Quote Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Cactuar View Post
Thats not really what happened, thats just a novel. In real life, Sun Jian, and later Sun Quan (who was only ten when all this stuff happened) Were real greedy dicks who just wished for power. Lie Bei wished for peace but had no way to actually implementit. Cao Cao was a righteous man who knew how to attain peace and was going to step down from the throne after doing so. Sima Yi is just a prick.
That's also pretty debatable. The argument can be made that Sun family rightfully claimed hegemony in the south. Sun Quan was made King of Wu by Cao Cao (via a petition to the emperor he controlled) and it could be argued that he was in fact being loyal to the Han in accepting it. By the same token, since Sun Quan was the last of the three major powerbrokers to declare himself Emperor, you could say he was a loyal retainer to the Han court for the longest time.

The whole story of Liu Bei is totally exaggerated anyway. The novels and the generations of folk tales have all painted him to be a ultimate virtuous leader, when realistically speaking, Cao Cao had pretty much sealed the deal by beating Yuan Shao. From that point on, he controlled the Emperor through the newly revived role of Prime Minister, he had the largest army and the controlled the part of Central China that at the time was recognised as the centre of the empire - the northern plains. Chi Bi, his own untimely death and the Simi family's overthrowing of the Cao clan were the only real setbacks in unification (pretty major ones, I'd admit. 60 years worth of setback). If he'd won at Chi Bi, the story would've ended right there.

I agree with you on the fact that Cao Cao probably wasn't the evil douche the novel makes him out to be. He actually never ascended the imperial throne. It was Cao Pi who did the actual overthrowing. It's unknown as to whether Cao Cao ever would have established himself as Emperor had he lived longer. It's unfortunate for him that his name is linked in with this concept of injustice and evil, because it was all due to him that the instable times of the Yellow Turbans, Dong Zhuo, Li Jue and Guo Si were ended.