Romance of the Three Kingdoms Novel/Era - Discussion Thread

[Dong Zhou]

read and then dedicate a shrine to the awesomeness that is Cao Ren. I'm not sure there is a great semininal moment for him, though it tends to be his spell in Jing, more the amount of victories or valiant defeats that makes him so highly regarded.

[Zhao Xiao]

I always used to think Liao Hua was an understated hero. He's mentioned a lot in the novel but barely gets any juicy bits lol

[thegrandmystic]

Liao Hua is interesting to me because, at least story-wise, he's probably the only figure who saw the entire Three Kingdoms period from beginning to end, first as participant in the Yellow Turban Rebellion all the way until his final years in the twilight of Shu.

[Zhang Dun]

Indeed. Had he not passed away right after the fall of Shu, he might even have lived to see the reunification of the land under Jin. That would have truly been an accomplishment.

[Marzy]

The fall of Wu happened in like... 280, right? Can you imagine someone running running around doing things during the Yellow Turban Rebellion all the way up to the Fall of Wu? He'd be like 115! That'd be an accomplishment today. I can't fathom how someone would have done that then.

[Selway]

No, Liao Hua died after the fall of Shu around 263 AD. The yellow turban rebellion was of most consequence between 184-185 AD. Though the whole way of peace movement was already around before and little uprisings sprung up after the main conflict. So assuming Liao Hua fought with them during 184 and was say twenty at the time, though I seem to recall there being reason to think he was fairly young at the time maybe early teens, then he would have been somewhere around eighty when he died. Still pretty good for the time though

[Zhao Xiao]

I always think if they made a movie series of the whole sage (again whatever) then they should make Liao Hua the main character haha and allow him to retell the whole story as narrator.

[Marzy]

No, Liao Hua died after the fall of Shu around 263 AD. The yellow turban rebellion was of most consequence between 184-185 AD. Though the whole way of peace movement was already around before and little uprisings sprung up after the main conflict. So assuming Liao Hua fought with them during 184 and was say twenty at the time, though I seem to recall there being reason to think he was fairly young at the time maybe early teens, then he would have been somewhere around eighty when he died. Still pretty good for the time though

Well, Zhang Dun put forth the hypothetical. 80 something still isn't anything to sneeze at.

Though, I've never seen a credible record that put him anywhere before Guan Yu's defeat at Fancheng. If anyone knows if he may really have been wandering around sooner, I'm interested in hearing about it.

[Selway]

My correction was incorrect anyhow because bad math. I meant to say at most he'd have been in his late nineties when he died if he had been around for the yellow turbans on through to the fall of Shu. I realized I had fudged the numbers about twenty minutes after I posted but didn't think it was worth popping on the computer again to hide my shame : )

[Dong Zhou]

Well, Zhang Dun put forth the hypothetical. 80 something still isn't anything to sneeze at.

Though, I've never seen a credible record that put him anywhere before Guan Yu's defeat at Fancheng. If anyone knows if he may really have been wandering around sooner, I'm interested in hearing about it.

Yeah, historically the first time we hear of him is as an officer of Guan Yu in Jing. He and Zong Yu would be the only Shu officers of that era to survive to see it's end and both would die on the road to Luoyang. In the novel, he is a Turban though we don't see him till Guan Yu's escape

[slick]

Yeah, Liao Hua is not mentioned as having participated in the Scarves Rebellion historically. And like practically every Shu-Han officer, he suffers from a dearth of information due to no official Shu-Han history being written.

[Zhang Dun]

When the winners write the history books, the losers are destined to (usually) fade into obscurity.

[Jia Wu]

Well, Shu didn't win the war but they got a heavily biased novel...

[Marzy]

That's because it's not really the winner who writes the history books. Really, the ones who scream loudest and longest write it. That's usually a lot easier when you've conquered your enemies though.

[Dong Zhou]

When the winners write the history books, the losers are destined to (usually) fade into obscurity.

In fairness, had Shu's history department not been a joke, we would have likely know a not more about the Shu officers.