| Diaochan | |
|---|---|
 Qing dynasty's Romance of the Three Kingdoms illustration of Diaochan | |
| First appearance | "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" |
| Created by | Luo Guanzhong |
| Based on | one of Dong Zhuo's courtesans |
| In-universe information | |
| Significant other | Dong Zhuo Lü Bu |
| Diaochan | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 貂蟬 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 貂蝉 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Diaochan was one of the Four Beauties of ancient China. Although based on a minor historical personage, she is mostly a fictional character. She is best known for her role in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which romanticises the events in the late Eastern Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period. In the novel, she has a romance with the warrior Lü Bu and causes him to betray and kill his foster father, the tyrannical warlord Dong Zhuo. She was praised in tales as a woman of unrivaled beauty who did what no other hero in China was able to accomplish: put an end to Dong Zhuo's regime of terror and the eventual end of Lǚ Bu; triggering the events that would lead to the formation of the Three Kingdoms: Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han.