The history

The Five Tiger Generals of Shu: who they were

5 October 2026·4 minute read·By Gitkonek Studio

Ask anyone who knows the Three Kingdoms for its great warriors and five names come back in one breath. They are a set. It is worth knowing who made them one.

The five, at a glance

Where the name comes from

Two sources, a thousand years apart.

The first is the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the history Chen Shou wrote in the third century. Its thirty sixth chapter is one joint biography of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong and Zhao Yun, in that order. Chen Shou’s closing judgment calls Guan Yu and Zhang Fei a match for ten thousand men each, and the tiger servants of their age. That is where the tiger comes from.

The second is Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the novel, when Liu Bei becomes King of Hanzhong in 219, he names the Five Tiger Generals in a ceremony and sends the seals out with an envoy. The scene made the phrase.

The real event behind it was smaller. Liu Bei did name his chief generals that year, and there were four: Guan Yu at the Front, Zhang Fei at the Right, Ma Chao at the Left, Huang Zhong at the Rear. Zhao Yun’s title ranked below them.

What each one did

Guan Yu followed Liu Bei from the start. Captured by Cao Cao in 200, he rode through an army to kill its commander, Yan Liang, and then went back to a lord who had nothing. In 219 he flooded seven armies at Fancheng, and was dead within months when Wu took his province from behind.

Zhang Fei was with them from the same year. At Changban in 208 he held a river crossing with twenty riders and a shout, and Cao Cao’s cavalry stopped. He beat Zhang He in the mountains of Ba in 215. His own officers killed him in 221.

Ma Chao came late and from the other side. He led the northwest against Cao Cao at Tong Pass in 211, lost his clan for it, and joined Liu Bei in 214. Chengdu surrendered within ten days of his arrival.

Huang Zhong was an officer of Jing Province who joined after Red Cliffs. At Mount Dingjun in 219 his charge killed Xiahou Yuan, Cao Cao’s commander in the west, and won Hanzhong.

Zhao Yun carried Liu Bei’s infant son out of the rout at Changban. Liu Bei said his whole body was courage. He outlived the other four and died in 229.

The quarrel the novel kept

One detail is in both sources. When Guan Yu heard that Huang Zhong had been raised to the same rank, he said a real man would not stand in a row with an old soldier, and refused the seal. The envoy Fei Shi answered that the king had honored Huang Zhong for one season’s deed, and that this did not make the two men equal in his heart. Guan Yu accepted.

Zhuge Liang had seen it coming. He warned Liu Bei that Guan Yu, far away in Jing Province, had not watched Huang Zhong at Dingjun and would not like the news.

Why it is five and not four

Because the list most people know is the chapter, not the appointment. Chen Shou chose which lives to bind together, and he put Zhao Yun with the four. The novel then gave Zhao Yun the youth, the white armor and the unbeaten record that made him many readers’ favorite of the five.

His real record is quieter. He managed Liu Bei’s household, argued against taking land from the people of Chengdu, and advised against the war on Wu that ended at Yiling. He was right each time.

In the game

All five are Generals of Shu in Warlords of the Three Kingdoms, and each has a page here with the history and the game’s numbers. A warlord sworn to Shu fields them a tenth stronger. Which Kingdom to choose covers what else the choice changes, and the full roster has Wei’s Five Elite Generals and Wu’s four Grand Commanders as well.

Sources

The offices of 219 and the quarrel over Huang Zhong are in Chen Shou’s Records of the Three Kingdoms, in the biographies of the five and of Fei Shi. The ceremony of the Five Tiger Generals is in chapter 73 of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms.