Who is the REAL Guan Yu? (revisited)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
- This video will revisit the life of Guan Yu and focus solely on the historical account with information taken from the Records of the Three Kingdoms.
Sources
Chen, Shou (3rd century). Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi)
de Crespigny, Rafe (2007). A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms 23-220 AD
Pei, Songzhi (5th century). Annotations to Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi zhu)
Sima, Guang (1084). Zizhi Tongjian
(Author unknown) (4th century BC). Yi Zhou Shu
Brunnert, H.S.; Hagelstrom, V.V. (2013). Present Day Political Organization of China
Dubs, Homer H. (1938). "Chapter IV, Appendix I, Standard Weights and Measures of Han Times". The History of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku. Volume 1.
Hulsewé, A.F.P. (1961). "Han measures". T'oung pao Archives. Vol. XLIX
Perkins, Dorothy (1999). Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture
Roberts, Moss (1991). Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel.
ter Haar, Barend J. (2017). Guan Yu: the religious afterlife of a failed hero.
You, Zi'an (2010). 敷化宇內：清代以來關帝善書及其信仰的傳播 (PDF). Journal of Chinese Studies No. 50 (in Chinese)
I was so surprised to find the historical accurate story between Guan Yu and Lady Du. It feels almost hilarious to see that Guan Yu would ask Cao Cao for a woman. It made me think how much further we pushed Guan Yu's image towards the immortalized and perfected one who he never was. Nevertheless I still like his appearances in DW games, his JP voice actor sounds exactly like how I imagine he would speak.
The god of war's weakness is pretty wei women lol
If you wanna follow ROTK, that did illustrate what Guan Yu did before he met Liu Bei.
Guan Yu was a strong farmhand and was about to be conscripted to fight but being a minor teen rebel at that time, he rejected it and when he was forced by the officer, he singlehandedly beat the officer to death with his hands and rocks to the point that he became a wanted fugitive so he went on the run till he chanced upon Liu Bei.
By then, he had established himself as a competent fighter and had exonerated himself for dealing with the Yellow Turbans with Liu Bei and Zhang Fei that his crimes against the officer was dropped soon after as he's still doing things that was initially tasked to him but just not directly to the Han court.
Also, there's some mistake in the video. Liu Bei did not get Xu province after the defeat of Lu Bu but already got it way before Lu Bu was even in Xuzhou (Xu Province).
Before Cao Cao's father died mysteriously in Xu, Liu Bei was already a minor officer under Tao Qian and his ties to Tao Qian was pretty solid. Liu Bei even managed to fraternize and soon married into the dignitary family of Mi who was the financial backer of Tao Qian which makes Liu Bei the sudden defacto secondary leader of Xuzhou.
Tao Qian himself had two sons, Tao Ying and Tao Shang but Tao Qian found them both to be incapable of holding the state thus he got advice from Mi Zhu that praised Liu Bei for his loyalty, caring nature, ability to fight and also being that he claims to be the uncle of the emperor, he could sedate the people and even rally them for support and defense against other warlord's attack which, Tao Qian did and soon decreed that if he died, the state would be given to Liu Bei for care.
When Cao Cao's father died, all hell broke loose and Cao Cao took that opportunity as a casus belli to swallow up the entire of Xuzhou on the pretext that his dad died in Tao Qian's land and he should be the one accountable for it since he guaranteed that Cao Cao's family would be safely escorted towards Cao Cao's then-homeground, Xuchang but it didn't happen so he started to invade Xuzhou.
Tao Qian called upon Tian Kai from Qingzhou who at that time was his ally and together with Tian Kai and Liu Bei's forces, they held their ground and halted Cao Cao which forced Cao Cao's forces to be bogged down and bled supplies thus eventually giving up on the attack and returned back to Yanzhou. However, Cao Cao would attack yet again just a year later which again failed because this time, Chen Gong, together with Zhang Miao and Lu Bu backstabbed Cao Cao and started a insurrection behind Cao Cao's back and forced Cao Cao to yet again return to Yanzhou to hold the ground against Lu Bu.
This is when Tao Qian collapsed from all the stress and died which promptly passed the helm to Liu Bei as he promised. Liu Bei took it and revitalized the area by even having an alliance with Kong Rong which did help Xuzhou prosper for abit and this went on for 2 years before Lu Bu stepped foot into Xuzhou after his disastrous defeat by Cao Cao at Juye and being pushed out by Cao Cao.
You missed the most important story when you're talking about Guan Yu leaving Cao Cao's service and that's the "Crossing 5 gates whilst slaying 6 generals".
Whilst in Cao Cao's service, Cao Cao admired Guan Yu alot and bestowed him with what you said like titles, concubines to pick and even a big mansion in Xuchang but most importantly, gold, a new silk robe and also, Lu Bu's infamous horse that can travel 1000li (About a thousand miles) without stopping or breaking a sweat, Red Hare.
Out of all the gifts, Guan Yu took nearly none of it but took Red Hare and the silk robe which he donned on the inside but wore his old one outside. Intrigued, Cao Cao asked him why and he replied "This torn garb was given by my elder brother (Liu Bei) and it's the only thing that's left of him that I have with me. I'm wearing it till the day I die so I can remember the gratitude I had for him when he stuck by me thick and thin and helped me when I was in trouble. I will never forget him and this will make me remember him". Cao Cao was touched and vouched to hold his promise of letting Guan Yu go when Guan Yu receives news of where Liu Bei or Zhang Fei was at.
At the Battle of Baima, right after he slewed Yan Liang, Guan Yu received news that Liu Bei was in Ye which signify that he was in Yuan Shao's territory so Guan Yu said nothing, wrote a note stating "I have found news of my brother, forgive me chancellor that now I am leaving. Thank you for your care, I hope you keep your promise and I will repay you someday", left it on his table, grabbed all his stuff and left Xuchang towards Yanzhou which was Yuan Shao's territory together with his retainer and Liu Bei's wife who was captured together with Guan Yu and placed under Guan Yu's care.
However, to move towards Yanzhou, Guan Yu's convoy had to pass thru 5 gates which requires passage passes but as he had left that quickly fearing that Cao Cao would deny his request like a conniving man they always thought of him, he just went anyways.
What he predicted was true as when he got to the gates, the gate officers kept giving him trouble thus he slewed them and went thru all 5 gates.
News of the slaying of the gates got to one of Cao Cao's top general, Xiahou Dun who had crossed blades with Guan Yu before and really wanted to slay him so he rushed to intercept Guan Yu which he did and even battled Guan Yu for a few hundred bouts before a messenger rushed in to halt the fight and flashed Guan Yu's pass to Xiahou Dun stating that Cao Cao had been busy still dealing with Yuan Shao that he had no time to hand the pass to Guan Yu beforehand. Reluctantly, Xiahou Dun had to let Guan Yu pass which, Guan Yu did and went towards Yanzhou to look for LIu Bei but Xiahou Dun was not happy and he rushed back to Xuzhou and complain to Cao Cao.
He questioned Cao Cao on letting Guan Yu go despite knowing that Guan Yu was effectively labelled as a traitor. Cao Cao instantly rebutted: "I made a promise to let him go when he found news of his brothers. Now he has found news of Liu Bei, I am simply honoring my promise. If I had stopped him and locked him her to forcefully serve me, that would make my image even worse than it is. I want a loyal man like that to serve me as he wants, not forcing people into servitude. Plus, 6 of my best officers were slayed by him and you've never even beat him everytime you've met and you've also not beat him this time so what makes you think you can stop him or anyone in my retinue can stop him now that we're locked horns with Yuan Shao still? Let him go if he wants. He's loyal and I respect that and a promise is a promise. End of".
Again, Xiahou Dun reluctantly relents but also agrees with Cao Cao and thus, Guan Yu managed to make way to Yanzhou before finding out that Liu Bei had left for Runan thus he rerouted back and eventually did find Zhang Fei along the way and then towards Liu Bei where the three brothers did meet again.
It is quite fascinating to see how Guan Yu could be a man with an honorable soul and skilled warrior... and simultaneously an arrogant and selfish jerk whose actions impeded his own army.
On the one hand, the man was greatly devoted to Liu Bei, by his side for ages upon ages AND possessed of such a loyalty that he would return to him despite the fact that his prospects under Cao Cao would no doubt be cushy and well-respected. Likewise, his skill on the battlefield was... decently commendable, his victories were not many but he was no doubt a skilled warrior who clashed with some of the best, so that's quite something.
...and yet, he's also the sort of man who:
* asked Cao Cao to gift him a widowed woman as a concubine after a battle that no doubt slew her family (in fairness, Cao Cao DID take the woman as a concubine, as he was known to do, but still wild to think Guan Yu would ask that (unless that was normal to do at the time...))
* belittled his allies in Wu despite the relative generosity shown to Shu in gifting them Jing (and if memory serves from what I've heard, Liu Bei even tried to deter Sun Quan from trying to conquer Yi before doing so himself) (Edit on 5/27: Liu Bei was gifted Nan; Sun Quan just acknowledged Liu Bei's rule over Jing after Liu Qi's passing made Liu Bei his successor)
* and atTACKING A WU STORAGE BASE TO RESUPPLY DESPITE BEING THEIR ALLIES CUZ HIS ALLIES WERE RUNNING LOW
Its crazy to imagine such a dichotomy of a man who could be so good to his friends and yet so brazenly act that way... and to imagine this is the same man who was DEIFIED, too...
Wu didn't gift Jing to Shu, you can't gift something that was never yours in the first place.
Guan Yu raided those supplies after Wu had already broken the alliance with Liu Bei once, and with Wu's second betrayal already underway, so...
@jmsm7499 Mild correction on my part there, Sun Quan gifted/lent them Nan Commandery instead. That said, he had also "recognized" Liu Bei's legitimacy in ruling Jing after Liu Qi died (as a reminder, Liu Qi was Liu Biao's older son, who Liu Bei was serving under at the time; Liu Qi's passing with no heirs resulted in Liu Bei taking command of his army), which people can debate over, but given that he has provided shelter to Liu Bei after he fled from Wei and also a location to operate from, he at least had some reason to make the claim he did.
And no, he raided a Wu base for supplies before Sun Quan allied with Cao Cao - the video does point it out at 19:24. Though even if this is wrong and Sun Quan had agreed to ally with Cao Cao against Guan Yu, Guan Yu would have had no idea of that, as he was caught completely unawares by Lu Meng taking a number of locations in Jing - which means he raided a Wu base while still under the belief they were allies, which'd still be fairly deplorable action.
@@PantheonFefnir He had some reason to make which claim? That Jing province was his? Haha, no. Sun Quan betrayed once, and Liu Bei already compromised by ceding 3 commanderies to Wu. Then Sun Quan decided that he should go for Jing again because of his failures at taking any territory from Wei, while Liu Bei was whooping Cao Cao in Hanzhong.
Guan Yu raided the base for supplies after the Wu plan to take Jing was already underway, according to Generals of the South by De Crespigny. Yes, Guan Yu raided a base while they were supposedly "allies", but considering Wu had already betrayed the alliance and attacked them before, as well as attempting to kidnap Liu Bei's heir, they had demonstrated that they were not trustworthy, hard to blame Guan Yu for a minor wrong when Wu had been complete assholes to them for a long time. It's funny you condemn Guan Yu for this while Wu was betraying the alliance (again) and invading Jing.
@@jmsm7499 i would appreciate you doing me a favor. I managed to come across access Generals of the South, so if you'd be so kind: might you inform me of where it is noted (page numbers, preferably) that Sun Quan betrayed Liu Bei first, where he attempted to kidnap Liu Shan, and where it says Guan Yu attacked Sun Quan's base Sun Quan had already moved to take Jing from Shu? I'm down to concede points if you could help me find those.
@@PantheonFefnir The kidnapping is in page 314: "There were obvious signs of difficulty as early as 211, when Liu Bei first went to Jing province. The Lady Sun, sister to Sun Quan and chief wife to Liu Bei, returned at that time to her brother's court, and she attempted to take Liu Bei's son and heir, Liu Shan, with her. She was escorted by a flotilla of ships from Sun Quan, but Liu Bei's commanders Zhao Yun and Zhang Fei intercepted the convoy. We know nothing of the details of the negotiations, which must have been delicate and tense, but the result was that the boy Liu Shan stayed behind while the Lady Sun continued her journey. The marriage, and the alliance at that level, were effectively ended."
First Wu betrayal page 315: "Early in 215, therefore, Sun Quan sent a formal note to Liu Bei, in the hands of his minister Zhuge Jin, elder brother of Zhuge Liang, asking that the commanderies of Jing province should be handed over to him. The request was put in terms of the territory being "returned" to Sun Quan, though it would seem that Liu Bei had taken possession of the southern territories in his own right after the victory at the Red Cliffs, and Nan commandery was the only one which could be said to have been
"loaned" by Sun Quan. Nan commandery, however, was a vital link in the communications between Jing province and Yi province through the Yangzi Gorges, and Jiangling, capital of the commandery, was the headquarters of Guan Yu. Liu Bei had no intention of giving up any of his possessions, but his reply was prevarication: he was making plans for a campaign in the north to conquer Liang province, but as soon as he had control of that region he would hand over all his holdings in Jing province. Sun Quan was quite
unimpressed, and remarked in disgust, "This is borrowing and not returning." He issued letters of appointment for officials in his service to take over Changsha, Lingling and Guiyang commanderies, and when Guan Yu, predictably, refused to allow these men entry, Sun Quan sent Lü Meng with twenty thousand men to press his claim."
Invasion was already underway before the supplies raid page 335: "The place is described as Xiangguan 湘關 "The Pass on the Xiang," but cannot be further identified. It was probably a small fortress by a crossing place of the Xiang River, between the territories of Sun Quan and Liu Bei and close to the junction of the Xiang with the Yangzi, south of Guan Yu's base at Gong'an and near presentday Yueyang. SGZ 54/Wu 9:1278, suggests this incident was the trigger for Sun Quan to move against Guan Yu, but it is clear that preparations had been made well before. The Xiangguan incident may have served as propaganda to justify the attack."
I always was fascinated about the romance of the three kingdoms and about the actual historical stuff about it, I always like to combine both fiction and historical accuracy together mixing them all together. Oh so I always like putting certain characters, death and birth dates at different moments. Like for Guan Yu I put his birthdate at 152 and is death date is still the same in 220 which means that he would be 68 years old at the time of his death in my version and also I also put that he did kill Hua Xiong and also because Sun Jian call upon Liu Bei as reinforcements just in case.
The Virgin Guan Yu vs the Chad Kan U
2 things: 1) Seems like eventhough Shu-han is often portrayed as the Protagonists in fiction, they have a consistent reputation of beating/executing underlings for minor offenses. 2) I never understood why Guan Yu is worshiped as a god of war in Taoism when he lost the vast majority of the battles he was in charge of, with his final one resulting in his death. Compared to other more successful Generals of his time like Zhang He, he does not have a very good win rate at all.
I blame the Qing for that one, forgot where I read the thread but the Original GoW is Yue Fei, but since Qing are of a foreign blood then didn’t really like Yue Fei
1)What underlings did they execute for minor offences?
2) First, the written records of Shu Han were the worse among the 3 kingdoms so the career overview of their officers is pretty incomplete compared to Wei officers, who even have records of minor victories against "yellow turban rebels" which were little more than crushing starving peasants. Liu Bei's forces were also in numerical inferiority most of the time. So win-rate ratio doesn't mean much. Crushing a few hundred peasants and crushing an army of tens of thousands of soldiers are both 1 win, but they're completely different in term of scale.
When Guan Yu served briefly under Cao Cao he killed one of Yuan Shao's generals and got a pretty high marquisate as a reward in 7 months. Notable generals like Zhang Liao or Xu Huang needed several years of service under Cao Cao to achieve similar distinction, while Guan Yu did it in 7 months. Practically all of the notable figures of the time, Lu Meng, Lu Su, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, Cheng Yu, Guo Jia... considered Guan Yu an extremely dangerous foe.
The fact that Guan Yu could invade northern Jing, crush the likes of Yu Jin and Pang De, and make Cao Cao shit himself so hard he considered moving the capital, with only 3 commanderies under his rule, is nothing short of phenomenal.
Taishi Ci was successful in every military endeavor he took.
Probably because of his dueling ability
Do you know the game ryse son of Rome. I would love to see a game like that but for Guan Yu.
Who is the God of War?
Jar Jar Binks.
Tho this isn’t relevant to the video
Do you know why they made Zheng He so feminine in the Dynasty Warrior games?
It's koei. They prob just wanted to make the characters all have a certain personality. All their characters all follow some type of quirk / personality
Wei Yan had the worst characterization and Design out of all Characters
From what I've heard, it's a name-based pun of sorts.
According to the Koei wiki, his name is Japanese is "Chō Kō" - and if you've any familiarity with Naruto, you might recognize the whole "Ino-Shika-Chō" thing, which apparently is related to a Hanafuda play, using Boar, Deer, and Butterfly (respective to Ino, Shika, and Chō).
So as you probably noticed, Chō is Butterfly - and Zhang He has a very big butterfly theme, so that's prolly the whole deal. Mind, this is a mostly apocryphal story, so I don't have any definitive proof, but I think this probably the likely answer.
@@Suleiman2000 nah
@enigma9971 Wei Yan was the definition of an alpha male in both novel and History
now they made him into a Primitive barbarian
Greece had Ares
Scandinavia had Thor
China had Guan Yu/Gong
Scandinavia had Tyr as their god of war not Thor.
@@stanfar4934 oh right my bad