We delve into the life and career of the real Liu Bei to see if he is really as virtuous as the novel made him out to be (spoiler alert: No one can be as virtuous as the novel made Liu Bei out to be).

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Painting at the Summer Palace of Liu Bei declaring himself king. (Source: Wikipedia)

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Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is a supplemental episode.

Alright, so this is another big one, as we bid farewell to the novel’s main protagonist, Liu Bei. In the novel, he is portrayed as the ideal Confucian ruler, extolled for his virtue, compassion, kindness, and honor, as well as his eagerness for seeking out men of talent. How much of that is actually true? Well, we’ll see. But bear in mind that even the source material we have about Liu Bei should be considered heavily biased, since the main historical source we have, the Records of the Three Kingdoms, was written by a guy who had served in the court of the kingdom that Liu Bei founded, which no doubt colored his view of the man.

Given Liu Bei’s eventual status as the emperor of a kingdom, there were, unsurprisingly, very extensive records about his life and career, and what’s laid out in the novel In terms of the whens, wheres, and whats of Liu Bei’s life pretty much corresponds with real-life events. Because of that, I’m not going to do a straight rehash of his life since that alone would take two full episodes. Seriously, I had to rewrite this episode three times to make it a manageable length, which is why it’s being released a month later than I anticipated. So instead, I’m going to pick and choose from the notable stories about Liu Bei from the novel and talk about which ones were real and which ones were pure fiction. And then I’m going to conclude by taking a look into the novel’s general portrayal of the man compared to his real-life self.

Let’s start with his roots. According to the historical records, Liu Bei was indeed a descendant of an emperor, specifically, the sixth emperor of the Western Han Dynasty. That emperor, it should be noted, died about 300 years before Liu Bei was born. So in the novel, when you hear people tracing Liu Bei’s lineage back to an emperor, just remember that Liu Bei was so many steps removed from the main imperial line that the sitting emperor probably would ignore his request to connect on LinkedIn. There is also some disagreement about exactly WHICH imperial line Liu Bei belonged to, but in any case, by Liu Bei’s time, his twig on the family tree was looking pretty sorry. Just like in the novel, Liu Bei’s family was broke and he was indeed a maker and peddler of straw-woven shoes and mats. This background, of course, gave his future enemies something to hold over his head whenever they needed a good insult on the battlefield.

By the way, in the city of Chengdu, the capital of Liu Bei’s kingdom, he is apparently worshipped as the patron saint of shoemakers. I know, that sounds just like the line from the movie Spinal Tap about there being a real Saint Hubbins who was the patron saint of quality footwear, but it’s apparently at least somewhat true. I found an article from 2005 that described a giant ceremony in Chengdu to offer sacrifices to Liu Bei as, quote, the god of shoes. Now, how much of that was real worship and how much was just an attempt to make a quick buck off Liu Bei’s name? Your guess is as good as mine, though this being China,