[1] Ultimately the rebellion failed, resulting in the death of Moquihuix who is pictured in the Codex Mendoza tumbling down the Great Temple of Tlatelolca.

As a result, Emily Umberger argues, fellow rulers were "predisposed to challenge" the new tlatoani in an attempt "to restore the importance of their own cities".

While we do not know the exact date of his ascendance to the Tlatelolco throne, Moquihuix seemingly spent some time rebuilding the key religious structures in his city prior to the war.

Durán claims that, as a result of these actions, the Tlatelolcas declared themselves independent to Tenochtitlan decrying: "O Aztecs, we who live in Tlatelolco, take courage, let us destroy the Tenochcas".

With the encouragement of a fellow nobleman, Teconal, Moquihuix summoned all young men over the age of twenty to participate in a series of war exercises aimed to prepare the Tlatelolca to be called to arms at any moment.

The initial plan was to attack Tenochtitlan at night, killing Axayacatl's older confidants first to leave the young tlatoani defenceless.

The celebrations turned sour, however, when the Tlatelolcas began to sing a number of war songs, belittling the people of Tenochtitlan.

Moquihuix responded with repugnance: "tell your lord the king that the answer is that he should be prepared because the people of Tlatelolco are determined to avenge the deaths of the other night".

[3] Upon hearing this message, Tlacael decried Moquihuix's arrogance, calling for Cueyatzin to return to Tlatelolco, "taking with him the ointments and insignia that are applied to the dead".

Greatly angered by this action, Axayacatl emerged, armed, and led his Tenochca army towards the city's border where the Tlatelolcas waited, ready for war.

Seeing that the battle was lost, Moquihuix and Teconal began to ascend the steps of the central temple-pyramid in order to distract the others so that the army could regroup.

The war only ceased when Axayacatl's aged uncle, Cuacuauhtzin, beseeched his nephew to give the orders to end the slaughter.

According to the Codex Chimalpahin, Chalchiuhnenetzin, the elder sister of Axayacatl, was "despised" and maltreated by her husband who preferred the company of his "concubines".

It is said that the Tenochca "threw [Moquihuix] from the top of an earthen mound along with his hunchbacks and [a] quetzal feather crest, there ending the rulership in Tlatelolco".

[8] Matthew Restall, along with others, has seen that, despite being subsumed by Tenochtitlan in 1473, Tlatelolco continued to have some semblance of a separate identity following the war, with the people usually referring to themselves as Tlatelolca rather than Mexicana.

[9] Inga Clendinnen has seen this amalgamated within the "returning god-ruler theory", the idea that Moctezuma was "paralyzed by terror [...] by the conviction that Cortés was Quetzalcoatl".