Romance of the Three Kingdoms is acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature; it has a total of 800,000 words and nearly a thousand dramatic characters (mostly historical) in 120 chapters.

In the late second century, towards the end of the Han dynasty in China, corruption was rampant on all levels throughout the government, with treacherous eunuchs and villainous officials deceiving the emperor and persecuting those who stood up to them.

In the meantime, the common people suffered, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion (led by Zhang Jiao and his brothers) eventually broke out during the reign of Emperor Ling.

The Ten Attendants, a group of influential court eunuchs, feared that He Jin was growing too powerful, so they lured him into the palace and assassinated him.

Meanwhile, in Chang'an, Dong Zhuo was betrayed and murdered by his foster son Lü Bu in a dispute over the maiden Diaochan as part of a plot orchestrated by the minister Wang Yun.

He also defeated rival warlords such as Lü Bu, Yuan Shu and Zhang Xiu in a series of wars and gained control over much of central China.

His eldest son, Sun Ce, delivered the Imperial Seal as a tribute to the warlord Yuan Shu, a rising pretender to the throne, in exchange for troops and horses.

Tragically, Sun Ce also died at the pinnacle of his career from illness under stress of his terrifying encounter with the ghost of Yu Ji, a venerable magician whom he had falsely accused of heresy and executed in jealousy.

With assistance from Zhou Yu, Zhang Zhao and others, Sun Quan found hidden talents such as Lu Su to serve him, built up his military forces, and maintained stability in Jiangdong.

However, their ambitions were not realised as they did not receive due recognition for helping to suppress the Yellow Turban Rebellion and participating in the campaign against Dong Zhuo.

Meanwhile, Sun Quan plotted to take Jing Province after growing tired of Liu Bei's repeated refusals to hand over the territories.

Guan Yu was unable to capture Fancheng so he retreated, but was caught off guard by Lü Meng and had already lost Jing Province before he knew it.

With his army's morale falling and the troops gradually deserting, Guan Yu and his remaining men withdrew to Maicheng, where they were surrounded by Sun Quan's forces.

Lu Xun initially pursued Liu Bei during his retreat, but gave up after getting trapped inside and barely escaping from Zhuge Liang's Stone Sentinel Maze.

After pacifying the south, Zhuge Liang led the Shu army on five military expeditions to attack Wei as part of his mission to restore the Han dynasty.

Each time, as Zhuge Liang was on the verge of success, he was recalled due to various unfortunate circumstances, such as Liu Shan listening to rumours spread by eunuchs.

The regents Zhuge Ke and Sun Chen consecutively attempted to usurp the throne but were eventually ousted from power and eliminated in coups.

Other major influences include Liu Yiqing's A New Account of the Tales of the World (Shishuo Xinyu), published in 430,[18] and the Sanguozhi Pinghua, a chronological collection of eighty fictional sketches starting with the peach garden oath and ending with Zhuge Liang's death.

[19] Some 50 or 60 Yuan and early Ming plays about the Three Kingdoms are known to have existed, and their material is almost entirely fictional, based on thin threads of actual history.

[23] Romance of the Three Kingdoms, like the dramas and folk stories of its day, features Liu Bei and his associates as the protagonists; hence the depiction of the people in Shu Han was glorified.

[26] Plaks states the novel deals with the "cyclical theories of dynastic decline," and relates the "breakdown of order" at the end of the Han dynasty to "the improper exercise of imperial authority, the destabilisation influence of special-interest groups (eunuchs, imperial clansmen), the problem of factional and individual idealism carried to the point of civil strife-all of which eventually surface in the body of the narrative."

He goes on to say, the "overlapping claims to legitimacy and multiple spheres of power," give the novel a "sense of epic greatness" with its "combination of grandeur and futility.

"[6]: 385, 403, 495 Besides the famous Peach Garden Oath, many Chinese proverbs in use today are derived from the novel: It means that wives and children, like clothing, are replaceable if lost but the same does not hold true for one's brothers (or friends).

As the novel was written in the Ming dynasty, more than 1,000 years after the era, these stories showed that Buddhism had long been a significant ingredient of the mainstream culture and may not be historically accurate.

[clarification needed] Luo Guanzhong preserved these descriptions from earlier versions of the novel to support his portrait of Guan as a faithful man of virtue.

The Jurchen chieftain Nurhaci was an avid reader of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, learning all he knew about Chinese military and political strategies from them.

A complete translation based on the 1522 edition of the novel was done in 1647 and published in 1650 by a team of high-ranking officials including Kicungge (祁充格; d. 1651) and Fan Wencheng (1597–1666), commissioned by the prince-regent Dorgon.

The first known translation was performed in 1907 by John G. Steele and consisted of a single chapter excerpt that was distributed in China to students learning English at Presbyterian missionary schools.

[40] A complete and faithful translation of the novel was published in two volumes in 1925 by Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor, a long time official of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service.

[7] After decades of work, Moss Roberts published a full translation in 1991 complete with an afterword, eleven maps, a list of characters, titles, terms, and offices, and almost 100 pages of notes from Mao Zonggang's commentaries and other scholarly sources.