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TW3K Yu River

The Yu River in Three Kingdoms

The Yu River is a location in Total War: Three Kingdoms. It is a point of interest in southern China, flowing from its origin in Zangke commandery into the Zhang and Nan Seas.


Description[]

Formed by the confluence of the Xun and Gui Rivers, this large waterway links the coastal cities of the south with China's interior.


Historical Context[]

The Yu River is but one part of a much larger system often called the Pearl River. While the in-game portion is called the Yu River in its entirety, curiously, the real-life Yu River is not included. The path taken in-game seems to follow the Long, Liu, Qian, Xun, and Xi Rivers instead. One way or another, the Pearl River system has historically been an economic lifeline in the far south of China, serving a similar purpose as the Yangtze to the north on a smaller scale. It was oft-sailed by merchants carrying goods up and down the system from the inland areas of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou to Guangxi and Guangdong. Unsurprisingly, this caused major coastal trading cities to grow at the mouth of the river, such as Guangzhou and the later European colonies of Macau and Hong Kong.

The Pearl River system saw little conflict of note during the Three Kingdoms period, with most of the action being further north near the hotly contested Yangtze River. Eastern Wu would capture the area from Shi Xie and his immediate family, though this was done with relatively little bloodshed. The area's relative remoteness meant it saw little action and -- by the time Eastern Wu began to fall to the nascent Jin Dynasty -- an organised defence of the region was off the table. While the system was economically vital for moving goods and troops across China's southern fringes and was extensively used by states and civilians alike, its relatively remote location ultimately made it less contested at the time than the Yangtze or Yellow River.


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