zi's wisdom".
** ImprobableAge: He leads the Sun army on a swift conquest of the eastern region, defeating and outwitting men twice his age, and established the foundation of the Sun clan in eighty-one states in five years. Historically he's only in his mid-twenties [[spoiler:when he dies.]]
** '''LeeroyJenkins''': We find it awesome, but this aspect of Sun Ce isn't exactly encouraged in-story - after all, he's still the leader of an army and giving all precautions and advices the middle finger to charge right into the middle of the enemy line is ''not'' a risk-free, and therefore not at all recommendable, idea.
** OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: We only get to see the beginning and end of his conquest of the Eastern region, which is said to last five years, made of pure awesomeness, and has granted him legendary fame among the battle-weary eastern warlords.
** OneManArmy
** YoungConqueror: An actual in-universe RedBaron of his, right out of the novel and folklore alike!

* [[spoiler:BodyDouble]]: [[spoiler:He pulled an epic one with Ling Cao, with Sun Ce playing younger cousin "Sun Fu", and everyone not in on it was fooled.]]

* [[spoiler: FakingTheDead]]: [[spoiler:Once against Yuan Shu's assassination attempt, twice against Yu Ji's.]]

* PeekABangs

* {{Badass}}: Went toe-to-toe with Sun Ce and managed to keep even with him.

* {{Badass}}: Fights on an even ground with Sun Ce.

* Mukokuseki: A factor in [[spoiler:his being picked as Sun Ce's body double]].

* BreakTheCutie: [[spoiler:During Sun Ce's hundred-day period of suffering from a poisoned arrow, especially when Sun Ce mistakenly calls him "Yu Ji".]]

* LargeHam: His morale-raising speech to his troops in chapter 406 shows that Sun Quan is fast on track to become a motivational speaker on par with Cao Cao or Liu Bei.

* LegacyOfService: Most aged generals serving Sun Ce used to be his father Sun Jian's subordinates; after Ling Cao's death in battle [[spoiler:under the guise of Sun Ce]] his son Ling Tong was given a title and joined Sun Ce.

Patriarch of Sun family and a famed general of Guandong warlord alliance. He's generally hailed as "one of the true last Loyalists" of the court, if not ''the'' true last Loyalist, given how treacherous most other warlords (even the respected Yuan Shao) turned out to be and how Cao Cao eventually shed this appearance in becoming an EvilChancellor to the Emperor. Largely a PosthumousCharacter, the readers know about his heroic deeds for the alliance only through brief words of mouth until a conversation with Sima Yi in volume 14 tells us he died off-screen not long after the campaign against Dong Zhuo.

** GoodIsDumb: He didn't trust the Yuan clan regarding the Imperial seal, but that didn't stop him from obeying them in ''every other matter''. In fact, he marched on his fatal campaign against Liu Biao on the order of Yuan Shu, who was very likely ''the'' Yuan brother who tasked his men to retrieve the Seal while Luoyang burned in the first place[[note]]As Yuan Shao later confessed to Yuan Fang that he tried to save Emperor Liu Bian to warn Yuan Shu off claiming the throne, it wouldn't make sense for him to claim the Imperial Seal for himself[[/note]].

* TogetherInDeath: [[spoiler:If Zhou Yu's vision is anything to go by, Sun Ce's soul goes to rest with his father when he dies.]]

* {{Badass}}: He could cleave a man in half just by hurling his halberd. And crush Lu Kang's defense and take his heads in a matter of days, to the point Yuan Shu proclaimed him 'Lu Bu on water'. [[spoiler:Small wonder he got chosen to play Sun Ce]].

* [[spoiler:DueToTheDead]]: [[spoiler:In a deliberate aversion, Sun Ce wrecked his tomb and blamed it on Liu Yao to raise army morale. It worked like a miracle, but Ling Cao's son understandably wasn't impressed.]]

* ObfuscatingStupidity: It didn't fool Yuan Shu and his advisor though. [[spoiler:That is to say, they could tell that "Sun Ce" is only pretending to be dumb... they just couldn't tell that he wasn't Sun Ce.]]

* {{Mukokuseki}}: Blond hair, freckles and all...

* AllLoveIsUnrequited: For a girl who isn't a bad catch at all, her streak of chasing after men who already have their significant others is really unfortunate.
* ArrangedMarriage: Has three over the course of ''Ravages'' and none of them ends well for her: her first fiancé Yuan Fang tried to kill her, the secone one Liaoyuan Huo cancelled the marriage shortly after their engagement and left her waiting for years. [[spoiler:And when she gets to meet him again, her brother and his cohorts wed her to the much older and recently widowed Liu Bei.]]

* ChristmasCake: When she meets Huo again in Chibi arc, it turns out she's been waiting for him ever since their engagement was cancelled. When he (rather bluntly) [[ObliviousToLove asks her why she isn't married yet at that age]], [[BerserkButton she isn't happy]].
* LookingForLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces: Her first love is Yuan Fang, who is almost obsessively loyal to the memory of his dead girlfriend; the novel version indicates that she's not unaware of his love for Xiao Cha but falls head over heel for him anyway because it just makes him a more romantic figure in her eyes. Her second paramour is Liaoyuan Huo, who maintains a close relationship bordering on romantic with Xiao Meng; she continues to pursue him because she's confident she wouldn't lose to Xiao Meng. [[spoiler:And sure enough, Huo ditches the engagement once Xiao Meng is supposedly dead]]. Years later, we find out she still holds onto her affections for him despite the long wait and her recent engagement to Liu Bei, his master. Given his character, no one's surprised that he rejects her the second time out of loyalty to Liu Bei.

** Then it came back ''again'' when she reappeared a decade later in the Sun clan while the Sun and Liu clan forces were meeting up. And then she tries to beat Huo -- now Zhao Yun -- with a stick for 'abandoning' her.

* WoundedGazelleGambit: He takes the fall for [[spoiler:Taishi Ci's death]] and asks Sun Quan to beats him until his legs can no longer walk, all to get inside Cao Cao's ranks and becomes a ReverseMole for Sun army. [[spoiler:Xun You doesn't buy it one bit and sees through his act before he even sets foots on their ship]]. Fortunately, [[spoiler:Huang Gai fooled the Cao army doctor into thinking his condition worse than it actually was, so Huang Gai nevertheless overpowers the Cao marines and escapes to shore, having scouted the Cao navy formation.]]

* MyMasterRightOrWrong: When he's sent to supervise Yu Ji's actions, Yu Ji implants this idea in his mind to get him argue with Sun Ce [[spoiler:and possibly weakens his loyal mindtrack enough for the hypnosis to slip through.]]

* YouKilledMyFather: A subversion, he knows his father's sacrifice was needed to revive the Sun clan and harbors no resentment towards Sun Ce or whoever has a hand in [[spoiler:the 'fake Sun Ce' plan]]. [[spoiler:But the desecration of Ling Cao's tomb is a different story]].
** The subversion even applies to his father's murderer, Gan Ning, who defected to the Sun camp before Chibi - he hates the man's guts, but as long as they both fight for the Sun family, they're brothers-in-arms and Ling Tong would risk his life and limbs for him like he'd to any other.

* BuffySpeak: When discussing war strategies, Lu Meng preferred vulgar and simple metaphors to using the proper military textbook terms. [[spoiler:Becomes a thing of the past after he devotes himself to study]].

* ClusterFBomb: His speech can get liberal with a huge amount of scatological vocabulary, to people's exasperation. [[spoiler:He no longer drops these after he bothers to read books]].

* {{Badass}}: Went toe-to-toe with Sun Ce and managed to keep even with him.
* CombatPragmatist: He's not above using hidden weapons in close combats. Also, guy deserves credits for his creative way of putting arrows to good use in a fist fight..
* DefectorFromDecadence: At the climax of the Battle of Jiangxia, he joined the Sun thanks to Pang Tong's InformedAbility of persuasion. It helps that by then Gan Ning was already disinclined against his lord Liu Biao and his commander Huang Zu for their incompetences.
* HeroKiller: Though it never really goes the way he intends. He killed 'Sun Ce' who later turned out to be [[spoiler:Ling Cao]] and the one time he actually went against Sun Ce, although he gave the latter a hard time Sun Ce gets away with just a few scratches. When he fights Zhang Liao in Chibi arc, he boasts to be this to Zhang Liao's face before giving him a knife on the sides. Zhang Liao just shrugs it off and proceeds to kick his ass before Ling Tong jumps in.

* OhCrap: A ''big'' one in [[spoiler:Chibi, when his side's entire scheme to burn Cao Cao's fleet was seen through and taken apart by Jia Xu and Xun You. As the situation looked bleaker than ever[[note]]Huang Gai was captured, the mole Kan Ze was murdered, his own army was lured on land and their escape route by the ships was cut off[[/note]], with no other cards in his hand Lu Xun had to order his men to swim to safety. Fortunately, the Cao navy underestimated just how good the men of the Southland were at that...]].
** Later subverted when [[spoiler:it turns out the joke is on Jia Xu and Xun You. Kan Ze (actually not dead) and Lu Xun's fleets (actually containing not half the number of troops that was expected) were just baiting Xun You to move in for the killing move, leaving them ''and'' Jia Xu's troops in the forest, which the fleets were shielding, wide open for Zhou Yu's fire attacks. The Sun troops that were supposedly 'lured on land', led by Lu Meng, actually aimed for Cao Cao's base all along.]]

* TheMole: He retired from the Sun clan's service on the pretext of his political differences with Zhang Jiao to find a chance of being recruited by Cao Cao. Cao Cao & co. didn't take much time to figure out his true intents, [[spoiler:but not the fact that this whole scheme was a charade staged by Zhou Yu to lure Cao Cao into a false sense of security after he's exposed, setting up the stage for the game-ending fire attacks on Cao Cao's fleets in Chibi.]]