The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Guan Yu cults have prevailed throughout the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), bringing pictorial illustrations of the novel a great deal of popularity that has persisted until the late Joseon period. As the hero of the novel Guan Yu was deified and worshipped both in the royal court and by common people, the illustrations of the Romance saw a stylistic division into court and folk painting styles. In the course of its development, the Illustrations of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Chae Yongsin occupies a unique position: Chae was not a member of the Royal Academy of Painting, but he has worked for commissions from the court—King’s portraits, for example—even after the dissolution of the institution (1896). His close relationship with the royal court increases the likelihood that this painting was produced at the request of the court. Presumably the Illustrations by Chae were housed in a local shrine dedicated to Guan Yu, known as Temple of King Guan; and yet its pictorial contents have much in common with those shared by a group of Illustrations of the Romance in folding-screen format made for the royal court. It is also notable that Chae’s Illustrations include a bundle of Guan-involved episodes that do not appear in other extant examples. The Illustrations disclose Chae’s individual style, distinctive mode, and peculiar composition. The painter’s creativity becomes apparent when his work is compared to other surviving illustrations of the Romance that show the recurrence of the same style and contents, similar scene organization, and formulaic color schemes. The conventionalization is observable from a court decorative folding screen (now in the National Palace Museum of Korea) and two works made for certain temples of King Guan in Seoul (framed and housed in the Seoul Museum of History and the National Folk Museum of Korea). Chae Yongsin imbued the illustrations of the Romance with another layer of significance. He seems to have aimed to highlight the symbolic role of Guan Yu as a manifestation of loyalty, the exemplary relationship of sovereign and subject, and even the monarch of Joseon, while producing the paining for a local temple at a time when the national crisis reached its catastrophic apogee over the period of Japanese Occupation.