In the introduction to the 1959 reprint of the Brewitt-Taylor translation, Roy Andrew Miller argues that the novel's chief theme is "the nature of human ambition",[22] to which Moody adds the relationship between politics and morality, specifically the conflict between the idealism of Confucian political thought and the harsh realism of Legalism, as a related theme.[22] Other dominant themes of the novel include: the rise and fall of the ideal liege (Liu Bei); finding the ideal minister (Zhuge Liang); the conflict between the ideal liege (Liu Bei) and the consummate villain (Cao Cao); and the cruelties and injustice of feudal or dynastic government.[1]
The opening lines of the novel, "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been", added by Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang in their recension,[25][14] epitomise the tragic theme of the novel. One recent critic notes that the novel takes political and moral stands and lets the reader know which of the characters are heroes and which villains, yet the heroes are forced to make a tragic choice between equal values, not merely between good and evil. The heroes know that the end of the empire is ordained by this cosmic cycle of division and unity, yet their choices are moral, based on loyalty, not political.[26]
Plaks states the novel deals with the "cyclical theories of dynastic decline," and relates the "breakdown of order" at the end of the Han dynasty to "the improper exercise of imperial authority, the destabilisation influence of special-interest groups (eunuchs, imperial clansmen), the problem of factional and individual idealism carried to the point of civil strife-all of which eventually surface in the body of the narrative." He goes on to say, the "overlapping claims to legitimacy and multiple spheres of power," give the novel a "sense of epic greatness" with its "combination of grandeur and futility."[6]: 385, 403, 495
