With the emergence of private ownership and class, China’s primitive clan society began to disintegrate, and its last leader of the Chinese tribal alliance, Yu, was succeeded by his son Qi as the "Xia Hou", and began the succession system of "father to son, family in the world". .
The so-called "family world" here refers to the idea that the emperor takes the state power as his own and inherits it from generation to generation. The so-called emperor treats the country as the private property of his family, which is passed on from generation to generation. Jia Tianxia is the product of a certain stage of historical development. In the Xia Dynasty period, the Chinese emperors regarded the land and subjects of the world as the private property of the emperor's family.
and then to Yingzheng to dominate the Central Plains and create a centralized monarchy, the inheritance system of "Family World" has been deeply ingrained in the Central Plains dynasty. It can be said that it has run through the history of feudal rule for two thousand years. In almost every dynasty, there have been unequal numbers of "er emperors", that is, young emperors who took the throne before their weak crown. This situation was most common in the Eastern Han period.
So, why does the phenomenon of the "child emperor" ascend the throne? The essence lies in the limitations of the succession system to the throne.
In 221 AD, Ying Zheng, who ruled the world, believed that his merits surpassed all previous emperors, including the "Three Emperors and Five Emperors" who had immense merit in ancient times. So he took the "Emperor" in the "Three Emperors" and the "Emperor" in the "Five Emperors". "Emperor", calling himself "Emperor". This tradition was continued. All rulers after Yingzheng, except for a few regimes such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, almost every feudal ruler regarded himself as an "emperor."
In addition, Yingzheng also established a set of centralized power system around the monarchy, among which the inheritance system of "Family Tianxia" is the top priority. In order to let Jiangshan continue to be passed on among the descendants of the family, "the weight of the Fengzongmiao is the infinite Zuo", and the Sheji was passed on to the second, third, and even thousands of generations. Although Yingzheng’s wishful thinking was not achieved, and the second king of the Qin Dynasty died, the inheritance system initiated by him has survived. By the Han Dynasty, this inheritance system had been relatively perfect.
Obviously, this inheritance system is very limited. The candidates for successors are concentrated among the emperor’s descendants, and the choices are very limited. Once the emperor died young, the possibility of the young emperor ascending to the throne is very high. Except for Emperor Guangwu, Emperor Mingdi, and Emperor Xian in the Eastern Han Dynasty, none of the other emperors lived beyond 36 years of age. Among them, Emperor An, Emperor Zhi, and Emperor Huan ascended the throne as their clan status. the rules.
Although there are many emperors and concubines, they will undoubtedly affect the health of themselves and their offspring due to their imperfect body development and excessive indulgence when they got married. The death rate of the princes in the Eastern Han Dynasty was very high. The harem competition, abolition, and the backward medical conditions were all important reasons that caused the prince to die early. There are very few princes who can live to adulthood, so the prince has almost no choice. The average life expectancy of the emperors in the Eastern Han Dynasty was relatively low, so the princes they left behind were not very old.
Because of the limitation of the inheritance system, even if the prince is very young, he must be established as the crown prince. After the emperor ascended the throne, he would fall into a vicious circle again.
In addition to the above reasons, the harem's political intervention is also one of the reasons that led to the Eastern Han Dynasty.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was such a strange phenomenon that the average life span of the emperor was not long, but the queen and the queen dowager lived very long. There are too many examples of "the master and the young mother are strong". During the Han Dynasty, there was such a rule that as long as the queen of the palace had a direct status, the emperor could be named as a guardian when the emperor was young, mediocre, or interrupted by the emperor's heir. In this case, they can obtain equal power with the emperor.
In this context, it is inevitable that there will be queen mothers who "greet children for a long time, and restrain the virtuous to dominate their prestige". The power is firmly held in his hand. For example, the empress of Yuanhe Emperor Deng Clan used the guise of declining eldest son Liu Sheng and established his infant son Liu Long as emperor. Empress Dowager Deng has controlled the government for 16 years, and has successively established two young emperors.
From these examples of the harem’s intervention in politics, we can see that the harem system in the Eastern Han Dynasty was very imperfect.This also served as a warning to the later dynasties.
Harem intervention will also bring about a chain reaction of the dictatorship of foreign relatives.
Liu Xiu The establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty relied on the support of powerful landlords. Liu Xiu is different from other founding kings in that he did not "raise a rabbit to die for a dog", and got rid of all the founding fathers, but treated these heroes with courtesy. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the concept of marriage of "men and households" had been deeply ingrained in people's minds. Gongqing and wealthy families were qualified to marry the royal family. These nobles originally had a relatively high social status. When concubines or even queens and queen mothers appeared in their families, they would inevitably use this nepotism to obtain more profits.
In addition, the queen mothers of called , in order to consolidate their position, usually invite their relatives to join the dynasty. Obviously, if the emperor is older, he will certainly not condone chaos in the harem and foreign relatives. For the queen mother and her relatives to be in power for a long time, it is necessary to establish a "child emperor" that is easy to control. The perverse actions of the relatives can easily arouse the young emperor's resistance. Once the young emperor reaches adulthood, he will often resort to the power of the eunuch to shovel his relatives. In the end, the emperor, empress dowager, relatives, and eunuchs alternated powers, resulting in a series of bad results.
Eastern Han Dynasty is in the critical period of the development of feudal society, the phenomenon of the emperor's accession to the throne is an inevitable pain in the development period. However, the previous feudal dynasties failed to solve this problem throughout their lives, and this problem eventually died out with the withdrawal of centralized autocracy from the stage of history.
Reference materials:
["Han Shu", "Zi Zhi Tong Jian"]
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