brief summary of three kingdom

三国演义or romance of three kingdoms by luo guanzhong was considered one of the best in its time and Chinese literature history, it was one of the four great classical Chinese novel where the other three was water margin (水浒传)，journey to the west (西游记)，and the plum in the golden vase (金瓶梅 )。

The book talks about the decaying han dynasty （汉朝） where the government has gone corrupt and the yellow turban rebellion(黄巾之乱) which is a peasant revolt led by zhang jue (張角) (sixth picture) who wants to topple the han government, the empire was led by a boy emperor who barely knew how to govern, because of that, local warlords such as liu bei (刘备）(first picture), sun jian(孙坚）, and cao cao(曹操) (second picture) rose up and put the rebellion down, but that isn’t the end of the story, even though the rebellion has been put down, local autonomy has been too high and now the emperor and the government don’t have a real power anymore and they were turned into pawns by the tyrant dong zhuo(董卓）(last picture) who proclaims himself a prime minister and he made use of the emperor and made him as an excuse to declare war and seek more power to himself,。

this enrages the local warlords so they build a coalition to topple him down, but the fact that the warlords can't agree on anything and dong zhuo‘s adopted son lu bu(呂布), who was considered the most dangerous person in china kept destroying the coalition’s troop led to the dissolve of the coalition and dong zhuo’s head still connected to his body, before lu bu betrayed him for a woman called diao chan(貂蝉) （fifth picture) who brings both dong zhuo and lu bu into conflict, diaochan was considered the most beautiful person in the time, and both lu bu and dong zhuo is weak to woman, the fact that dian chan is also very good at poker face and acting also helps being both of the strongest men in the time to their downfall, and so lu bu killed dong zhuo.

Cao cao, an ambitious leader who seeks to become the new emperor started seizing more and more lands from the other warlords, liu bei who seeks to restore order and reform the han empire was helped by the famous tactician, zhuge liang(诸葛亮) (eighth picture). Zhu ge liang was considered the smartest and deadliest tactician of his time, his accurate prediction and deadly tactics has had him called “god” from the other warlords such as cao cao and the others, zhuge liang helped liu bei to stand toe to toe with the other 2 warlords who was cao cao and sun quan(孙权） (seventh picture) (who was the son of sun jian)

cao cao who gets too ambitious decided to take on sun jian and liu bei all at once, and that led the the epic battle of the red cliff (赤壁之战) where cao cao’s 800000 troops were wiped out by the tactics of zhouyu（周瑜）（who was considered zhuge liang’s rival who works for sun quan） and zhuge liang, after the decisive defeat at 赤壁, cao cao retreated, when he retreated trough the Huarong road（华容道）, zhuge liang has prepared an ambush, after hit by series of ambush, a battalion led by general guan yu(关于）(fourth picture) blocks the way out, cao cao at that time was already desperate and ready to lose his life, but one of his general convince him to negotiate with guan yu considering guan yu was a general known for his righteousness and kindness, guanyu who was treated kindly by cao cao back then agrees to let cao cao pass.

after the battle at red cliff until the retreat from Huarong, cao cao had lost countless troops, he was only left with a handful of men who was exhausted and nearly collapse, but the kindness that guan yu showed to cao cao doesn’t stop him from slicing guan yu’s head, and finally after his death, the powerful sima clan （司马） took his position and fully annexed the two other warlord’s land and finally ending this story.