>>17780835
That's not entirely true, ROTK is basically Luo Guanzhong taking every fucking folk story of the Three Kingdoms period and ramming it into the Records of the Three Kingdoms, but really the situation was a chaotic mess. Whether Lü Bu's was sagacious or fatuous he found himself surrounded by enemies and traitors to the puppet Emperor.

He served Ding Yuan but Dong Zhou showed up and was clearly stronger and Ding wouldn't submit so he had to kill Ding to prove his loyalty to Dong and save him and his men from dying pointlessly then Yuan Shao defeated Dong who fled to Chang'an so he left Dong and joined Shao's half-brother Shu but Shu didn't want him so he went to Shao and helped him defeat Zhang Yan however now Shao didn't need him anymore and tried to kill him so he fled again to join Zhang Miao and Chen Gong to help them rebel against the dodgy Cao Cao who had kidnapped the emperor though he was defeated so he had to flee to Liu Bei who had taken Xiapi from Cao Cao who gave Lü Bu Xiaopei however later Yuan Shu defeated Liu Bei so Lü Bu decided to take over Xiapi and give Liu Bei Xiaopei so now in a stronger position he could stop the war with Shu ostensibly by winning an archery contest (obviously another folk story, more likely he just threatened to intervene) however Shu declared himself emperor and everyone declared war on him in a campaign led by Prime Minister Cao Cao "serving" the Han emperor which Lü Bu nearly didn't join because Shu offered to marry his son to Lü Bu's daughter however Lü Bu remembered Shu is treacherous and has a shifting sense of loyalty so he decided against it and joined Cao Cao but then Cao Cao proved to be equally treacherous and sided with Liu Bei to get Xiapi back while he was away fighting Shu so Lü Bu sided with Shu and went back to defend Xiapi where Cao defeated Lü Bu by breaking dams and flooding the city, so you see it wasn't quite as depicted in ROTK.