The lawlessness and the legitimacy of the ruler asseen through the regicide cases in the Zuozhuan(左傳)

This paper analyzes the way in which the regicide is recorded in the 『Zuozhuan(左傳)』) scriptures, and examines the 『Zuozhuan』’s evaluation of the regicide and its perception of the legitimacy and lawlessness of a ruler. To this end, I first select all of the 『Zuozhuan』 scriptures on the regicides of rulers to determine the analysis target, and then roughly outline the incidents through the 『Zuozhuan』 articles. In a full-scale review, I analyze the way in which the 『Zuozhuan』 distinguishes and explains legitimate rulers and unjust rulers based on differences in the notation method and referring to the exemplum of Fourth Year of the Lord Xuan(宣公). Finally, I summarize what I have confirmed through the analysis, and present the political and ideological implications related to the regicide along with future tasks. According to the exemplum, not revealing the name of the subject who committed the regicide means that the murdered ruler violated the way of rulership(君無道), which can be considered to partially justify the regicide of the monarch. I attempted to specify the nature of the lawlessness of a ruler, but it was difficult to identify consistent characteristics. In addition, there are cases where assassination incidents are written as ‘killing(殺)’ instead of ‘regicide(弑)’ despite the status of a ruler, which is important in that it shows one criterion for determining the qualifications of a legitimate ruler. It is particularly noteworthy that the accession through usurpation did not have any influence on determining the ruler’s legitimacy. The justification of the regicide and the recognition of a usurper ruler have been criticized from the perspective of the ‘Chunqiu obligation(春秋義理)’, but they need to be seriously reviewed as part of the ideological resources of the early political community of East Asia.