W3K: Which hero is associated with which Kingdom?/ Background stories for each hero

Gameplay Help & Tactics
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Hey,

For those that know better the legend of the three Kingdoms, can you write a few words about each hero with which Kingdom is associated and what they are known for?!

Thanks!

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Off the top of my head -

Shu- Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang
Wu - Sun Quan (any Sun should be Wu, as it’s the family name of the the ruler), Zhou Yu
Wei - Cao Cao, Xiaohou Dun

Lu Bu is basically a mercenary, I believe he spent time fighting for various kingdoms, maybe all.

[Edited to correct Sun Quan and Cao Cao 
 memory confuses Wu and Wei :upside_down_face:

Edit 2 changed info on Zhuge Liang]

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Thanks, @ProfessorPenguin , it’s great to form a clearer perspective of these heroes :slight_smile:

It’s a bit surprising because Sun Quan appeared on the pic when I was assigned to Wu Kingdom, so I assumed that he was related to the Wu Kingdom.

And I just learnt that Chinese have their surname mentioned first, like Hungarians :slight_smile:

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Guan Yu’nĂŒn yaƟadığı dönem Çin’in Han hanedanlığı’nın sonu ile Üç Krallık Döneminin baƟlarına denk gelir. Bu dönem iç çatÄ±ĆŸmaların, kargaƟanın hakim olduğu bir dönemdir. Guan Yu, kardeƟi Liu Bei ve kan kardeƟi Zhang Fei ile birlikte Wei ve Doğu Wu Hanedanlığına karĆŸÄ± savaƟmÄ±ĆŸtır. Daha sonra Liu Bei Shu Han hanedanlığının ilk imparatoru olmuƟtur. Guan Yu ise bir savaƟta Wu generali LĂŒ Meng tarafından esir alınmÄ±ĆŸ ve idam edilmiƟtir.

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I got Cao Cao and Sun Quan backwards!

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Hi there. I’m glad you created this topic. I’m not Chinese but I’m from an Asian country which historically belongs to the East Asian cultural sphere. War of the Three Kingdoms is a fascinating era in Chinese history from which many remarkable historical figures appeared. Officially the era started in year 220 when the Wei and Shu kingdom claimed their existence and ended in year 280 when the Jin (not counted among the 3 kingdoms) united the whole China. However the era is supposed to begin from around year 190 when various regional warlords began to fought each other to seize power from the weakened Han dynasty.

Most of the warlords (including Lu Bu) were defeated after that war. There were 3 remaining factions: the Cao clan (led by Cao Cao, later found the Wei kingdom), the Liu clan (led by Liu Bei, later found the Shu kingdom), and the Sun clan (led by Sun Quan, later found the Wu kingdom). Each kingdom controls a portion of Chinese land: Wei is the biggest, Shu and Wu are smaller and usually cooperates with each other to campaign against Wei. Later on, one wealthy aristocratic clan (the Sima clan, led by Sima Yi) began to rose in power in the Wei kingdom. They finally succeeded in seizing power from the Cao clan. After the Sima clan defeated and annexed the Shu kingdom, they overthrow the last Cao emperor and found the Jin dynasty. Finally, the Jin kingdom defeated the Wu kingdom and united all Chinese land under their rule.

Now I’ll try to give some infos about the new E&P heroes:

  • Lu Bu (5-star Purple) (not belong to any of the 3 kingdoms): one powerful warlord of the early war period. He is a strong fighter and is usually described as a “god of war”. However he is defeated and killed by Cao Cao.

  • Diaochan (5-star Purple) (not belong to any of the 3 kingdoms): unlike the other character, this girl is mostly a fictional character. She is considered one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China. She is a royal maid and cooperates with Lu Bu in a coup. Later she began a romance with Lu Bu.

  • Guan Yu (5-star Green) (Shu kingdom): one powerful military general under Liu Bei. Liu Bei - Guan Yu - Zhang Fei share (and later become famous for) a very loyal brotherly relationship. Later captured and killed by Wu kingdom.

  • Zhang Fei (5-star Yellow) (Shu kingdom): one powerful military general under Liu Bei.
    Later killed by his own subordinates during a campaign against Wu (to avenge Guan Yu’s death).

  • Xiahou Dun (4-star Blue) (Wei kingdom): one military general under Cao Cao. He is a cousin of Cao Cao and is greatly trusted by him.

  • Zhuge Liang (5-star Yellow) (Shu kingdom): one the most famous military advisor from the era. He helps Liu Bei (who at this time is just a small warlord) to defeat many bigger opponents and conquer their lands.

  • Zhou Yu (4-star Red) (Wu kingdom): the most famous military general from Wu. He played the decisive role in defeating a numerically superior Cao Cao force to protect the Sun clan. Indeed, for his role in history he should be a 5-star.

  • Sun Shangxiang (4-star Red) (Wu kingdom): Sun Quan’s sister and later married Liu Bei in a political marriage.

  • Wang Yuanji (4-star Yellow) (Sima clan): She is the wife of one of Sima Yi’s son, later she is made a queen of the Jin dynasty.

  • The 3-star Yao, Jing, and Li: I think they depict soldiers from the 3 kingdoms.

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Thank you very much, great insight!

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Bravo :clap: :clap: Thanks for the additional insights! Would give more than one like if I could!

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Regarding Lu Bu, his name should be more correctly rendered as LĂŒ Bu (with the umlaut diacritic) in the pinyin romanisation scheme, since LĂŒ is pronounced rather differently from Lu in standard Mandarin Chinese. China’s spelling standards ask for Lyu if the umlaut is not available (as was seen for Chinese athletes with the surname LĂŒ/Lyu in the recent Winter Olympics). Since Small Giant is able to put in diacritics for heroes such as Jean-François, Marie-ThĂ©rĂšse, CristĂłbal, and Dölgöön, I wonder why they did not bother to do so for LĂŒ Bu. A missed opportunity to showcase their cultural understanding. Urgh


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I think you should raise a separate topic in the forum and make a request for it. I suspect that it was more ignorace than intent. I would do it myself, but I think it should come from someone with first-hand knowledge of the issue

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Any chance you could explain the difference phonetically between Lyu (LĂŒ) in LĂŒ Bu and Liu from Liu Bei ?

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Wow your first post, and one of the best I have seen in these forums :+1:

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Also, while the 3-star soldiers’ names are generic, I wished they had chosen some other name for the red hero, since this overlaps with Li Xiu (similarly to Jack [Morlovia] and Jack O’Hare), which can cause some confusion in discussions.

As for Zhou Yu not being a 5-star, perhaps we can attribute it to artistic licence (urgh again). For example, I would expect Merlin (such a famous character! and a powerful and wise sage and enchanter) to be a 5-star hero. But no, he is just a 4-star hero in Small Giant’s mythos, and inferior to his students Morgan Le Fay and Lady of the Lake. I hope in Season 5, no powerful Egyptian god gets relegated to 4-star or even 3-star status


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In addition, I always want to call Frosty “Jack Frost” :upside_down_face:

I know in Dynasty Warriors they were up to nearly 100 playable characters at one point, with more “named enemies” appearing in battles. It would be easy to name them after lesser Warriors of the 3 kingdoms.

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I agree in theory, even Sir Lancelot I imagined him as a 5*
 But the stories that I’ve heard about Lady of the Lake don’t place her as one of Merlin’s students. She appears as a godess, fairy etc I always considered her more powerful than Merlin

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In Chinese pinyin, â€˜ĂŒâ€™ is a unique monophthong (pure single vowel), similar to French ‘u’ and German â€˜ĂŒâ€™ (all pronounced as a close front rounded vowel [y]), and when pronounced on its own, it is written as ‘yu’, like in Zhou Yu. (But from my own experience, many Chinese speakers seem to pronounce a consonant-like onset, so it may not be exactly a pure vowel in reality.)

Liu, on the other hand, has the rhyme -iu, which is pronounced like a normal [u] (as in English ‘oo’, French ‘ou’, German ‘u’) with a medial palatal glide, as [ju]. So, Liu is pronounced somewhat like lee-yoo, or even more correctly as lee-yoh-woo [ljoʊ] versus LĂŒ Bu’s simpler [ly]. The Cantonese version of LĂŒ is written as Lui and pronounced the same, just romanised in a different way and this may help audiate how it actually sounds like.

(Apologies for using the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is difficult to describe sounds not found in English. But this may be educational for folks wanting to learn more about Chinese culture.)

Edit: Apparently my angle brackets (used to indicate graphemes) do not render correctly, so the original text was hard to read, so I have used quotation marks instead.

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I think with the Lady of the Lake, there are many versions and origin stories, and some medieval literature depicts her as human and a student/lover of Merlin. I have no issue with her as a powerful 5-star hero.

But at the least, I would prefer Merlin to be a 5-star hero in the first place, given his place in Arthurian legend. This is one of the many instances I feel Small Giant’s world-building to be quite inconsistent, considering how much real mythology they draw on


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Perfect! I actually took a class on International Phonetics a year and a half ago, so your technical explanations are perfect. Just what I wanted :smile:

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It was Jiang Wei who switched from Wei to Shu. Zhuge Liang (Or The Sleeping Dragon or Kong Ming) joined the Kingdom of Shu after Liu Bei visited him 3 times and could even be said to have led the Shu Kingdom after Liu Bei passed away (According to The Romance of The Three Kingdoms Novel)

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Spot on. Not one thing wrong. Great post :+1: