Three kingdom novel (and modern TV dramas) was based on the real three kingdom era in Chinese history.
For more serious history, pls refer to the historic book Records of the Three Kingdoms (written in 3rd century, and many articles are on today's high school textbook of Chinese)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_the_Three_Kingdoms
All events and historic figures presented in modern entertainment are real, but the details might not 100% accurate, probably 85-95% correct.
The Records of the Three Kingdoms is a Chinese historical text which covers the history of the late Eastern Han dynasty (c. 184–220 AD) and the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). It is widely regarded as the official and authoritative historical text for that period. Written by Chen Shou in the third century, the work combines the smaller histories of the rival states of Cao Wei, Shu Han and Eastern Wu in the Three Kingdoms period into a single text. The Records of the Three Kingdoms provided the basis for the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century.
It is one part of the Chinese official records of the history, one of the 24 Histories that cover Chinese history from 3000BC to 17th century.
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The Twenty-Four Histories (Chinese: 二十四史; pinyin: Èrshísì Shǐ), also known as the Orthodox Histories (Chinese: 正史; pinyin: Zhèngshǐ) are the Chinese official historical books covering a period from 3000 BC to the Ming dynasty in the 17th century. The Han dynasty official Sima Qian established many of the conventions of the genre, but the form was not fixed until much later. Starting with the Tang dynasty, each dynasty established an official office to write the history of its predecessor using official court records. As fixed and edited in the Qing dynasty, the whole set contains 3213 volumes and about 40 million words. It is considered one of the most important sources on Chinese history and culture
