Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan are emerging as the three most powerful men in China. Each man has traveled a unique path to get to where he is, with different lessons learned along the way. Now, as boundaries and battle lines are being drawn, they must learn how to survive in a world where fortune does not always smile on the strong, and where a cruel fate can be handed down through the generations.

The legend of the three kingdoms is an epic chronicle of a centuries-long struggle to win control of China after the fall of the Han Dynasty. It is therefore a story of ambition and betrayal, cunning and cruelty, greed and virtue, war and peace. It is also a story about the shifting fortunes of one's supposed fate and destiny. In Western culture, there is a common proverb that fortune smiles on the brave and frowns on the cowardly. But Three Kingdoms turns such an assumption on its head, since there are numorous brave men and women, central characters in the story at one point or another, who suffer tragic fates. Ultimately, fortune cannot be said to smile on anyone, and only those who are accordingly suspicious of it come out on top.