As the story went, they poured Guan Yu a cup of wine before he went out to fight Hua (4) Xiong (2), but he told them to just hold on to it and that he’d be right back. That is, until Guan Yu went out and took care of him. One of Dong Zhuo’s generals, Hua (4) Xiong (2), was proving to be quite a handful for the coalition forces. In episode 7, Liu Bei and company were part of a massive campaign by a coalition of warlords against the villainous prime minister Dong Zhuo. Moving on, let’s go to one of the legendary incidents in the novel where Guan Yu first made his name. But you know, it’s a small leap from “like brothers” to “actually brothers” to being the benchmark by which all fraternal bonds are measured. But there is no mention in the historical records about the three of them actually pledging an oath to be brothers. All of that came straight from the Records of the Three Kingdoms. For instance, in episode 2, the novel talked about how the three of them slept in the same bed, and when Liu Bei was sitting in public, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei would stand next to him all day long. Now, according to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the historical text on which the novel is based, the three of them were close like brothers. So you know all that talk about the oath of brotherhood in the peach orchard between Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei? Well, there’s nothing in the historical records that indicates this oath actually happened. There’s a lot to unwind here, so let’s just start from the beginning.Īnd right at the beginning is where we have our first major discrepancy between history and fiction. ![]() This is no easy task, since so much of his real life has receded into the background, overshadowed by the fictionalized version. As I have done in the past when a major character exits the narrative, I’m going to cover some of the similarities and differences between Guan Yu the fictional character and Guan Yu the historical figure. ![]() In this episode, we’re going to bid farewell to one of the novel’s major characters as we close the book on Guan Yu, who lost his territory and his head in episode 97. Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. A ceramic statue of Guan Yu in a museum in Foshan, China.
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