Summary: We bid farewell to the Lord of the Beautiful Beard and talk about that time when Cao Cao stole the woman Guan Yu was going to steal from someone else.<br> <a href="http://www.3kingdomspodcast.com/2016/12/14/supplemental-episode-009-guan-yu-fact-and-fiction/#transcript">Transcript</a><br> <br> A ceramic statue of Guan Yu in a museum in Foshan, China.<br> <br> <a id="transcript"></a>Transcript<br> <a href="http://www.3kingdomspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3kingdomssupplemental009GuanYuFactandFiction.pdf">PDF version</a><br> Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is a supplemental episode.<br> In this episode, we’re going to bid farewell to one of the novel’s major characters as we close the book on Guan Yu, who lost his territory and his head in episode 97. As I have done in the past when a major character exits the narrative, I’m going to cover some of the similarities and differences between Guan Yu the fictional character and Guan Yu the historical figure. This is no easy task, since so much of his real life has receded into the background, overshadowed by the fictionalized version. There’s a lot to unwind here, so let’s just start from the beginning.<br> And right at the beginning is where we have our first major discrepancy between history and fiction. So you know all that talk about the oath of brotherhood in the peach orchard between Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei? Well, there’s nothing in the historical records that indicates this oath actually happened. Now, according to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the historical text on which the novel is based, the three of them were close like brothers. For instance, in episode 2, the novel talked about how the three of them slept in the same bed, and when Liu Bei was sitting in public, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei would stand next to him all day long. All of that came straight from the Records of the Three Kingdoms. But there is no mention in the historical records about the three of them actually pledging an oath to be brothers. But you know, it’s a small leap from “like brothers” to “actually brothers” to being the benchmark by which all fraternal bonds are measured.<br> Moving on, let’s go to one of the legendary incidents in the novel where Guan Yu first made his name. In episode 7, Liu Bei and company were part of a massive campaign by a coalition of warlords against the villainous prime minister Dong Zhuo. One of Dong Zhuo’s generals, Hua (4) Xiong (2), was proving to be quite a handful for the coalition forces. That is, until Guan Yu went out and took care of him. As the story went, they poured Guan Yu a cup of wine before he went out to fight Hua (4) Xiong (2), but he told them to just hold on to it and that he’d be right back. Then, moments later, he returned with Hua Xiong’s head in tow, and it took so little time that the cup of wine was still warm.<br> If this sounded too good to be true, that’s because it is. In fact, Guan Yu wasn’t even the one who killed Hua Xiong. That honor was left to the forces led by Sun Jian (1), the guy who eventually started the Sun family’s empire in the Southlands. According to the historical records, Sun Jian lost a fight against Dong Zhuo, but then he rallied his troops and pulled victory from the jaws of defeat, killing Hua Xiong in the process. There wasn’t even any mention of Guan Yu being on the scene.<br> One guy that Guan Yu did kill, both in the novel and in real life, was Yan Liang, who was the warlord Yuan Shao’s top general. This happened during that brief time when Guan Yu was in Cao Cao’s service. According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao sent Guan Yu and the general Zhang Liao to lift the siege that Yan Liang was leading on one of Cao Cao’s cities. Guan Yu saw Yan Liang’s canopy from a distance, so he rode through a sea of enemy soldiers and cut down Yan Liang and brought his head back, thus lifting the siege. That prompted Cao Cao to give him the title of ...
