Ollie Randall, writing and cartoons
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a bit of a slog for the final thirty chapters. The Three Kingdoms, locked in a stalemate, have replaced the dynamic rises and falls of earlier power bases. The age of romance and heroic deeds is passing, and most of the interesting heroes and villains are dead (sorry, Jiang…
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a historical epic, but there are also strong elements of tragedy. As I have tried to demonstrate in my Three Kingdoms chapter summary, most leaders’ failures in the novel can be traced directly to clear flaws: arrogance, excessive cruelty, recklessness, naivete. This is not prescriptive – luck has…