Summary: In this final installment of the Han Dynasty overview we look at the reign of Wang Mang during the short lived Xin Dynasty and the Eastern (or Later) Han Dynasty that followed. The Eastern Han was a period of endless skullduggery at the imperial court where the palace eunuchs rose to power and meddled endlessly behind the scenes. The final years of the Eastern Han were times of great chaos where the empire ultimately broke up into three kingdoms. This was the time of Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Quan. When the Eastern Han ended in 220AD, the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu battled for supremacy in China for sixty years.
