Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast.

This is a supplemental episode.

Before I go on, I should warn you that this episode contains spoilers.

So if you don't know how the story turns out and you don't like spoilers,

then you should go and listen to episodes 25 and 26 before you listen to this one.

Go on, I'll be here when you come back.

All right, so in episode 26, we witnessed the end of Lvoubu.

He's the first really significant player in our narrative to die.

Dong Zhuo was an important figure, to be sure, but he hung around for just a few episodes.

Lvu, on the other hand, was introduced back in episode 4, and just now left the narrative. Given his importance, I think

it only right that we give him a proper send-off by taking a look at the real libu versus the fictional

one portrayed in the novel. And this is something that I want to do for other major players as well

once they exit stage left from the narrative.

Before we start, I should note that much of the historical information in this episode

and future supplemental episodes on other key figures are sourced to two texts,

the book of the later Han and records of the Three Kingdoms. The book of the later Han covers the history of the later Han, and records of the three kingdoms.

The book of the later Han covers the history of the Eastern Han dynasty from the year 6 AD to 189 AD.

The book was compiled during the 5th century,

so a good 300 years after the events it covers.

The compilation draws on a number of earlier sources,

most of which have not survived to us intact. Records of the Three Kingdoms covers a period of about

100 years, from 184 to 280, so it spans the end of the Eastern Han and the entire Three Kingdoms period.

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