End of Han, the world was divided into three

The division of the late Han into rival powers gives the novel its central political structure: as the imperial order collapses, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, and Liu Bei establish competing bases of rule, each with a different claim to authority. Their emergence makes the Three Kingdoms more than three territories carved from a disintegrating empire. It becomes a contest between military control, local support, and the asserted duty to restore the Han, set against the recurring pattern of dynasties rising from disorder and falling back into it.

From imperial breakdown to division

The narrative places the division within a long cycle of unification and collapse. Earlier dynasties and kingdoms have fought until one power reunites the realm; the Han itself was restored after an earlier period of fragmentation. Under Emperor Xian, however, the empire again breaks apart. The account traces the crisis to imperial weakness and court faction: Emperor Huan favored eunuchs over capable ministers, Emperor Ling failed to support a palace effort against them, and the Ten Imperial Attendants came to dominate the court. Rebellion spread beyond the palace as the authority of the center weakened.

The court’s loss of practical power is made concrete by the return to Luoyang. Its palaces have been burned, its streets overgrown, and famine has left the few hundred remaining families without enough food. People survive on bark and roots, while some die beside the ruins of their homes. The emperor’s presence cannot restore either the city or the state’s ability to protect its people. The ruined capital makes visible the distance between imperial title and effective rule.

Three competing bases of power

The novel identifies Cao Cao, Sun Quan, and Liu Bei as the three leaders who emerge from the breakdown, each founding a dynasty and carving out a kingdom from the weakened Han empire. Their positions differ in the counsel given to Liu Bei by Kong Ming. In the north, Cao Cao commands a vast army, has overcome the stronger Yuan Shao through cunning, and controls the emperor; his possession of the Son of Heaven also draws the allegiance of nobles. Kong Ming therefore judges him too powerful for Liu Bei to oppose directly. Sun Quan, by contrast, holds the south through a family established there for three generations and enjoys the support of its people, making him a potential ally rather than an immediate enemy.

Liu Bei’s route to power is presented as both strategic and ideological. Kong Ming directs his attention to Jingzhou as the place where the future will be decided, and describes its eventual possession as aligned with Heaven’s will. Later, when Liu Bei’s commanders urge him to become emperor, Kong Ming argues that his benevolent rule and restoration of peace have made him an appropriate claimant. Liu Bei resists, fearing that taking the throne would make him appear a rebel; the disagreement exposes the central tension of his project, which seeks to oppose usurpation without seeming to imitate it.

Legitimacy and the changing imperial title

The contest over the Han is fought through claims as well as armies. Cao Cao’s power becomes increasingly dynastic when, in the middle of 216, he is enthroned as king of Wei. He adopts royal authority, has heralds clear the way as though he were emperor, and builds a grand palace at Yejun. The narrative identifies these actions as part of his design to establish a new dynasty. The Han emperor remains in place, but the growing authority around Cao Cao turns the court into an instrument of a rival political order.

Liu Bei’s accession as king of Hanzhong answers this development with a different argument. In his letter to the emperor, he links the crisis of the imperial family back to Dong Zhuo and presents his own campaigns as efforts to defend the throne. He recalls the failed conspiracy with Dong Cheng and claims that Cao Cao’s power has left the emperor exposed to further abuses. By accepting the title, Liu Bei represents himself not as abandoning the Han but as taking responsibility as a distant member of its ruling family. The title thus serves simultaneously as a political step and as a justification framed in terms of family duty and imperial continuity.

Abdication, succession, and unresolved division

The Wei claim becomes formal when Emperor Xian’s abdication announcement declares that the Han era has ended and that fortune has passed to the Cao family. The announcement invokes the ancient precedent of Yao’s abdication, presenting the transfer as a public act of legitimate succession rather than seizure. Cao Pi is advised by Sima Yi to refuse at first, then accepts the throne at the Altar of Abdication, where Emperor Xian hands over the jade seal. The former emperor is demoted to governor of Shanyang and ordered to leave. The ceremony establishes Wei’s imperial claim, but it does not settle the competing claim made in Liu Bei’s name.

In Chengdu, news of the Wei dynasty and rumors about Emperor Xian’s fate distress Liu Bei. Kong Ming proposes that Liu Bei be crowned emperor of Han, arguing that Cao Pi has taken the throne and that Liu Bei, as a descendant of the Han founder, has a duty to continue the lineage. Liu Bei initially condemns the proposal as disloyal and rebellious. This response preserves the moral difficulty at the heart of the division: rival powers can describe their actions as necessary service to the realm, while the same actions appear to their opponents as usurpation.

A political order built by conquest and accommodation

The struggle also concerns how territory is governed after it has been won. Following Liu Bei’s capture of Shu, he forbids retaliation against opponents including Huang Quan and Liu Ba; their opposition notwithstanding, they surrender, moved by his restraint. He declines to redistribute the conquered land to reward his followers after Zhao Zilong warns that the people have already suffered enough and that generosity can secure future support. Laws are revised, corrupt or excessively harsh local governors are checked, and the territory is settled. In this account, the effort to rule benevolently is not separate from the effort to establish a durable state: care for the population becomes a source of political allegiance.

The same problem of combining force with recognition appears in the southern campaign. After the rebellion is quelled, Meng Huo rallies the valley chieftains, each bringing about fifty thousand men to resist the Shu invasion. Following his repeated defeats and final submission, Kong Ming appoints him ruler over the lands conquered by Shu. The Man people celebrate the settlement. The episode presents political division as an ongoing process of incorporation as well as separation: military victory can be followed by local rule, and the authority of the expanding kingdom depends on more than defeating its opponents. Together, these contests leave the empire divided among rival dynastic claims, while keeping the possibility and the cost of reunification in view.