The Three Kingdoms Across Media: Characters in History, Fiction, and Video Games

How does a historical general become a god? How does an exemplary emperor turn into an evil villain? Is a warrior in a novel the same as a figure made of pixels in a video game? This course investigates the central element to animate the famous Chinese tale Romance of the Three Kingdoms: its heroes. We explore these characters in terms of political ideology, gender norms, and religious needs. We compare how a character's physical attributes, personality, and life stories change across media, from storyteller tale, to novel, to video game. By doing so we ask how notions of individuality and identity change across times and cultures.