Map showing the major warlords of the Han dynasty in the 190s AD, including the territories controlled by Lu Bu (on the map as Lyu Bu) after he seized control of Xu Province from Liu Bei. These warlords were critical characters in the Chinese epic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
With Dong Zhuo’s takeover of the Han Imperial government, the regional administrations were left to their own authority. Where governors where effective they maintained control and became the local warlords—Liu Biao, Liu Zhang, Ma Teng, Han Sui, and Kong Rong—but where they were weak, they were quickly overthrown by ambitious leaders or taken over by neighboring warlords—Liu Yao, Gongsun Zan, Zhang Miao, Tao Qian, and Liu Dai. The great heroes and warlords that are core to the epic, such as Cao Cao, Sun Ce, Lu Bu, and Yuan Shao, were establishing their bases at this time (SY 2010).
Sources:
SY (2017). Map – Map showing the major warlords in China in the 190s, before the definitive end of the Han dynasty in 220. Wikipedia, 7 July 2017. Accessed Jan. 2020 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BC_Bu#/media/File:End_of_Han_Dynasty_Warlords.png