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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1860 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 25, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Thanks! I had a look at the Substack, and while it's a decent glossary and dramatis personae, I was looking for something less dry. But it's useful context.

Sadly the gameplay of Dynasty Warriors is the opposite of what I'm into. I know Total War Three Kingdoms is solid, but due to severe mismanagement, it barely gets into the actual meat of the Three Kingdoms period.

I'll keep hunting, while I think there's a real chance of a Chinese Century, learning Chinese from scratch sounds rather daunting. I've translated entire Xianxia novels with AI with excellent results, so in theory I could do that if I had to.

Thanks! I had a look at the Substack, and while it's a decent glossary and dramatis personae, I was looking for something less dry. But it's useful context.

Just to clarify that you're looking for the novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義 sanguo yanyi), rather than the actual history, Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志 sanguozhi)?

I'm aware that the novel takes a few liberties and "romanticizes" historical events, but is still reasonably grounded. I'd honestly be fine with either, though if I had to choose it would be the Romance.

Much of the cultural relevance and memes (in the Dawkinsean sense) from the Three Kingdoms can be found from the Romance, so if getting a background on that is what you're after then the Romance is definitely a better fit, as the culmination of a thousand years of dramatised retellings of the period. You're not going to get things like Zhuge Liang borrowing ten thousand arrows from the actual history.

I'm not sure if there even is an English translation of the Records.

If you can’t read Chinese, there’s not much point in reading the actual history book. It is a great book, well written by Chinese history book standard, but it is a biography of a hundred different people, each presented in chronological order within their own lives. Without already knowing the broader historical timeline, it’s hard to connect them to one another. On top of that, it’s written in classical literary Chinese, which is hard even for native Chinese readers. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is written in vernacular Chinese and should be much more accessible, though I’m not sure how much that classical vs vernacular distinction survives in English translations.

Playing the games honestly sounds more reasonable. That said, with the games (and with romance of the three kingdom itself, since it’s a novel) it becomes hard to tell what’s actual history and what’s fictionalized. Not that it matters too much.

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