Sanguo Zhi
三國志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms)
The chaotic collapse of Han authority into three warring successor states, Wei, Shu, and Wu, is best understood as three parallel, internally coherent political histories rather than as one continuous narrative, since each state's claim to legitimacy has to be assessed largely on its own terms.
- three parallel sectional histories of Wei, Shu, and Wu
- written by a former official of the defeated Shu Han
- spare style later expanded by Pei Songzhi's commentary
- primary source for the later Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The official history of the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220-280), covering the collapse of Han authority into the rival states of Wei, Shu Han, and Wu, compiled by Chen Shou, a former official of the defeated Shu Han who had served afterward under the Jin dynasty that reunified China. Organized, unusually, into three largely separate sections rather than a single interwoven annals-biography structure, reflecting the genuinely divided sovereignty of the period, it is written in a notably spare, restrained style compared to earlier histories, later supplemented with extensive additional material by the 5th century commentator Pei Songzhi. It became the primary historical source underlying the much later popular novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
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