Water Margin is just a fictional romance novel, in which the characters and stories are true and false. The so-called "romance novels" refer to some characters and stories in novels, which do exist in history, but quite a few or even most of them are fabricated. In other words, The Water Margin is just a collection of historical figures and events. It's just written so well that future generations think that this is history, but the real history has retired.
"The Water Margin" shaped Liang Shanbo's "hundreds of single and eight generals", each with a vivid image and vivid story. However, compared with the history books, there are only 36 characters in history, and the remaining 72 are mostly fabrications, which are purely false. According to historians' research, during the reign of Xuanhe in Song Huizong, there was indeed an uprising by Song Jiang and Liang Shanbo, which was a historical event in which 36 people, including Song Jiang, ran amok in Huainan, but there were not as many 108 generals as described in Water Margin, and there were not so many vivid and dramatic scenes.
Extended data:
The Water Margin is one of China's four classical novels. It is a chapter-by-chapter novel with the Sung River Uprising as the main story background at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, and it belongs to a heroic legend in genre. The author or editor is generally regarded as Shi Naian, and most of the existing periodicals have one or two people, Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong.
The Water Margin is one of the earliest Zhang Hui vernacular novels in the history of China. After the publication of Water Margin, it had a great impact on the society and became a model of China's novel creation in later generations.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia-Water Margin