[granada]

Lol.
In Water Margin, all of the outlaws eventually surrendered to the government;
And the Three Kingdoms ended up in the Great Unity.
Pls think of Robin Hood and his merrie men.....

[Zhang Fei]

[In Water Margin, all of the outlaws eventually surrendered to the government;
And the Three Kingdoms ended up in the Great Unity.]

---

And yet the characters depicted as heroes were rebels. It’s not for nothing that there’s apparently a Chinese saying (in the preface to a translation of the Water Margin) to the effect that the young shouldn’t read The Water Margin, and the old shouldn’t read The Three Kingdoms, since these accounts might give them ideas. Especially since the three dynasties (including the current Red dynasty) founded by peasant revolts have spanned fully 1/3 of the past 2200 years since Shih Huang-Ti founded the Chinese imperial state. And more than a handful of rebels came within striking distance of the throne. That’s not even counting the thousands of rebellious officials who held off the empire for years or decades.

[Zhang Fei]

[In Water Margin, all of the outlaws eventually surrendered to the government;
And the Three Kingdoms ended up in the Great Unity.]

---

Note also that sedition was punished with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations So any author (including the 14th century authors of 2 novels), even if he were heedless of the risk to himself and his kin, would have to consider the difficulty he’d have in reaching a wide audience if his work was considered seditious, and possession thereof a capital offense. So story lines were devised to skirt the edge without going over.