I always loved Jiang Wei ever since i first played him in Dynasty Warriors 4, his weapon and fighting style was always the most fun for me. Then i learned his actual story and found him a very intriguing character.
Jiang Wei has been my favourite character after learning of him through the arcade game 三国志大战. The later period characters don't get talked about as much so I'm looking forward to his lore as well as also your concluding opinion of him. :)
Jiang Wei is a fascinating personage. That chart listing at the start already assures me that this will be an even-handed look at someone who is often quite maligned. If I'm not mistaken, which I might be, 约 means something like "joined together" or "treaty/covenant". But maybe it had a different meaning back then (or maybe I'm completely wrong in this case.)
I think Jiang Wei is certainly a tragic figure, but I also believe his maligned reputation is quite well deserved. Whatever his intentions, his actions were ultimately selfish, and self-destructive. He accomplished little but massive loss of life in pointless and futile conflict.
Not only was Jiang Wei abandoned by his supervisor the side he was working for also imprisoned his family, so I guess I'm not surprised that he would whole-heartedly join Shu. Was he never reunited with any of his relatives?
I learned a lot from this video, until then I had the idea that Jiang Wei, like many of the officials in that region, were loyal to the Wei dynasty (given how much they suffered with the Han dynasty and how Cao Cao "saved" them from Ma Chao ) and that he had betrayed Wei to join Shu-Han because he had no choice. But your explanation makes it clear that the gentry clans in that area were still loyal to the Han dynasty (you exemplified with the several cities that surrendered to Zhuge Liang without a fight), so in reality, Jiang Wei was kind of "going back to his roots" by join the Shu, as their clan has always been loyal to the Han dynasty.
Over 300. Maybe see ya tomorrow? 😉 Quality content as always and really indepth as well. Plenty of content creators that do surface level are great and all but I'm excited to learn about everything in the era (and others). I like Three Kings (content creator) "Who is___?" series as well for nuggets on things too.. Like you present two sources and I didn't know about one, citing both, giving your opinion on which might be true and why...I'm going along too and I get to look at it and decide as well (I agree with the records as well). Jiang Wei was always a no go fav for me as a teenager because betraying your country seemed like betraying your brothers in arms, family, friends, ect. As I became an adult and reading his situation, I've become to actually emphasize with him and I respect him.
Reading RotTK is pretty hilarious because even with Luo Guanzhong's massive pro-Han bias in his text, Jiang Wei comes off like a massively incompetent fool, who was simply attempting to do things far outside the realms of his competence.
What if Wei Yan was still alive, what advice would he give to Jiang Wei? What I don't like is how the TV show lied to us. For instance, Jiang Wei didn't reunited with his mother. Here is how he respond to his mother. "Jiang Wei's biography in the Sanguozhi recorded that he lost contact with his mother after defecting to Shu, the Zaji recorded that after he later received a letter from his mother asking him to return home. He wrote a reply as follows: "One mu of land is nothing compared to a hundred qing of fertile farmland. When one's ambition lies far away, he will not want to return home."
5-4-2 doesn't seem like a bad record at all considering how much shit Jiang Wei tends to get. How would you have categorized Zhuge Liang's campaigns. I'm guessing: 1st - Loss 2nd - Loss (Draw?) 3rd - Win (Cao Zhen's invasion - Win) 4th - Draw (Win?) 5th - Draw
This talented outsider's gonna have a debatable legacy! We gotta dive into there soon! Also, how does the writer Fu Xuan, the son of Fu Gan and thus grandson of Fu Xie, surmise that Jiang Wei had a personal private militia in Tianshui around before Zhuge Liang's 1st Expedition?
Calling them campaigns at all always seemed a bit generous. At that point, with Shu-Han's diminished strength and critical lack of manpower or new talent, they were little more than glorified raids that only resulted in loss of life and resources that could no longer be replaced.
I am in the camp that these attacks were never going to do much but at the same time, I don’t think just doing nothing would be the better option. There is never going to be a peaceful co-existence between the two kingdoms. And Shu Han is one fourth the population and probably one sixth to one seventh the landmass. Before some of his final expeditions when Wei really started to ramp up their forces in the west in preparation for the big invasion, Jiang Wei traded up in his attacks and lost less than Wei. It was always going to be an overwhelming defeat in this elephant vs the ants battle. The ants trying to nimble bits off the elephants is not the reason why the ants lost. The argument that if Shu Han invested these ten thousand troops into just farming would have made a dent into the difference between the two kingdom is laughable as in a time when manpower was proportional to output, Wei’s lead over Shu Han was constantly growing and by having this probing force, you are actually forcing Wei to commit far more resources than Shu has on the western front. Basically for every Shu Han citizen out on northern expeditions with Jiang Wei, multiple Wei citizens would also be drafted to be stationed out west and more supplies would have to flow from the interiors of Wei to the west to keep their defenses sharp for the chance of an attack from Jiang Wei.
@@SeriousTrivia To be clear, I don't think there was any alternative outcome where any of these three states endured either. A century of warfare after the Han collapse left central China exhausted. Even the Jin unification came to nothing when the northern tribes and peoples who had been bled as mercenaries in these wars simply migrated south and found China had been left hollow. Basically, they were all living in the clock, but they didn't know they were already out of time.
Ma Zun’s loyalty is questionable. His behavior was out of line for an administrator and acted entirely out of self preservation by running to the safety of Shangbang. If he was a dutiful and loyal administrator, he should have returned to Ji and tried to defend it with his life. His mistrust of the others was just a reflection of his own paranoia while Jiang Wei and those abandoned by him really had no say in the matter. We just know their names because they went on to do something after joining Shu Han. Pretty sure things like this happened all the time in history where an unit commander might abandon his men in a bad position for one reason or another which ends with his men either killed or captured by the enemy forces. You can’t really blame those who were just simply left behind.
the current plan for this channel is to finish Three Kingdoms history. Then I plan to start a new channel that is just history related videos and cover Chinese history from the beginning. Let's Talk Lore started as sort of a historical companion to my Total War Three Kingdoms videos and I prefer to keep this channel more gaming related so I will finish the Three Kingdoms history until Sima Yan creates Jin and wipes out Wu to unite. But after that everything history related will move to the new channel which I will announce once it is ready later this year.
God Tier: Jiang Jieshi Northern Campaigns High Tier: Liu Yu Northern Campaigns Mid Tier: Huan Wen Northern Campaigns Low Tier: Zhuge Liang Northern Campaigns Meme Tier: Jiang Wei Northern Campaigns Ultra Meme Tier: Wang Zhaoyuan saying he could retake the North as easily as waving the palm of his hand. I'm sure someone will point out all their circumstances were slightly different and it's not a worthwhile basis of comparison. Yeah yeah, whatever. Tier lists aren't exactly a serious tool of historical analysis anyways. Not a big fan of Jiang Wei.
@@SeriousTrivia I'm actually not the biggest fan of Jiang Jieshi. In fact I don't like him at all. But when you look at the results of his Northern Expedition, the original one, as compared to the others I listed, and compare to the others, look at what he was able to accomplish. He basically swept away all the warlords of the North and re-unified China in just a few years. In my view, the problem is that for various reasons his government was not fully able to consolidate control, and the warlords retained enough power in the aftermath of reunification to launch several more destabilizing bids to oppose reunification. Now compare to all the others, starting at the bottom. Jiang Wei's campaigns were disastrous, particularly the Battle of Duan Gu, which led to sizable casualties. Jiang Wei sometimes would win a victory, but then go too far, described as "drawing legs on a snake," push his luck, and then snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Does anybody really think he deserves a rank above any of the others? I don't think so. He had gall, I'll give him that much (the size of a bushel, which is impossible according to Sima Guang). Zhuge Liang, although I ranked low, I have a high opinion of him. But ultimately, he seized a few commanderies and that's it. He didn't get Chang'an let alone Luoyang. I consider his campaigns to be basically an overall modest success. He deserves some fault for some of the failures, especially the first Northern Campaign where you can point to numerous significant military mistakes, such as appointing Ma Su to lead the vanguard and failing to alacritiously reinforce the vanguard on a personal level (the defeat cannot entirely be blamed on Ma Su, and ultimately as the CiC, even if it could be, Zhuge Liang was partly at fault for making his appointment). Huan Wen: Takes much of the Northwest, and even gets as far as Chang'an and Luoyang. Ultimately loses, but he got farther than Zhuge IMO. Hard to really deny that. You could make an argument his defeats were worse, but I'd still rank him higher since he got much closer to the end goal. Liu Yu: Retakes much of the North. Although it's eventually lost, in my opinion the victories are more impressive than Huan Wen's and the defeats are more slender. Jiang Jieshi: However fractious, he literally reunifies China with his, however ephemerally. I guess the Ming should be somewhere in there, and they'd be gigachad tier above Jiang Jieshi. To steelman your argument, though, I've made the argument before that Wei's campaigns against the Xianbei were in some ways more successful than those of Han's for similar reasons you're making as to why Jiang Jieshi should be lower. Essentially my argument was that although Han had more overwhelming victories, their defeats against the Xianbei were REALLY bad, especially versus Tanshihuai's, whereas Wei's defeats were seemingly not as devastating, even though several frontier regions were raided. In a similar regard, although Jiang Jieshi had high "highs," he lost everything in the end except for an island, so his lows were worse than, say, Zhuge Liang.
by the way, always been interested i chinese name for people kingdoms and all, such as when Xu You mocks Xu Chu for being ignorant and not knowing the origin of names, anyone knows where there s intel on that ?
@@SeriousTrivia in the series (sorry never read the actual novel ahah) Xu You taunts and insults Cao Cao, yes for example by calling him Ahman, and then mocks Xu Chu for being uncultured and not worthy of holding the same name., then dies. But I wonder most of all why those names come back through the eras and why there can be for example a kingdom called Chu with nothing in common with old Chu
Jiang Wei, The General who heard no bell.
I always loved Jiang Wei ever since i first played him in Dynasty Warriors 4, his weapon and fighting style was always the most fun for me. Then i learned his actual story and found him a very intriguing character.
Jiang Wei has been my favourite character after learning of him through the arcade game 三国志大战. The later period characters don't get talked about as much so I'm looking forward to his lore as well as also your concluding opinion of him. :)
I feel bad for how he was just pushing a rope trying to fulfill Liu Bei's and Zhuge Liang's pipe dream
The fact that Three Kingdoms got cut loose before we got Jiang Wei feels so bad
thx for all your work king,thought I was out, but every new series PULLS ME BACK IN
Jiang Wei is a fascinating personage. That chart listing at the start already assures me that this will be an even-handed look at someone who is often quite maligned.
If I'm not mistaken, which I might be, 约 means something like "joined together" or "treaty/covenant". But maybe it had a different meaning back then (or maybe I'm completely wrong in this case.)
I think Jiang Wei is certainly a tragic figure, but I also believe his maligned reputation is quite well deserved. Whatever his intentions, his actions were ultimately selfish, and self-destructive. He accomplished little but massive loss of life in pointless and futile conflict.
Not only was Jiang Wei abandoned by his supervisor the side he was working for also imprisoned his family, so I guess I'm not surprised that he would whole-heartedly join Shu. Was he never reunited with any of his relatives?
Never reunited
Ouch.. 😢 ..that's terrible..
Yes! Love this 👍
I get to learn what happened after Zhu Ge Liang
I learned a lot from this video, until then I had the idea that Jiang Wei, like many of the officials in that region, were loyal to the Wei dynasty (given how much they suffered with the Han dynasty and how Cao Cao "saved" them from Ma Chao ) and that he had betrayed Wei to join Shu-Han because he had no choice. But your explanation makes it clear that the gentry clans in that area were still loyal to the Han dynasty (you exemplified with the several cities that surrendered to Zhuge Liang without a fight), so in reality, Jiang Wei was kind of "going back to his roots" by join the Shu, as their clan has always been loyal to the Han dynasty.
Over 300. Maybe see ya tomorrow? 😉 Quality content as always and really indepth as well. Plenty of content creators that do surface level are great and all but I'm excited to learn about everything in the era (and others). I like Three Kings (content creator) "Who is___?" series as well for nuggets on things too.. Like you present two sources and I didn't know about one, citing both, giving your opinion on which might be true and why...I'm going along too and I get to look at it and decide as well (I agree with the records as well).
Jiang Wei was always a no go fav for me as a teenager because betraying your country seemed like betraying your brothers in arms, family, friends, ect. As I became an adult and reading his situation, I've become to actually emphasize with him and I respect him.
Can't wait to see the mental gymnastics to justify Jiang Wei "draw and win" when Guo Huai was literraly wiping the floor with him.
Reading RotTK is pretty hilarious because even with Luo Guanzhong's massive pro-Han bias in his text, Jiang Wei comes off like a massively incompetent fool, who was simply attempting to do things far outside the realms of his competence.
What if Wei Yan was still alive, what advice would he give to Jiang Wei?
What I don't like is how the TV show lied to us. For instance, Jiang Wei didn't reunited with his mother. Here is how he respond to his mother.
"Jiang Wei's biography in the Sanguozhi recorded that he lost contact with his mother after defecting to Shu, the Zaji recorded that after he later received a letter from his mother asking him to return home. He wrote a reply as follows:
"One mu of land is nothing compared to a hundred qing of fertile farmland. When one's ambition lies far away, he will not want to return home."
5-4-2 doesn't seem like a bad record at all considering how much shit Jiang Wei tends to get.
How would you have categorized Zhuge Liang's campaigns. I'm guessing:
1st - Loss
2nd - Loss (Draw?)
3rd - Win
(Cao Zhen's invasion - Win)
4th - Draw (Win?)
5th - Draw
Loss, Draw, Win, Win, Draw
This talented outsider's gonna have a debatable legacy! We gotta dive into there soon!
Also, how does the writer Fu Xuan, the son of Fu Gan and thus grandson of Fu Xie, surmise that Jiang Wei had a personal private militia in Tianshui around before Zhuge Liang's 1st Expedition?
history enthusiats eating good this day now when prior hours Oversimplified just artilleried with 3 videos, one of which just a minor recap
great interesting video
Calling them campaigns at all always seemed a bit generous. At that point, with Shu-Han's diminished strength and critical lack of manpower or new talent, they were little more than glorified raids that only resulted in loss of life and resources that could no longer be replaced.
I am in the camp that these attacks were never going to do much but at the same time, I don’t think just doing nothing would be the better option. There is never going to be a peaceful co-existence between the two kingdoms. And Shu Han is one fourth the population and probably one sixth to one seventh the landmass. Before some of his final expeditions when Wei really started to ramp up their forces in the west in preparation for the big invasion, Jiang Wei traded up in his attacks and lost less than Wei. It was always going to be an overwhelming defeat in this elephant vs the ants battle. The ants trying to nimble bits off the elephants is not the reason why the ants lost. The argument that if Shu Han invested these ten thousand troops into just farming would have made a dent into the difference between the two kingdom is laughable as in a time when manpower was proportional to output, Wei’s lead over Shu Han was constantly growing and by having this probing force, you are actually forcing Wei to commit far more resources than Shu has on the western front. Basically for every Shu Han citizen out on northern expeditions with Jiang Wei, multiple Wei citizens would also be drafted to be stationed out west and more supplies would have to flow from the interiors of Wei to the west to keep their defenses sharp for the chance of an attack from Jiang Wei.
@@SeriousTrivia To be clear, I don't think there was any alternative outcome where any of these three states endured either. A century of warfare after the Han collapse left central China exhausted. Even the Jin unification came to nothing when the northern tribes and peoples who had been bled as mercenaries in these wars simply migrated south and found China had been left hollow.
Basically, they were all living in the clock, but they didn't know they were already out of time.
BENEVOLENCE!
Interesting, how they are all loyal to Wei but didn't believe each other's loyalty.
Ma Zun’s loyalty is questionable. His behavior was out of line for an administrator and acted entirely out of self preservation by running to the safety of Shangbang. If he was a dutiful and loyal administrator, he should have returned to Ji and tried to defend it with his life. His mistrust of the others was just a reflection of his own paranoia while Jiang Wei and those abandoned by him really had no say in the matter. We just know their names because they went on to do something after joining Shu Han. Pretty sure things like this happened all the time in history where an unit commander might abandon his men in a bad position for one reason or another which ends with his men either killed or captured by the enemy forces. You can’t really blame those who were just simply left behind.
Well said :)
Can you do videos on the Jin dynasty and the northern and southern kingdoms of china?
the current plan for this channel is to finish Three Kingdoms history. Then I plan to start a new channel that is just history related videos and cover Chinese history from the beginning. Let's Talk Lore started as sort of a historical companion to my Total War Three Kingdoms videos and I prefer to keep this channel more gaming related so I will finish the Three Kingdoms history until Sima Yan creates Jin and wipes out Wu to unite. But after that everything history related will move to the new channel which I will announce once it is ready later this year.
the Wei in Jiang Wei name meant Defender or Upholder if am not mistaken
Hi serious trivia, have you read the comic entitled Lu Bu's Life Story? If yes, can you make a video of your opinion about the comic?
Never seen it
Oh oke@@SeriousTrivia
I wonder why breakthrough into Guanzhong in the 3K period being so difficult yet after 3K it happen all the time.
what examples are you comparing it to?
@@SeriousTrivia During the Five Barbarians, North & South Dynasties periods Eastern Jin did capturing Guanzhong multiple times.
I think this "維" mean to "uphold"?
Not related to the video, but ST did you try or hear anything about that new Zhao Yun game?
Yep I will be playing it on the channel soon
What game?
@@ChhalySamsokriththree kingdoms zhao yun
God Tier: Jiang Jieshi Northern Campaigns
High Tier: Liu Yu Northern Campaigns
Mid Tier: Huan Wen Northern Campaigns
Low Tier: Zhuge Liang Northern Campaigns
Meme Tier: Jiang Wei Northern Campaigns
Ultra Meme Tier: Wang Zhaoyuan saying he could retake the North as easily as waving the palm of his hand.
I'm sure someone will point out all their circumstances were slightly different and it's not a worthwhile basis of comparison. Yeah yeah, whatever. Tier lists aren't exactly a serious tool of historical analysis anyways. Not a big fan of Jiang Wei.
Can’t see how it can be god tier when it ultimately failed…
@@SeriousTrivia I'm actually not the biggest fan of Jiang Jieshi. In fact I don't like him at all. But when you look at the results of his Northern Expedition, the original one, as compared to the others I listed, and compare to the others, look at what he was able to accomplish. He basically swept away all the warlords of the North and re-unified China in just a few years. In my view, the problem is that for various reasons his government was not fully able to consolidate control, and the warlords retained enough power in the aftermath of reunification to launch several more destabilizing bids to oppose reunification.
Now compare to all the others, starting at the bottom. Jiang Wei's campaigns were disastrous, particularly the Battle of Duan Gu, which led to sizable casualties. Jiang Wei sometimes would win a victory, but then go too far, described as "drawing legs on a snake," push his luck, and then snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Does anybody really think he deserves a rank above any of the others? I don't think so. He had gall, I'll give him that much (the size of a bushel, which is impossible according to Sima Guang).
Zhuge Liang, although I ranked low, I have a high opinion of him. But ultimately, he seized a few commanderies and that's it. He didn't get Chang'an let alone Luoyang. I consider his campaigns to be basically an overall modest success. He deserves some fault for some of the failures, especially the first Northern Campaign where you can point to numerous significant military mistakes, such as appointing Ma Su to lead the vanguard and failing to alacritiously reinforce the vanguard on a personal level (the defeat cannot entirely be blamed on Ma Su, and ultimately as the CiC, even if it could be, Zhuge Liang was partly at fault for making his appointment).
Huan Wen: Takes much of the Northwest, and even gets as far as Chang'an and Luoyang. Ultimately loses, but he got farther than Zhuge IMO. Hard to really deny that. You could make an argument his defeats were worse, but I'd still rank him higher since he got much closer to the end goal.
Liu Yu: Retakes much of the North. Although it's eventually lost, in my opinion the victories are more impressive than Huan Wen's and the defeats are more slender.
Jiang Jieshi: However fractious, he literally reunifies China with his, however ephemerally.
I guess the Ming should be somewhere in there, and they'd be gigachad tier above Jiang Jieshi.
To steelman your argument, though, I've made the argument before that Wei's campaigns against the Xianbei were in some ways more successful than those of Han's for similar reasons you're making as to why Jiang Jieshi should be lower. Essentially my argument was that although Han had more overwhelming victories, their defeats against the Xianbei were REALLY bad, especially versus Tanshihuai's, whereas Wei's defeats were seemingly not as devastating, even though several frontier regions were raided. In a similar regard, although Jiang Jieshi had high "highs," he lost everything in the end except for an island, so his lows were worse than, say, Zhuge Liang.
Hi Serious Trivia, is Jiang Wei's "wei" pronnounced with 一声 or 二声? as I've heard both.
I think it should be the second tone even though I am prone to making the first tone pronunciations at times too
by the way, always been interested i chinese name for people kingdoms and all, such as when Xu You mocks Xu Chu for being ignorant and not knowing the origin of names, anyone knows where there s intel on that ?
You mean when he kept calling Cao Cao by his baby name?
@@SeriousTrivia in the series (sorry never read the actual novel ahah) Xu You taunts and insults Cao Cao, yes for example by calling him Ahman, and then mocks Xu Chu for being uncultured and not worthy of holding the same name., then dies. But I wonder most of all why those names come back through the eras and why there can be for example a kingdom called Chu with nothing in common with old Chu
Why is Zhang Yi's portrait looks so ugly? Does the game makers think he is a numskull? What is his status in game?
Pretty average to above average in ROTK14. I think the artists are just tired of making characters