Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast.

This is a supplemental episode.

In this episode, we are delving into the life of the real Sun Quan, the long-time ruler of the Southlands. In the novel,

Sun Quan took over the rings of his family's enterprise at the age of 18, and he kept the

Southlands safe for the next 52 years of his life until his death at the age of 70. He was painted

as a generally wise, if sometimes quick to anger,

ruler. Let's see if the real history bears this out. Sun Quan was born in the year 182, a couple

years before the outbreak of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which kicked off our novel. Now, according to the author of the historical

text, the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, the Sun family came from humble backgrounds. But there's

a legend that they were actually descendants of Sun Zi, he who wrote the now famous text,

the art of war. But there is no proof of that, and it sounds like the kind of embellishment one might be tempted

to go back and tack on to one's family history after one had become the ruler of his own kingdom.

While Sun Quan's more distant family roots may be ordinary, his more immediate connections definitely made names

for themselves. His father, Sun Jian, made his name in helping to put down the Yellow Turban

rebellion and then became a prominent player in the early period of the novel. He was one of the

18 warlords who joined forces to take on the tyrannical prime minister Dong Zhuo.

That coalition quickly dissolved, and Sun Jian went home to the Southlands to begin building his empire.

But he was killed in the year 191 while waging war against Liu Biao, the imperial protector of Jing province.

Four years after Sun Jian's death, his eldest son, Sun Tze, began his grand enterprise of

carving out an empire in the Southlands. Sun Quan was only about 13 years old at this point,

but he accompanied his brother on campaign and was said

to have been one of his advisors. In fact, Sun Tze was so impressed by his younger brother

...