There was once such a "preemptive answer", the title asked: The following characters who do not belong to the Three Kingdoms are: A, Cao Cao; B, Zhuge Liang; C, Jia Xu.
Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang were very famous, and relatively speaking, Jia Xu was not so well known.
Then, if you make a choice in the case of limited time to answer, many people will choose C.
But the correct answer should be A.
After all, the so-called Three Kingdoms refers to the three regimes of Eastern Wu established by Cao Pi's usurpation of Han, The Shu Han established by Liu Bei, and Emperor Sun Quan.
Obviously, Cao Pi was only called emperor after Cao Cao's death, so Cao Cao did not belong to the Three Kingdoms figures.
That is to say, if you want to strictly define the history of the Three Kingdoms, it should be from 220 years when Cao Pi usurped the Han dynasty as emperor, to 280 when Sima Yan destroyed Eastern Wu and unified China, the time before and after was just 60 years.
However, according to this division, not only was Cao Cao not a figure of the Three Kingdoms, but even Dong Zhuo, Lü Bu, Sun Jian, Sun Ce, Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu, Liu Biao, Liu Zhang, Ma Teng... Even Pang Tong, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and so on are not Three Kingdoms figures; in addition, the Battle of Guandu and the Battle of Chibi, which affect the trend of the world, are not part of the Three Kingdoms Incident, which is absolutely unacceptable to most people.
Therefore, the record time of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" of the Three Kingdoms is from the chaotic government of Dong Zhuo in the first year of the Han Shao Emperor Guangxi (189 AD) and ended in the first year of the Western Jin Dynasty (280 AD), with a total history of about 90 years.
The historical novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", which has a great influence on the history of the Three Kingdoms, even advanced the time to the beginning of the Yellow Turban Rebellion in the first year of the Han Ling Emperor Zhongping (184 AD), and finally the eastern Wu Sun Hao descended to jin in the first year of the Western Jin Dynasty (280 AD), with a total history of 97 years.
Needless to say, historians studying the Three Kingdoms must focus on the formation and process of the Three Kingdoms.
The time when the Eastern Han Dynasty lost its political entity began with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184, so from the division of the masses after 184 and the formation of the Three Kingdoms prototype, to the time before the Cao Wei Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, which should have belonged to the Eastern Han Dynasty, that is, from 184 to 220, its thirty-six years would be included in the Three Kingdoms period for discussion.
In this way, the most magnificent and wonderful chaotic era in ancient Chinese history appeared in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty and the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Especially in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it can be described as a changeable situation, stirring people's hearts, strategists like clouds, and stars like rain.
In addition to the book "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Luo Guanzhong also wrote "The Romance of the Five Dynasties of the Tang Dynasty"; "The Romance of the Five Dynasties of the Cruel Tang Dynasty" belongs to the last novel, but the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" can become one of the "Four Masterpieces of Classical China", why is the reason? Obviously, it lies in the uniqueness and excitement of the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era.
However, the fiction of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is too large, and the characters are seriously deified; the records of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms are too dull and cold, resulting in many readers not being able to distinguish the distance between the "False Three Kingdoms" and the "True Three Kingdoms", resulting in many misunderstandings.