Arglebargle III posted:

What a coincidence, we were recently talking about the Three Kingdoms period in the Classical History thread.

I'll just fart this here:

Xander77 posted:

Keep it up.

Arglebargle III posted:

Yuan Shu is the worst.

quote:

I actually haven't posted more partly because it takes a while to write because there are so many details to check, but also because there are so many details and backstabs and reverses that I'm afraid I'll get something wrong. It's been 30 days since that last post.

dotchan posted:

Apparently, Dong Zhuo was so fat that when they took hold of his corpse and burned it, it took days for all of it to be consumed.

my dad posted:

Potooweet posted:

What movie/show is this from?

Also, great post Arglebargle.

RabidWeasel posted:

Note that the "concise narrative" is still 95 46 minute episodes

Brony Hunter posted:

Three Kingdoms, a drama adaptation made in 2010. It's a rather good series and easy to follow. I actually recommend it as a great starting point if you're interested in the era as it has a concise, internalised narrative. Expect lots of bearded men getting drunk and fighting and murdering and plotting against each other and betrayals and all your favourite characters dying and large scale battles and beautiful sets and a memorable cast of dozens. So yeah, imagine Chinese Game of Thrones.

Potooweet posted:

I've read the novel, so I'm interested in seeing the adaptation. As long as there is still tons of crazy backstabbery and bullshit going on I'm sure I'll be hooked.

Brony Hunter posted:

and all your favourite characters dying and large scale battles

warhammer651 posted:

Unless you, for some reason, like Wu. Then everybody is dying of sickness. I'm pretty sure most of their strategists all die of sickness, actually. I wonder if there was something in the water.

"The Romance of the Three Kingdoms' posted:

Yuan-te looked over the new-comer item by item and noted his huge frame, his long beard, his dark brown face and deep red lips. He had eyes like a phoenix and fine bushy eyebrows like silkworms. His whole appearance was dignified and awe-inspiring.
...
"I am Kuan Yu (Guan Yu)" said he; "I used to be known as Shou-ch'ang (Long as eternity), but now am usually called Yun-ch'ang (Long as a cloud). I am a native of the east side of the river, but I have been a fugitive on the waters for some five years, because I slew a ruffian who, since he was powerful, was a bully."

Romance of the Three Kingdoms posted:

Peerless indeed was our lord Guan, of the latter days,
Head and shoulders stood he out among the best;
Godlike and terrible in war, elegant and refined in peace,
Resplendent as the noonday sun in the heavens,
Haloed as are the noblest of those early days,
He stands, the brightest model for all ages,
And not only for the strenuous days he lived in.

And another-

Seek ye a nobel one? Then take ye the way of Chiehliang,
Watch ye how all men revere Yun-ch'ang,
Each excelling others to honour him,
Him, one of the three brothers of the Peach Garden Oath,
Of whom two have won sacrifices, as Emperor and prince.
Incomparable, their aura spreads through the world;
They are respendent as the great lights of the firmament;
Temples to our lord Guan abound, no village lacks one,
Their venerable trees at sundown are the resting places for birds.

Arglebargle III posted:

Wow that puts Liu Bei and company in the best possible light. My notes read more like "then he switched sides, then he revolted and declared independence, then he got his butt kicked and ran away, then he invaded his ally, then he betrayed Sun Quan...

SpecialK800 posted:

My goal is to make these posts fairly concise, which means glossing over the details of every back-stab and betrayal. It might make the historical figures seem better than the human beings they were, but it's to keep things at a manageable reading length while not becoming too complicated to follow.

And I'm trying to be careful on how I choose to characterize certain actions and certain characters so my own biases don't put off people reading the update.

warhammer651 posted:

Sadly, for those of you who (for some reason) like Wu, everybody is dying of sickness rather than in awesome last stands.. I'm pretty sure most of their strategists all die of sickness, actually. I wonder if there was something in the water.

Bloodly posted:

As the smallest 'force' on the board at that time and being half wandering mercs looking for a 'home' half the time, why wouldn't he? Peace means time to build and train and maybe become something more.

Arglebargle III posted:

Yeah that's a problem for me definitely. So many details.

Arglebargle III posted:

Civil War: 190-208 AD

When we left off, the city of Luoyang and the child Emperor and Crown Prince had just fallen into the hands of Dong Zhuo, governor-general of Liang province, and his veteran army of the northwest frontier. Dong Zhuo had been invited into the capital by He Jin, leader of the Empress Dowager's He clan, who had died before he arrived. The debacle in the capital that killed He Jin also eliminated the eunuchs, leaving both factions that had dominated court politics dead or at least powerless. Yuan Shao, general of the Imperial Guard, and Cao Cao, General of Cavalry, had been in the capital but both fled upon Dong Zhuo's decision to depose Emperor Shao. This is in late 189, the same year the Emperor Ling died.

Dong Zhuo had a history of insubordination and a veteran army at his back, and took over Luoyang with only the flimsiest pretext of maintaining the Emperor's rule. He deposed the Emperor Shao and named his younger brother the Crown Prince as the new Emperor Xian, quietly poisoning Empress Dowager He and the child emperor Shao. He then created himself Chancellor, the highest post in the Han government and one that had been abolished almost a hundred years ago. To top it off, he took up residence in the Imperial Palace and history records that he took liberties with the Emperor's property, including his harem, that the capital officials found distasteful and disrespectful. But with the general of the Imperial Guard fled and his men folded into Dong Zhuo's army on the Chancellor's authority, there was no force in the capital region immediately available to evict the man whom everyone suspected of imminent usurpation.

The powerful and wealthy governors, generals, and governors-general of the Han empire probably were not sure what to do at this point. The crisis in Luoyang had been very sudden, playing out within months of Emperor Ling's death. Dong Zhuo held the capital and the emperor, but his position was clearly illegitimate. Dong Zhuo made overtures to Yuan Shao and others, offering titles, but in the event no one accepted his offers.

Whatever was going through the minds of the great men of the empire, within a few weeks of Dong Zhuo's capital of Luoyang the decision was made for them. Qiao Miao, administrator of Dong Commandery (sort of like a count in terms of power) took the matter into his own hands. He caused letters to be forged, purporting to be from the high officials of the capital and denouncing Dong Zhuo's conduct, begging for the governors and generals to evict Dong Zhuo from the capital and restore the Han government. The provincial governors began raising their armies and scheduled a council of war at Hangu pass not far to the east of Luoyang.

A round dozen of governors and generals representing large sections of the professional army and Han territory attended the meeting at Hangu and officially formed the Guandu Coalition to oppose Dong Zhuo, but were less than sanguine about actually assaulting Luoyang. Cao Cao and Sun Jian, a talented general who rose to prominence in the Yellow Turban Rebellion, were notable voices in favor of attack, but the majority of leaders present including Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu, brothers who together represented a large constituency of the professional army, were against. I'll give the list of notables who showed up from wikipedia:


For part of 190 the coalition sat and surrounded Luoyang with their armies in a large semicircle, cutting it off from the north, east and south from the rest of China. Once again, it's impossible to know what was going through everyone's mind at the time. Once again, their decision was eventually made for them, when Dong Zhuo did something so shocking that no one, not even the people close to him, anticipated it.

Life in the embargoed but not quite besieged Luoyang got progressively worse over the months of the coalition. Dong Zhuo was, supposedly, increasingly self-indulgent and unstable. He purged the court and tortured captured enemy soldiers personally, so we are told. Whether the stories of him boiling men alive or gouging their eyes out are true or not, he was deeply unpopular in the capital. He melted Qin Shi Huang's massive bronzes to mint coins and when that ran out looted the wealth of the capital.

Finally, driven to desperation by the decaying situation within the capital and the armies arrayed against him, Dong Zhuo determined to relocate the Imperial court to Chang'an and to raze Luoyang behind him. The entire city was ordered to pack up and march. Dong Zhou's army burned Luoyang to the ground and hounded a massive column of civilians west. Whatever plans the coalition might have had were dashed to pieces when the news of the city's burning reached their camps. This is April 9th, 192.

The retreat from Luoyang and the razing of the city is remembered as a disaster. The economy within the capital was already collapsing and the households of the city had been looted by Dong Zhuo's soldiers. The citizens were not prepared for marching 500 miles. By all accounts the retreat was chaotic and the imperial court, including the Emperor, endured great hardships on the road to the old western capital. How many people remained within the city when it was burned is unknown. Chen Shou only says: “The number of innocent dead was beyond counting.”

We'll leave the coalition in their camps for the moment and follow Dong Zhuo. When the news reached the coalition, Cao Cao and Sun Jian took their armies and took off after Dong Zhuo's column. Sun Jian and Cao Cao's volunteer armies caught up with Dong Zhuo's rearguard more than once, but were soundly defeated in a series of minor actions by Dong Zhuo's veteran Liang Province frontier army. Without doing any serious damage Cao and Sun Jian disengaged as the coalition collapsed and endangered their political status at home.

Dong Zhuo reached Chang'an and installed the court there, but the empire, descending into a state of chaotic civil war, did not acknowledge his rule. Despite having precipitated the civil war Dong Zhuo was not a major player in it. He and his army essentially sat in Chang'an and did nothing in the opening years of the civil war. According to Records Dong Zhuo's behavior became increasingly sadistic and erratic over 191 and 192. Sources used by both Chen Shou and Pei Songzhi seem to agree that sometime in 192 Dong Zhuo, in a fit of rage, threw an ax at his general, chief bodyguard, and adopted son Lu Bu*. After this event Lu Bu was receptive to overtures by Wang Yun, Director of the Imperial Secretariat, and other palace officials to assassinate Dong Zhuo. On May 22nd 192 AD Lu Bu and a party of his trusted officers stabbed Dong Zhuo to death at the palace gate.

*of Dynasty Warriors fame

In the immediate aftermath Dong Zhuo's clan within Chang'an was executed and Dong Zhuo's body was exposed in the city's main avenue. However, Chang'an was still surrounded by forces from Liang province and four of Dong Zhuo's highest generals escaped the city walls and laid Chang'an under siege. Lu Bu attempted to break the siege but was defeated and fled east to pop up in Cao Cao and Liu Bei's stories. Dong Zhuo was dead but the Imperial court was still held captive by the army of Liang Province and still wholeheartedly ignored by the rest of China.



Getting back to the coalition:

The capital was on fire and the Emperor's fate was unknown. Cao Cao's army had been defeated, and Sun Jian was on campaign with a detachment of Yuan Shu's army to retake the Luoyang area. In the meantime, the coalition had to decide what to do with the Han state, currently headless and more or less on fire.

Yuan Shao, nominally leader of the coalition, decided to crown Liu Yu, Inspector of You Province (a title equivalent to governor) the new Emperor. As Grand Administrator of Bohai, a large area within You Province, it was clear Yuan Shao would be in a position to exert great influence on Liu Yu should he become emperor. Liu Yu refused and perhaps more importantly Yuan Shu and Cao Cao disagreed with the decision. Yuan Shu was dissatisfied with his brother's leadership of the coalition when he was of more or less equal rank to Yuan Shu, and besides Yuan Shu comes across as a self-important dick. Yuan Shu personally insulted Yuan Shao and left the Luoyang area for his base in the Huai River area. The coalition drifted apart, with generals and governors taking their armies back to their respective homes with no political settlement.

Han Fu, Governor of Ji Province, had been supplying the coalition armies for the last year and was perhaps understandably growing resentful of all these armies sitting around not doing anything eating his food. A resentful vassal of Han Fu defected to Yuan Shao and alerted him to this attitude. Yuan Shao came up with a devious plan: he secretly formed an alliance with Gongsun Zan, a cavalry general from the northern frontier, to take Ji Province from Han Fu. When Han Fu became aware of Gongsun Zan's intentions, he threw himself on the protection of Yuan Shao and even handed over governorship of Ji Province. Yuan Shao's gained a permanent base in central China (his Bohai Commandery was far to the east and not rich) and Gongsun Zan looked like the aggressor.

With Sun Jian still campaigning against Dong Zhuo on behalf on Yuan Shu, Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu negotiated alliance blocs against each other and began handing out titles without consulting each other, effectively forming two opposed alliances with two views of what the Han government should look like. Yuan Shao allied with Cao Cao, while Yuan Shu formed an alliance encircling them with Tao Qian to the east and Gongsun Zan to the northwest.

Sun Jian's army was returning from its victorious reconquest of the Luoyang area from Dong Zhuo (now based far to the west in Chang'an) to reunite with Yuan Shu when Yuan Shao sent an army to intercept him. This was the first major clash of the civil wars. Sun Jian was taken by surprise but repelled the attack in a series of battles. Gongsun Zan had lent Sun Jian a detachment of cavalry under Gongsun Yue, his cousin, and Gongsun Yue was killed in the battles. Gongsun Zan then declared war on Yuan Shao and attacked from the northwest, kicking off the civil wars with its first serious campaign of conquest.

Now I'm going to break the civil war into three parts to make it more understandable. First, I'll start with Northern China focusing on Cao Cao since he will, spoilers, eventually defeat Yuan Shao and gain supremacy over everyone in that theater up until Red Cliffs. Then I'll follow Sun Jian, Sun Ce and Sun Quan as they successively conquer the south and get killed (but not Sun Quan) and then desert Yuan Shu, eventually through to Red Cliffs also. Finally, I'll follow Liu Bei's winding path through Cao Cao's story and go into more detail on the complete mess on Cao Cao's southern flank, through Red Cliffs and beyond to his sneaky conquest of Yi Province.

Here is the situation around 191:



Cao Cao went home to Yan Province and his capital of Xuchang upon the dissolution of the coalition and remained loosely allied with Yuan Shao. With his northern border secure on Yuan Shao's territory, and the reactive Tao Qian to the south, Cao Cao was free to concentrate on pacifying and organizing his territory. From 191-194 Cao Cao campaigned to put down rebels and re-establish order in his province. The previous years of civil war had thoroughly disrupted the agricultural economy and most state institutions, and Cao Cao either restored them or applied new systems for the new times. For example, the Yellow Turban Rebellion had left much agricultural land to return to waste and transportation was plagued by bandits. Cao Cao implemented a collective farming system, settling refugees on land arrayed around military garrisons, which would pacify the local area and contribute to the farm work in its off time. Upon discovering that the imperial examinations had ceased and most education with it, he appointed education officials to re-establish education and official examinations in every county under his control. For this reason Cao Cao's relatively small territory was far more productive than the other warlords'.

In 193 Cao Song, Cao Cao's father, was murdered while traveling through Xu Province and Cao Cao ordered a massacre of peasants in retaliation and attacked Tao Qian. The extent to which his father's death was the real reason for his territorial expansion into Xu is up to the reader. Starting from 193, Cao Cao began a campaign to conquer Xu Province, his neighbor to the south, under the control of Tao Qian. The campaign was long and full of reversals, as we'll get into with Liu Bei's story. Xu Province would change hands several times between 193 and 199, at various times being almost totally under Cao Cao's control, reinforced by Yuan Shu, or in total rebellion. The front in Xu will finally be resolved after Yuan Shu's death and Cao Cao's final victory over Yuan Shao in the 200s, more because the successive governors of Xu have no one left to switch sides to than because it remained militarily contested.

The most major upheaval in Cao Cao's campaigns, however, was the Emperor Xian falling into his lap in 196. Emperor Xian, now 14 years old, was a pawn in Dong Zhuo's feuding successors in Chang'an. He was kidnapped at least once even within Chang'an, already at the mercy of his keepers. In 195 two of Dong Zhuo's successor generals allowed him to leave with his court but almost immediately regretted the decision and chased him east. Not knowing what to do, having been held incommunicado for five years and fleeing in desperation, the Emperor's party returned to Luoyang to find it in ruins. Pathetically, they remained at the capital for some months until they were literally starving.

Although the emperor was within Yuan Shao's territory, he decided against welcoming Xian to his court. After all he had tried to elevate another Liu in his place and was now the most likely candidate to win the war and become the new emperor. So instead, Cao Cao marched an army to Luoyang and invited the desperate boy emperor to return to Xuchang under his protection. Naturally the emperor assented and set up his court in Xuchang. This windfall would both set up Cao Cao with the emperor's moral authority and sow the seeds of dissent between him and his senior ally Yuan Shao.

Through 196-199, Cao Cao's control of the Emperor became more assertive and his conflict with Yuan Shao become more overt. He issued edicts in Xian's name, in one condemning Yuan Shao's vast territorial ambitions. As if the capital being held by his nominal junior partner was not galling enough, Yuan Shao was further antagonized when Cao Cao had himself created Grand Commandant, one of the three top-level cabinet posts, while offering Yuan Shao Minister of Works, a regular cabinet post. By 199 Yuan Shao had defeated Gongsun Zan and held all four northern provinces, and Cao Cao, realizing his blunder, offered to trade posts with Yuan Shao but the insult could not be undone. Meanwhile, in 199 a conspiracy within the court at Xuchang to assassinate Cao Cao prompted him to crack down on the Emperor's court and alienate Xian by executing one of the emperor's pregnant concubines.

In 200, Yuan Shao finally turned on Cao Cao although as we've seen they had had irreconcilable differences ever since 196. He marshaled his armies, swollen by Gongsun Zan's submitted troops, and determined to cross the Yellow River south into Yan province at the fords near the city of Guandu. These fords were actually a series of three fords where the Yellow, Puyang, and Bian Rivers converged. Cao Cao had however anticipated this move and in 199 constructed a series of forts guarding the fords, and fortified the city of Guandu.

Not to get hung up on one battle, I'll try to keep this brief. Yuan Shao brought about 100,000 soldiers to Guandu, and Cao Cao brought 30-40,000. Over the space of a few weeks Yuan Shao successfully forced the fords, but was held up by an organized fighting retreat that managed to ambush his vanguard along the approach to Guandu itself. Yuan invested Guandu for a siege, and within another week or two both sides were in danger of running out of food and supplies. Yuan's army was replenished by a supply train left in the town of Wuchao near the fords, about 12 miles from Guandu. Yuan Shao critically failed to guard Wuchao as strongly as he should have. Cao Cao was made aware of this by a defector.

Cao Cao personally lead a night raid on Wuchao with about 5,000 men, disguised as allied reinforcements. They took the undersized garrison by surprised and burned the supply depots. Yuan Shao threw his reserves into a last-ditch effort to storm Guandu rather than reinforce Wuchao, and failed. Cao Cao is supposed to have taken ears and noses from the dead soldiers, and the next day displayed them on the walls of Guandu mixed with cow and pig bits to exaggerate the scale of his victory. Yuan Shao's army, seriously demoralized and low on food, could not continue the siege. Individual generals began to withdraw or defect to Cao Cao, and Yuan Shao found his army melting around him.

With good intelligence from the many defectors, Cao Cao and his generals realized the time was perfect for a sally, and Cao Cao shattered Yuan Shao's wavering forces. Yuan himself escaped over the Yellow River with his cavalry corps but his army of 100,000 scattered, defected, or deserted. Over the course of 200 and 201 Cao Cao lead his army from victory to victory in Yuan Shao's territory, mopping up armies and obtaining the submission of local rulers.

From 202, when Yuan Shao died of old age, to 208 Cao Cao drove all before him, his army swelling with each victory and his administrators incorporating conquered rulers and their territories into his state bureaucracy. Indeed his victories after 202 had a character of inevitability. Cao Cao often didn't have to fight and marched from bloodless submission to bloodless submission. In his wake a sense of normalcy was restored to the country as the imperial examinations resumed and wasteland was returned to cultivation. By 208, Cao Cao had united China north of the Yangtze and Qin Mountains. His state, still nominally the Han Empire, was by far the largest of the civil war, but also the most organized and productive on the local level. His army had swelled to 400,000 men. With north China secured, he marched into the divided Jing Province in 208 no doubt hoping for yet another easy victory and seeing the restoration of the Han on the horizon.

Meanwhile, in the south:

In 189, Sun Jian under Yuan Shu had been the most successful general of the coalition in the fight against Dong Zuo. Although he and Cao Cao had failed to catch Dong Zhuo on his flight west, in 190 Sun Jian brought the Luoyang area back under coalition control in a campaign that saw him victorious in a series of major battles. Yuan Shu, fearing the accomplished general's prowess and what might happen should he install himself in Luoyang, interfered with Sun Jian's supply train but relented when Sun Jian complained. This will become a pattern with Yuan Shu, who comes off as a lazy and suspicious jerk with a very high opinion of himself. Sun Jian handed Yuan Shu his first victory in his fight with his brother Yuan Shao in 190 on his way back to the Huai River, fresh from beating Dong Zhuo's army.

In 191, Yuan Shu dispatched Sun Jian to campaign against Liu Biao, the governor of Jing Province, who hasn't figured in this story so far. Liu Biao was a distant relative of Liu Bei and more or less content to remain in Jing Province rather than attack other governors. Jing Province lies along the Yangtze River in modern Hunan and Hubei, and it's quite rugged country. Sun Jian was successful initially but was killed in an ambush shortly after the opening of the campaign, terminating the whole endeavor early.

Sun Ce was Sun Jian's eldest son, and in 194 he presented himself to Yuan Shu who assigned him Sun Jian's army. Sun Ce embarked on a few small pacification campaigns for Yuan Shu and was successful but the rewards that Yuan Shu offered were somehow never forthcoming. Yuan Shu was aware that Sun Ce was dissatisfied in his service but impressed by his abilities, so he contrived to give him an impossible assignment rather than see him defect. He gave Sun Ce between 1000 and 2000 men and sent him to pacify a number of rebellious lords and administrators in the southern Yangtze Delta, with no plans to support the young general. Sun Ce had several enemies who were more powerful than him, and when he arrived they made common cause against him.

There are really too many details to go into here, but the gist of the story is that Sun Ce was repeatedly able to rally much larger forces of volunteers than anyone expected and able to deliver crushing defeats to enemies who expected to defeat him easily. He isolated opponents who were trying to combine against him, struck from unexpected directions and seemed to always show up with more soldiers than anyone supposed he commanded. Soon local administrators and subordinate generals were defecting to Sun Ce personally and improbable numbers of volunteers were flocking to his banner. Between 195 and 198 Sun Ce went from a minor general operating with a small army with no support from home to a major regional power. By 198 the entire lower Yangtze Delta pledged allegiance to Sun Ce personally, on the strength of his charisma and gifted generalship, and not particularly to Yuan Shu.

Although Yuan Shu had basically achieved nothing in seven years of warfare, he declared himself emperor in 197. This act of political suicide accomplished nothing accept alienating all of his allies and vassals, who deserted him en masse. Sun Ce renounced his allegiance to Yuan Shu at this time. Yuan Shu, bereft of allies, suffered a series of defeats at the hands of Cao Cao's generals and fled far to the south, where he sent messengers to Yuan Shao seeking reconciliation. However he died before anything could be decided, more or less irrelevant without his territory or followers anyway.

In the aftermath of Yuan Shu's abrupt collapse, Sun Ce absorbed those of his followers who were willing and crushed those who were not with derisive ease. By 199 Sun Ce controlled the Yangtze from the delta to the border with Liu Biao in Jing Province, roughly the northern border of the nascent Kingdom of Wu. Recognizing Sun Ce's power and wanting to secure his southern flank for his war with Yuan Shao, Cao Cao reached out with an offer of marriage and a generous grant of titles from the imperial court, and Sun Ce accepted. He was officially the Marquis of Wu and a high general of the Han court in addition to the personal loyalty he commanded in the Yangtze Delta. However in 200 Sun Ce was abruptly assassinated by the retainers of an official he had killed, ambushed with crossbows in the woods.

Sun Ce was succeeded by his 18-year-old brother Sun Quan, who was able to keep his position mostly through choosing good advisers who, again, it's too much trouble to get into. From 200-208 Sun Quan solidified his rule over Sun Ce's conquered territories and against generals who might have wanted to defect from such a young leader. He also began preparing for a campaign against Liu Biao's Jing Province, particularly as Huang Zu, Administrator of Jiangxia Commandery in Jing Province, had killed Sun Jian in that ambush in 191. 208 saw Sun Quan beginning to advance into eastern Jing Province, when Cao Cao's arrival in the area and Liu Biao's death upended the situation entirely.

UGH.

I'll get to Liu Bei's Adventures in Treachery some other time.

Xander77 posted:

Interesting fact - one of Cow Cow's advisers (the one who died on a desert expedition?) predicted the following about Sun Ce:

"Even though Sun Ce seems kinda cool, with his superb strategic skills and personal charisma, you don't have to worry - within the year someone will cap his rear end, because he's loving with way too many people at once". Which is exactly what ended up happening.

Sindai posted:

I had no idea Sun Ce was such a badass. IIRC, even the 2010 drama skims over most of what he did and goes straight to the assassination.

Sindai posted:

I had no idea Sun Ce was such a badass. IIRC, even the 2010 drama skims over most of what he did and goes straight to the assassination.

Sindai posted:

I had no idea Sun Ce was such a badass. IIRC, even the 2010 drama skims over most of what he did and goes straight to the assassination.

Tae posted:

I think the biggest contrast I've seen early on in Three Kingdoms was Lu Bu being like the nicest, peaceful guy. He likes to fight, but he started more attempts at peace talks than any of the 3 leaders which was really weird.

Tae posted:

Well when my only previous exposure to Lu Bu is Dynasty Warriors, you can see how my reaction happened.

Pimpmust posted:

For this I really like the Ravages of Time portrayal of Lu Bu: Kung-FuGod of War Jesus.



More of a really good general (and probably the beefiest fighter around) that just can't catch a break / don't really have a massive clan and resources of his own to fall back on.

Unlike in Dynasty Warriors where he literally shouts stuff like "I'M ALL BRAWNS AND NO BRAINS" *gets into an obvious trap for the fifth time and loses*

Emprah posted:

I've been watching the Three Kingdoms series, and It appears really obvious that they are trying to portray Cao Cao as the big bad guy of the times, even though I never saw Cao Cao throw a baby on the ground.