Beginner’s Guide

The first hurdle with the Three Kingdoms isn’t remembering names — it’s telling "official history" from "the novel." This guide clears that hurdle first, then gives you a path to read on.

A Few Things to Know First

The "Three Kingdoms" is really two systems: the official history, Chen Shou’s Records of the Three Kingdoms, and Luo Guanzhong’s historical novel written centuries later, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Most of the famous scenes we know today — slaying Hua Xiong while the wine is warm, the chain-link scheme, Jiang Gan stealing the letter, the empty-fort ruse, borrowing the east wind — come mostly or wholly from the novel, not the histories. Every figure card here cites its "primary source," flagged as clearly as the record allows.
The novel is "seven parts fact, three parts fiction," not made up from nothing. It broadly respects the real historical skeleton (who fought whom, who surrendered to whom, who unified the realm at last); what it invents is mostly the specific episodes, the dialogue, and a filter on some characters (Cao Cao markedly "belittled," Zhuge Liang markedly "deified").
Don’t read Three Kingdoms figures as "good guys" and "bad guys." Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan were all fighting for their own side’s survival, none more "righteous" than another — the novel adopts a "honor Liu, belittle Cao" narrative stance to set off Shu Han, and that is the key to the gap in how figures are rated.
Three Kingdoms relationships are a web, not a line: whom a strategist served, how many times a general defected, how many houses a marriage tied together — the relationship graph and figure cards here spread that web out to give you a first look at the whole.

A Few Suggestions

First sort out "is this a real event or a novel episode," then decide whether to remember it as history. This site’s "version differences" notes and "primary source" citations are there so you can check at a glance.
Remembering a few key years is more useful than the details: 184 the Yellow Turban Rebellion, 200 the Battle of Guandu, 208 the Battle of Red Cliffs, 220 Cao Pi takes the throne (the Three Kingdoms formally begins), 263 the fall of Shu Han, 280 the Western Jin destroys Wu and unifies. Set the skeleton, and the details have somewhere to hang.
Don’t rush to pick a side. Which of Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan is more "worth liking" has had no standard answer for two thousand years; the more you read, the more complex — and more interesting — your judgment becomes.

How to Read

To know "what really happened," read the Records of the Three Kingdoms

Chen Shou’s Records is terse and sparing of words, many key episodes given in only a few. Pair it with Pei Songzhi’s notes — Pei cites a wealth of later-lost sources, often in a note longer than the main text, and many details "the novel didn’t write but that are even better" are hidden in the notes.

To know "how everyone remembers it," read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Luo Guanzhong’s novel shaped our main image of the Three Kingdoms today, of high literary value and immense popular reach — but read it reminding yourself that "a good read" is not the same as "the truth." Read with that clarity and you appreciate the author’s narrative craft all the more.

Reading the histories and the novel side by side works best

For the same event, first see how the Records records it, then how the Romance writes it; set side by side, you see clearly what is historical fact and what is literary shaping — a method this site demonstrates in the "version differences" notes on a few figure cards.

Go Deeper: The Official Histories

Chen Shou, Records of the Three KingdomsThe official history by the Western Jin historian Chen Shou, the most authoritative firsthand source for the history of Wei, Shu, and Wu, terse in style.

Pei Songzhi’s notes to the Records of the Three KingdomsThe Liu-Song scholar Pei Songzhi’s notes, citing a wealth of later-lost sources and variant accounts, often larger than the main text — the first place to look for "version differences."

Sima Guang, Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (the Han and Wei annals)The Northern Song chronological history, reorganizing the Three Kingdoms along a timeline, clearer and more readable than the biographical form of the Records.

Go Deeper: Novel and Popular History

Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three KingdomsThe "seven parts fact, three parts fiction" historical novel that shaped our main image of the Three Kingdoms today. Read alongside this site or other sources to tell history from literary shaping.

Yi Zhongtian, Analyzing the Three KingdomsA popular book from CCTV’s Lecture Room series, devoted to sorting out the differences between the histories and the novel — one of the most readable introductions to "removing the novel’s filter."

Key Years

The Age of Chaos Begins

184 The Yellow Turban Rebellion
189 Dong Zhuo enters the capital, deposes and installs emperors
192 Wang Yun’s chain-link scheme kills Dong Zhuo

Unification and the Three-Way Division

200 The Battle of Guandu; Cao Cao unifies the north
208 The Battle of Red Cliffs; the three-way division takes shape
219 Guan Yu drowns the seven armies, then falls at Maicheng
220 Cao Pi takes the throne; the Eastern Han ends and the Three Kingdoms formally begins

Stalemate and the Return to Jin

221–222 The Battle of Yiling; Liu Bei crushed
223 The deathbed charge at Baidicheng
234 Zhuge Liang dies at Wuzhang Plains
249 The coup at Gaoping Tombs; the House of Sima takes power
263 The fall of Shu Han
280 The Western Jin destroys Wu and reunites the realm