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Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels and the pinnacle of historical fiction. Set against the hundred-year age of turmoil from the late Eastern Han to the early Western Jin, it depicts the rise and fall, union and division of Wei, Shu and Wu, and the loyalty, strategy and tragic heroism among contending powers — 'As the general trend under heaven goes, long divided must unite; long united must divide' — a grand work about its age and human nature.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is traditionally attributed to Luo Guanzhong of the late Yuan and early Ming periods. It draws on Chen Shou’s official history Records of the Three Kingdoms, with Pei Songzhi’s annotations, and was further elaborated from folk tales and popular storytelling about the Three Kingdoms. It is a historical romance that is “seven parts fact, three parts fiction”. In the early Qing period, Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang and his son revised and annotated it, editing it into the 120-chapter edition (the Mao Zonggang edition) commonly used today, with more polished prose and a more clearly pro-Liu, anti-Cao tendency.
This section's chapter titles follow the Mao Zonggang edition (the standard edition), comprising one hundred and twenty chapters. Once the full text has been imported, the reading page will use the original text of the imported version as the reference.
In the late Eastern Han dynasty, court politics had become corrupt, and imperial relatives and eunuchs had been manipulating state affairs in turn, until the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out. Warlords rose everywhere to suppress the Yellow Turbans, and then Dong Zhuo entered the capital and threw the court into chaos; from then on, the realm fell into nearly a century of fragmentation and warlord rule. Against this backdrop of “heroes emerging in a turbulent age”, the whole book unfolds a magnificent panorama of competing powers.
The book can roughly be divided into four sections:
1. Contenders for supremacy (Chapters 1–33) — the Oath of the Peach Garden, the campaign against Dong Zhuo, the Chain Stratagem, and the Battle of Guandu, as Cao Cao gradually unified the north while Liu Bei, after repeated setbacks, searched for a foothold.
2. The Three-way Division (Chapters 34–85) — the Three Visits to the Thatched Cottage, the Battle of Red Cliffs, Liu Bei's entry into Sichuan, and the Battle of Hanzhong establish the pattern of the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu.
3. Falling Stars over Jing and Yi (Chapters 86–104) — Guan Yu loses Jingzhou, Liu Bei's campaign against Wu is defeated at Yiling, the child heir is entrusted in Baidi City, and Zhuge Liang makes six expeditions to Qishan; Shu Han declines from prosperity to weakness.
IV. The Three Split into Jin (Episodes 105–120)—the Sima clan seizes power, Jiang Wei campaigns north, Shu and Wu fall one after another, and the realm returns to unity under Jin.
'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' uses 'division and unity', 'loyalty and righteousness', 'strategic thinking' and 'mandate of heaven' as its core themes, writing in full the tension between ideal and reality in a time of turmoil: Liu Bei's group's 'benevolence and righteousness', Cao Cao's 'cunning heroism', and Zhuge Liang's tragic resolve to 'do what cannot be done but do it anyway' are all enduring human questions repeatedly savoured by later generations.
For readers encountering it for the first time, you can approach it from three angles: treat it as a grand historical drama of competing warlords, a narrative exemplar that writes each character as a vivid type, and a meditation on loyalty, strategy and destiny. It is recommended to start with the oath of brotherhood in the first chapter and the events before and after the Battle of Red Cliffs, grasp the three-way balance, and then read through each chapter in order.