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5:28 Han Officials: It's time to pay your taxes. Yan Baihu: LOL, No >Flees to the mountains and becomes a bandit< I'll collect my own taxes, thank you very much!
Cao Cao's own words; "So I have pacified the empire. I am the chief. I have the utmost honor a subject can hold, far beyond my former hopes. Supposing I had not been here, who can say how many men would have claimed the imperial title or how many would have sought to rule as kings? It may be, however, that as some people see how my power has grown, and recognize that I am not the sort of man to trust indefinitely on the favor of Heaven. I am concerned lest they misjudge me, and say I have ambitions for the throne. So I now reveal my true feelings, with words from the bottom of my heart. On the other hand, should anyone suggest that I give up my army, hand over my power, and retire to my fief at Wuping, then that just cannot be. Quite simply, I am afraid I should be harmed as soon as I left the protection of my troops; and I want to arrange that even my children and grandchildren shall be secure. Should I be destroyed, moreover, the whole realm will be in danger. I am not prepared to give up my life for a meaningless reputation." My personal theory is that Cao Cao didn't aspire to the throne, nor did he aspire to lay the groundwork for his children to seize the throne. He merely aspired to piece together the empire, broken as it was. If establishing a new dynasty furthered that goal, so be it.
There is an apparently recent theory that suggests that Cao Cao and Emperor Xian became co conspirators rather than puppet master and pawn over time. Essentially the theory is that Xian was well aware of his actual qualities as a ruler, that he was far more effective as a scholar, but he and Cao Cao didn’t believe it would be practice for the realm for him to simply step down. So the two of them played the roles they both saw as most effective to quell the chaos
@twosull It's ironic For all the evils hes done for all his good intentions in his desire to restore the Empire History remembers him as a villain how cruel it is The ironic thing is Dubai South South both want to restore the ha But both saw each other as villains But then again the world isn't a generic Saturday morning cartoon And more complicated than that
Yuan Shu: "Screw this chaos. I'll create a new dynasty and unite China!" Every warlords: (stop fighting each other and target Yuan Shu) Me: "Bruh... he really did unite China. Unite them to kill him i mean."
Liu Chong and his crossbow enthusiasts are my favorite faction. It's hard to break the habit of slaying the tyrant and restoring the Han as the Prince of Chen.
8:00 For all signs, Dong Zhou did not want to overthrow the Han Dynasty. He wanted to keep the Han Dynasty together and place himself as the Empress faction. Dong Zhou even tried to claim to be a blood relative of Empress Dowager Dong (true or not, he did try to become with that faction). The reason he got a bad reputation because he messed up the then system, and he was a bully when he was in control. However, there is no sign that he wanted to usurp the Han Dynasty. These two things are not related. You can be a bully who tried to restore Han, and you can also be a skillful leader who tried to usurp a dynasty. If anything, Dong has done plenty of actions to restore the Han Dynasty. In his own way, he actually appointed talented people to various areas, and avoided promoting his own people. This is not a sign of someone trying to overthrow a government. Yes, he was a bully. Yes, he was an abusive leader. However, this does not mean he was trying to overthrown the Han Dynasty.
Dong Zhuo is painted as a brute tyrant just like Yuan Shi Kai was during the ROC era but reading into history you can find some positive characteristics in their person. Romance Dong Zhuo is a brute Historical Dong Zhuo was fairly calculative in his schemes
I recognize that the Restoration characters are a bunch sages and Confucians. Aside from Lu Bu. Look at them, they got one great looking facial hair. Plus, they are more likely to have connections with the Liu clans much more. Whereas, to the Usurpers, I noticed that the group focus more in Martial capability.
Would love to see modern-day comparisons of 3 Kingdoms locations and modern Chinese counterparts, since there have been a lot of name changes over the last 2000 years and it'd be interesting to see if anything is even remotely worth visiting for 3K reasons besides the temples to Zhuge Liang and tomb of Cao Cao etc, particularly for landmarks like Chibi and the Sleeping Dragon Ridge (if such a thing ever existed)
I recently got back to total war three kingdoms. I forgot how insanely useful and informative your content is. Please make videos on the next total war historical titles. Not only do I find your guides interesting and entertaining, but the historic videos as well!
This makes me feel like there is a real honorable side in Lu Bu. He had é opportunity to become a new tyrant or at the very least demand more power and wealth from the court, but instead he tried to do some good and was very content with the reward he got.
I feel like Liu Yan wouldn't usurp because even if he crowned himself emperor, he would still be a part of the imperial clan so it wouldn't be a total usurpation.
I feel like Sun Jian wouldn't have usurped the Han. Not because of his personality or ambition but because he never would have had the chance. If he'd lived longer he'd likely have become a Lü Bu like figure for Yuan Shu's proclaimed dynasty. I feel this because he was nigh unbeatable in battle (even putting Lü Bu to flight at Luoyang); he also didn't do much to seek independent power under Yuan Shu - he abandoned his Governorship of Changsha when he cast his lot with him; he also didn't have Sun Ce's nous, he straight up killed Han officials when raising his army, which much like Gongsun Zan would have made building up his own power in the region unpopular at best and impossible at worst.
Master Trivia, I have a idea, stupid but similar to Sir Yap's idea, who's loyal to the Han, not pointing at fiction leaders but pointing at characters that served under these fiction leaders. I got this idea from Xun Yu's suspicion death of whether he die because Cao Cao wanted to usurp or just sickness. Thankfully, Total War has limited character illustrations, so the video won't run forever, but for a long time. Thank you, sincerely, the subscriber who won't stop asking you questions.
It would be interesting to think about who is actually still loyal to the Han as in this time most people are serving under warlords and the Han is pretty much already gone.
you inspired me to download the game again! I put so many hours into the game when it first came out I got burned out but wow the game has so many updates
Awesome video I definitely will choose differently for each character I play as and depending on their "villainy", I kind of hope they add maybe some RP mechanics later like this mod I'm using called abdication where you can make any leader abdicate so even if I choose the han emperor route I can reverse it can rp scenarios where the another character usurps the title.
@@christiandauz3742 I'd put him one tier to the left of Cao Cao. I think he very much wanted the Han to be usurped, but rather have his warlord be the usurper while he pulls the strings in the background.
I don't know how knowledgeable you are on the topic but I would love to see a discussion about the character costumes and if they are at least somewhat accurate to period clothing and armor. I mean things like that white fur on Ma Teng or Liu Chong's impressive armor, stuff like that. Anyways it's always a pleasure to watch your vids, I always learn something new and interesting.
“I don’t give a hoot about the Han, as long as I get to beat someone up and dominate everyone on the battlefield, that is all I care about” -Lu Bu Lu Bu’s not the kind of guy who’s gonna be wasting his time on bureaucratic BS, he just wants to lay the smackdown on anyone who dares to go against him!
Sun Jian did everything in his power to fight for the Han, he was one of the only generals in the Coalition that did actually fight against Dong Zhuo and had success while the rest of the warlords did nothing. He definitely wouldn't usurp the Han, he fought against pirates and rebels his whole life, he fought for peace his whole life. He was the last true general loyal to the Han.
No, Cao Cao led a group of militia and some regular cavalry but held up a imperial force for a whole day until both sides retired. It's what happened in the fate divided DLC trailer.
I also think had Liu Bei somehow been able to restore the Han to power, he would have tried to be the Cincinnatus of China, he would have gone super humble and retired to comfort and let his legend grow, then married his children into the royal family and win that way.
I think he will hold onto power as an imperial regent until he died then the emperor gets full power. This is done to protect himself in case the emperor decides to purge him because he is too popular. Kinda like how Franco in Spain hold on to power until he died and pass the throne to King Juan Carlos.
Honestly, I'm relatively confident that if any of these people (except Kong Rong) found themselves in the same position Cao Cao/Cao Pi had in the 220's, with the amount of leverage that they had over the Emperor and the Court, they would have usurped the Emperor.
An idea for a video i had was a discussion about how well the unique units fit the faction. For example, Camp Crushers fit the faction but not so much the role of a faction specific unit as there were so few historically.
Video idea a legendary character (Maybe just the ones with unique art, so it is a more manageable number) heir/faction leader tier list similar to the ancillary or unique unit ones.
Hey serious trivia. Really enjoy your videos. Could you do a similar video as of 190 and 194 on "Who would have been the most likely to unify china?" I feel like as of 200 it would be easily either Yuan Shao or Cao Cao, but as of 190 and 194 it isn't that clear since Liu Biao was quite strong as well, for instance. Another idea (which is even more crazy) is "who deserved to rule china?". this is more of a moral judgement which includes governors like Liu Yu or Liu Dai. it's just about legitimacy or a demonstrated will to do good for the country. Once again, I may have watched every 3k related video you have made and also listened to the entire ROTK podcast series twice because I was inspired by you. Thank you for all you do.
Video idea: which famous generals are distantly related that we might not realise. For example, there’s lots of generals called Xu (Huang, Chu, Shu, Sheng), Zhang (Brothers, Yan, He, Fei, Liao, Zhao, Hong, Chunhua), Lu (Su, Meng, Bu, Xun), Huang (Gai, Shao, Zhong, Zu), Sun (Quan, Qian), Zhou (Yu, Tai), Gongsun (Zan, Du), Yan (Baihu, Liang), Pang (De, Tong), Jiang (Wan, Wei) etc. Which ones are lesser known distant relatives that maybe people didn’t notice?
Lu Su's Lu is a different pronnounciation from Lu xun, and Lü Meng and Lü Bu all have the Lü and are also pronnounced differently. Be good to take a look at their characters too, usually its more indicative if their surnames share the same character
Video Idea: ranking the starting difficulty all factions of all start dates in the game (including all DLCs apart from 8 princes). Do you agree or disagree with the difficulty CA gave in the game? What is the best start date for a faction?
Third time is the charm. No issues found on this video. 😁 👍 If I might add a little bit,about Lu Bu I always saw/think of him as simply this Glory seeking general, y'know,one who wants to be remembered as doing grand or crazy feats of military exploits. As you aptly explained,he's accredited to being the killer of the tyrant Dong Zhuo and tried to save the Emperor. Titles are secondary to him, it's the feats and glory that drives him I think. If only he's willing to listen to his strategists more and do not commit several betrayal on route to chase his glory-seeking way,I think he's gonna be remembered similar to Zhou Yun albeit a less humble and chivalrous version 🤣 As for ideas,I am kinda interested and curious about the spouses of the famous generals,the tiger generals,the five elites and so on. since they rarely mentioned,talked about or recorded in history,you might have more insight about it perhaps. And if you do,that would be great. Could go deeper into the in-laws relations between characters as well. Sorry for the long post 😅
I think there is some chance yuan shao would have been an opportunist restorationist as he wanted to put liu yu on the throne at one point and had chen lin write condemnations against cao cao. I could see Yuan Shao being like an overbearing minister like Liang Ji or (ironically) like dong zhuo.
Interesting placement you have for Yuan Shao here ! I personnaly always thaugt that the only reason Benchu did not declare himself emperor was because he saw how bad of an idea it was thanks to his brother doing that stupid move. Also, i think that if he would have won at Guandu he wouldn't have acted as Cao Cao did because, if he had won he would have become the most powerful warlord of china, and that is what Yuan Shu lacked to stay alive and make his "dynasty" prosper. The main thing that tells me he wouldn't have acted as Cao Cao is because when the emperor needed help, he didn't respond and that's because : 1) he wasn't as smart as Cao Cao and he didn't understood the power that having the emperor would have gave him and 2) Yuan Shao was arrogant, he didn't really care to save Liu Xie because he was planning to become himself emperor so why would he save a emperor that he wanted to usurp ? Where Cao Cao understood what he had to do to empower his clan and his kids Yuan Shao didn't. Also if i remember correctly Cao Mengde always thaught that the first one to usurp the throne would be Yuan Shao. But i have to admit that most of my knowlege comes from the romance (and i'm not nearly as informed as you are obviously) so i could be totally wrong, but i still wanted to give my opinion, so you could correct me if I am. PS : Sorry if there are any mistakes, English is not my native tongue. PS2 : keep up doing the great work ! I love your channel !
I would probably put the bandits more towards usurp than the Nanman. If you are in it for the money, and you have the chance of becoming emperor, you would probably do it. But if you are in it for independence, there are advantages and disadvantages to taking the throne.
How would you feel about doing a video on some of the women of the time period? I was kinda sad that CA missed the opportunity to include Lady Liu in Yuan Shao's faction. She's just as willing to get her hands dirty as any of the men of the period. Yuan Shu's concubine Lady Feng's life is quite a tragedy, but there's also the case of Pang (or Zhao) E, the woman who successfully avenged her husband's murder around 180 AD. Would love to see her running around in the Mandate of Heaven start.
I know you're probably inundated with ideas/suggestions for videos, but here's another one! What about a series like the Let's Talk Lore that focuses on individual generals' lives throughout the era? Could quite neatly fit into a series of algorithm-friendly 10-15 minute long videos, and help flesh out the parts of the mythos that otherwise aren't well covered on RU-vid. There's heaps of content talking about the big moments like Dong Zhuo's governance, or the battle of Red Cliff - but nothing if you want to learn more about characters like Wei Yan, Xu Chu, or Zhang He, who are otherwise consigned to their Dynasty Warriors adaptations in spite of being incredible people who did a lot of amazing things.
I think I would have have flipped Sun Jian and Liu Bei. Liu Bei actively attacked and opposed Cao Cao, while Sun Jian only ever did what he was told by the Han Court. Had Sun Jian lived until Yuan Shu declared himself the Emperor, I think he would have joined arms against him.
How about making videos behind the names of the Kingdoms when Warlords achieve King rank in the game. Like why "Song" for Yuan Benchu or "Xun" for Liu Yan/Zhang.
I can your option would be to support the new regime or to fight to support the former one but he decided that he wanted a kingdom to his name so in my opinion Wu is the least legitimate kingdom of the three.
Will it be possible to make a video on Kingdom names for each faction after they reach the King rank. Like the lore behind why the Kingdom names used in game cause even until now, there are some Kingdom names for certain faction which I'm still blurr.
I think when there is a debate about if Cao Cao was a villain; the execution of people like Kong Rong seals it for me that he is. He lacks that forgiveness of his enemies that Julius Caesar had; he didn't want to kill his opposition, he wanted to convert them, he wanted them to say, 'you were right and I was wrong, I see that now.' That is true victory.
Unity succeeds division and division follows unity. One is bound to be replaced by the other after a long span of time. This is the way with things in the world.
i mainly agree but i would put liu yan and liu bei closer to usurption mainly because one wanted to become emperor while liu bei never really made any action to try to save the emperor. while with yuan shao he would be further into the usurption branch because his brother had already committed treason against the han and there may have been some that would push for his execution as punishment for his brothers treason
participating in the blood oath assassination, fought Cao Cao countless times, organized the alliance to halt Cao Cao at Chibi...I think he did plenty especially considering the limited resources he had too
I’ve read versions that say Sun Jian gave the seal up willingly which would put him on the restored no? Then again he gave it to Yuan Shu so maybe usurper by proxy? What do you think if that version is true?
A couple of questions after I had time to finish the video: 1. Do you think the pace of the game might change what the characters end up doing? In history the fall of the Han ended in a 60 year stalemate, but most campaigns of TW:3K end around 200ish. Maybe Cao Cao would've been more likely to take the throne if he won Red Cliffs and spent his last 12 years ruling the entire empire, rather than a third of it? 2. Wouldn't Shu-Han be more like Han 3.0? I was under the impression that Chinese dynastic thinking would've considered a victorious Liu Bei's line a similar quasi-continuation like what happened with the Western and Eastern Han. 3. Not related to the video, but I was wondering since you seem to know this stuff; would a victorious Wei be remember as the Wei dynasty and Wu as the Wu dynasty, or would they have another umm.. chance to pick a dynasty name or something?
1. Well historically if Cao Cao didn’t lose at Chibi, Three Kingdoms would never really happen and unity would have been achieved at 208. I mean player speed is assuming no major setbacks. 2. Sure you can call it Han 3.0. It would be seen as a continuation of the Han after a break either way. 3. There is no changing Dynasty names after it’s been set unless some dramatic change in leadership happens. Like sure someone can change it but it would have been seen as disrespectful towards the founders
If I had the chance personally, I would have opted for usurp. It’s not every day you get a chance to start your own dynasty. We still remember Yuan Shu even today even though he was a complete failure
@@SeriousTrivia probably because he was the only warlord of that era brave but foolish enough to declare himself the emperor before the 3 Kingdoms actually rise, others planned to but not yet until Cao Pi declared with Liu Bei and Sin Quan behind, it would actually cause literally everyone in the vicinity of his region to whip Yuan Shu's rear end. As for me I would only usurp and start a dynasty for myself if there was a really good chance of me winning against any opposition because of it
I do actually have an idea for a video, It might be too much to ask, but there are a lot of people in the game with the same clan names, but a lot are just coincidental, I like knowing Liu Dai and Liu Zhang and Liu Biao's position in the clan as pointed out in your Liu Yan campaign, but there are more characters that may or may not be related. I know you've pointed out some Yuan members relationships but I wanna know if like Lu Fan and Lu bu are related and any other bits of trivia. I mostly want to know the familial bonds if the same surname is there or if it's purely coincidental. I know I can look at the symbols for their name but without reading chinese I may misremember and often I can't get all the characters I'd want to look at in my court to observe their chinese characters to note if they're different or not. Anyway, just an idea if you feel like it
right so for the most part, you can default them all to not being related. It is very common for people to have the same exact last name and not be related.
I may be too lenient towards him but i found your point of view on Sun Jian quite harsh. The "Han Hammer" seemed quite a simple man, not accustom to politics. He fought the good fight most of his life against bandits, rebels and Dong Zhuo at Dagu pass. But your point is gravitating toward the imperial seal. And i must ask, what was he really supposed to do ? I remembered that he gave it to his superior (Yuan Shu) but i may be mistaken (if the records of the three kindgoms explain what Sun Jian did). Even so to whom could he have given it without creating problems ?
you are probably right as there was probably not a great solution when it came to the imperial seal and most of his actions were based on the fact that he saw Yuan Shu as someone who was standing up to Dong Zhuo. So actions like attacking Liu Biao can be justified as Liu Biao was appointed by Dong Zhuo. His kill on Liu Biao's predecessor Wang Rui on a personal grudge does leave a lot of questions about his character. Certainly he was hardline military man, but unlike the likes of Huangfu Song or Zhu Jun, I don't see the sense of Han loyalty in Sun Jian who was more brash and self serving and if the opportunities lined up, usurpation is probably still where I lean with him.
@@SeriousTrivia About Wang Rui i don't know that much about him but he spoke ill of Sun Jian (supposedly because of his lowly birth) and quarrel with Cao Yin that Wang Rui wanted dead. Because of that, Cao Yin forged an order listing all of Wang Rui's crimes and faults so that Sun Jian could take care of it. Did Sun Jian know that the order was forged ? maybe if they were colluded but i find more probable that Sun Jian was just happy to jump on the occasion feeling legitimize. Sun Jian might be brash that i give it to you without a problem, but if Wang Rui was a moron i won't mourn his death (even thogh the reason of thoses quarels are not known and i can be wrong). To me it's pretty akin to a Liu Bei that whipped the inspector that didn't give him a chance at being a mayor. It doesn't necesseraly mean that he is disloyal even though.... i get it, officially Wang Rui is a representative of the court then i understand your opinion. Nonetheless i would give him at minimum the benefit of the doubt.
The only one who tryed to restore The Crumbling han dynasty was cao cao. He was the only one to go rescue the stupid emperror from li jue and guo si, no liu bei run,neither yuan shao. liu bei was a double face politician, and he is very romantized by luo guanzhong romance of 3 kingdoms.
Cao Cao wanting to restore the Han when he ran to the Emperor is like thinking the beggar wanted to keep the floor clean when picking up food from the street
The Lu Bu argument is interesting. While he did not make efforts to take control of the Han government personally after the death of Dong Zhuo, he also made claims that he was intending to restore the Han government. Despite this he was willing to cooperate with Yuan Shu at the same time. Surely cooperating with an usurper is as treasonous an act as is possible. I had never considered Lu Bu as someone lacking ambition before, but this analysis is spot on. We would know more about his intentions if he acted on the many opportunities he disregarded.
Suppose one issue is that many of the Lius sort of can't usurp the Han as they are the Han surely? So you feel they wouldn't want to make themselves emperors of the Han? I am just not sure if they had the power they could claim that their usurpation of the throne was a true restoration surely? But yeh suppose given the evidence (or lack of) i am likely wrong lol
