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If I have to pick a favourite piece of classic literature ("classic" being here defined as something at least a hundred years old), I'd have to pick the Chinese historical novel Romance Of The Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong. This epic historical novel tells the story of the fall of the four hundred year dynasty of the Han, with China being divided into three parts before finally being reunited by the Jin Dynasty. Drawing on a variety of sources (including history, folk tales, and traditional opera), RotTK is at times heart breaking, hilarious, action packed, and clever.

And when I say "epic", I mean it in every sense of the word. Its scope is 120 years, its size (in my translation, at least) is some 1300 pages, and its cast of characters is over 1000 named (mostly historical). Battles are huge, with brave generals carrying out complex tactics at the behest of far seeing strategists. Duels are common, a showcase of the mighty warriors that each side has enlisted.

As can be expected of such a pivotal work, it has received numerous adaptations. The most popular in the west is probably the video game series Dynasty Warriors. But it has been made into a number of other video games, a couple of recent movies, several TV series (both live action and animated), and quite a few manga and manhua. The one that stands heads above the rest in that last category is Chan Mou's Ravages of Time, which manages to take everything I like about the novel and turns it up to eleven.

Which finally gets to the point of this post. So let's set the Wayback Machine to 190 AD. The place is Luo Yang, the capital of the Later Han. And Dong Zhuo, having taken over the Imperial court by force, is going to give his young puppet Emperor a lesson in leadership.


Remember, reads right to left.



I'm sure you've guessed what's going to happen to the people lying like that. In case you haven't, the emperor's chariot, bearing the boy Emperor Liu Xie (aka Xian) and Dong Zhuo and pulled by a number of attendants, are going to drive over them. Did I mention that the wheels of the chariot have been spiked for this occasion? It's an incredibly ghastly thing to do, and as you can imagine the young emperor isn't taking it too well:



Dong Zhuo enters into a rant about how the entire court has grown corrupt. The corruption increased taxation, causing the peasantry to be forced into banditry or to support evil cults. Finally, he lays the blame:



As Dong Zhuo, continues his rant, a change comes over the Emperor. He begins to see them as pigs, to become sickened by them more than the actions of the chariot. He rages against them, declaring a need for revolution. And finally, he declares his hatred of Dong Zhuo. Why?









And that establishes the main bad guy for the first part of the story, Dong Zhuo. It's amazing the change they've managed to give the guy. The Dong Zhuo of the novel was a pompous ass. This guy, though, oozes dark charisma. You can actually see someone following him, for all of his butchery.

Of course, you could argue that such a drastic change doesn't even make him the same character, but there's still something fundamentally right about him. He's still a cruel butcher, only instead of being a blowhard he now has some magnetism. Plus there's also his respect for Liu Xie, which is touched on briefly in the book and then forgotten. In this manhua, the two have a much closer relationship. It fundamentally alters Liu Xie into someone a bit more willing to do whatever is necessary, and makes the reader familiar with the traditional story wonder how it will affect his future relationship with Cao Cao (more on that guy later).

Anyway, that's an introduction of the primary antagonist of the first bit of Ravages of Time. Up next, I'll take a look at how they altered the Three Brothers. Also, if anyone has a favourite Three Kingdoms character or scene, I'd be happy to post bits if/when that character or scene shows up. Take note: despite being over 300 chapters so far, the manhua has yet to reach the raid on the Wuchao granaries. So some popular characters haven't shown up yet.

Also, this manhua hasn't received an official English translation yet, probably due to the fact that there are fewer people familiar with RotTK in the west. So you're going to have to track down something unofficial, unless you can read Chinese. Sorry about that.