What is the real Zhuge Liang in history?

Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu in the Three Kingdoms period, was a highly respected figure in ancient China. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms described him as a wise god who could skillfully calculate and predict the future. He assisted Liu Bei in establishing Shu, and his conscientious and hard-working life and character are the perfect images in people's minds.

What kind of person is Zhuge Liang in fact?

In the fifteen years from Zhuge Liang's coming out of the mountain to Liu Bei's death, Zhuge Liang was not a strategist who was always at the front line and studied the arrangement of troops all day, as the novel said. The fact is that during the establishment of the Shu-Han regime, Zhuge Liang mainly engaged in diplomatic and government affairs activities and played the role of a politician.

He went to Jiangdong and successfully concluded a friendly treaty with Soochow, which eliminated the hidden dangers of Liu Bei's regime in the east and sought a better political environment for political stability and the establishment of Shu-Han regime.

In the battle, Zhuge Liang often shoulders the heavy responsibility of consolidating the rear, from which we can see Zhuge Liang's extraordinary ability to handle government affairs.

However, judging from the overall situation of the history of the Three Kingdoms, Shu Han was defeated, and many strategic mistakes and tactical failures were also related to Zhuge Liang. For example, Guan Yu's carelessness in Jingzhou is not only Guan Yu's responsibility, but also the result of Zhuge Liang's almost inaction.

After Liu Bei's death, Zhuge Liang also had many problems in managing Shu, such as the reserve of talents and the improvement of national strength, which were all stretched and self-righteous. In particular, lacking collective wisdom, they often go their own way and hold prejudices against General Wei Yan, which makes them become a helpless dou, and even Shu will soon perish.

The deification of Zhuge Liang may be the loyalty advocated by later generations. After all, his spirit of "doing my best and dying" was extremely rare in that troubled times.