-87 BC- Emperor Wǔ dies and is replaced by his son, Prince Liú
Gúlíng, is enthroned as Emperor Zhāo (age 8 haha).
-However, Emperor Wǔ had set it up so that a
triumvirate would rule as regents (who would also serve as teachers for Emperor Zhāo,
as well) until the young emperor came of age.
-The regent triumvirate:
-Huò Guāng (AKA Zǐ Mèng)-
high-ranking official and de facto leader of the trio.
-Jīn Mìdī (AKA Wēng Shū or
Marquess Jìng of Dù)- prominent official (and an ethnic Xiōngnú).
-General Shàngguān Jié
-Of course, this succession of power didn't make
everyone happy, and this included Emperor Zhāo's older brothers whom all
had been passed over so that the youngest, Emperor Zhāo, could be enthroned.
-A conspiracy to topple the young emperor was
plotted among some members of the royal Liú clan but this didn't end up working
out.
-86 BC- Jīn Mìdī dies.
-This was significant because up till then he had
served as a balance between Huò Guāng and Shàngguān Jié who seemed to have
opposing views on how shit should be run (even though apparently they were
close friends and Huò Guāng's daughter (was even married to Shàngguān Jié's
son)).
-Shàngguān Jié also resented being less
powerful than Huò Guāng, and Jīn Mìdī's death only exacerbated these
sentiments.
-Shàngguān Jié wanted his grandaughter (Lady
Shàngguān, 5 year-old daughter of his daughter and Huò Guāng's son)
to marry Emperor Zhāo, but Huò Guāng disagreed with this plan.
-As a workaround, Shàngguān Jié
next appealed to one of the four acting regents, Princess Èyì (AKA
Princess Gàicháng, one of Emperor Zhāo's older sisters), claiming that a
marriage would be able to secure a stronger alliance between the Shàngguān and
Liú clans).
-Princess Èyì
agreed, and in 84 BC Lady Shàngguān and Emperor Zhāo were married (with
Lady Shàngguān becoming Empress Shàngguān (AKA Empress Xiàozhāo)).
-Up till then Huò Guāng's regency had been a success.
-Because he scaled back the empire's wars of
expansion, this allowed for wartime rationing and self-imposed sanctions to be
lifted. Because of this, the merchant class began to grow and the
population experienced less-shitty living conditions.
-However, this pissed off the rich monopolies
whom had actually profited immensely because of Emperor Wǔ's restrictions.
-One key politician involved in
this scheme was Grand Secretary Sāng Hóngyáng, whom in the past had helped
oversee significant economic developments such as the government monopolization
of iron and salt (which involved bringing in two powerful salt and iron CEOS to
join the government in order to manage the industry on a national scale for the
emperor... hmmmm that doesn't sound corrupt at all!), which of course made the
dynasty more rich.
-Because of Grand
Secretary Sāng's resistance to these economic changes, Huò Guāng was able to
shift support away from him. As a response to his waning power, Grand
Secretary Sāng desperately tried to form a cabal of anti-Huò Guāng courtiers
with included the Shàngguān clan, Princess Èyì, and Prince Dàn (one of
Emperor Zhāo's older brothers) in order to force Huò Guāng out of power.
-However,
when the conspirators tried to have Huò Guāng arrested on trumped-up charges,
Emperor Zhāo (who was now 14) didn't buy their bullshit. This was
important because it made people realize that the emperor wasn't stupid.
-Unfortunately, that didn't stop the conspirators from trying again, but this
time they planned on taking care of that punk Emperor Zhāo as well!
-The plan was for Princess Èyì to murder him (her own brother!)
and have Prince Dàn installed on the throne instead.
-However, one of Princess Èyì's servants ended up leaking
the news to Huò Guāng and Emperor Zhāo.
This, of course, resulted in the immediate suicide of Princess Èyì and Prince
Dàn and the extermination of the entire Shàngguān clan (except for Empress
Shàngguān because she was only like 9 at the time). Of course, this freaked out everyone else and
made them think that Huò Guāng was going to increase his grip on power and turn
into a brutal autocrat, but actually this didn’t end up happening.
-77 BC- the Western kingdom of Lóulán (AKA Krorän or Kroraina in its
native tongue), located around the northeastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in
Xīnjiāng, China) got a new king (named either Chángguī or Ānguī), and this dude
was not down with the Hàn dynasty at all.
-This was serious for the Hàn dynasty because they
needed to be able to travel through their territory in order to get to the
other Western kingdoms.
-In order to pacify Lóulán,
Huò Guāng sent the assassin Fù Jièzǐ to go take out King Chángguī. Pretending to be a messenger, he set up a private
meeting with the king before murdering him.
-When the Lóulán court
finally figured out what had happened, Fù Jièzǐ warned them that if anyone
tried to stop him from going back home a Hàn army would immediately invade and
kill all of them.
-This actually
worked, and the Lóulán guards backed off.
Fù Jièzǐ then had King Chángguī’s brother, Wèitúqí (a puppet of the Hàn
dynasty), enthroned as the new king, before renaming the kingdom Shànshàn.
-74 BC- Emperor Zhāo dies suddenly, and without an heir!
-In order to avoid a
succession crisis, Huò Guāng decides to enthrone Liú Hè (who at the time was
the King/Prince of Chāngyì (near modern-day Hézé, Shāndōng Province), nephew of
Emperor Zhāo (even though they were roughly the same age haha) and
grandson of Emperor Wǔ.
-According to legend,
when Liú Hè found out that he had been chosen to be the new emperor, he immediately
left Chāngyì and traveled so quickly down to Cháng'ān that his horse died from
exhaustion :(
-Unfortunately for Liú Hè, his reign as
emperor would only last for a few weeks because obviously all he was interested
in was drinking and partying and shit and didn’t respect the position or follow
any of the “mourning” rules of etiquette or whatever, so obviously Huò Guāng
realized that having Liú Hè as emperor simply wasn’t going to work out. So, Liú Hè was peacefully dethroned (and
demoted to a marquess, in which he still lived comfortably I’m assuming) and
was replaced by Liú Bìngyǐ (AKA Liú Xún), enthroned as Emperor Xuān (AKA Emperor Xiàoxuān).
-This was
actually a completely unexpected choice by Huò Guāng because Liú Bìngyǐ was a
commoner, even though technically he was a member of the royal Liú clan.
-Liú Bìngyǐ was
the son of Liú Jìn, who was the son of Liú Jù (former crown prince under Emperor Wǔ
who had been suddenly bypassed in favor of Liú Fúlíng (AKA Emperor Zhāo), which of course
pissed off everyone and there was a bunch of drama and resulted in a bunch of
executions except for Liú Bìngyǐ since he was just a baby around that time (so
instead he was forced to grow up in an imperial prison).
-Eventually, Emperor Zhāo found out about Liú Bìngyǐ’s situation
and decided to have him be officially looked after by the imperial court and be
supervised by the eunuch Zhāng Hè.
After this happened, Liú Bìngyǐ married Xǔ Píngjūn, the daughter of another court
eunuch, Xǔ Guǎnghàn, and was soon being educated in the Confucian classics and
shit like that. However, because he came
from such a humble background Liú Bìngyǐ seemed to have a very strong sense of
social justice and hatred of corruption.
-Because of this, Huò Guāng chose him to be the next emperor.
-When it came time for Emperor Xuān to choose his queen, he
ultimately chose his wife, Xǔ Píngjūn, who then became Empress Gōng’āī (AKA
Empress Xiàoxuān)). However, this whole
process caused a bunch of drama because many court officials (especially Huò
Guāng’s wife, Lady Xiǎn) had wanted Emperor Xuān to choose Huò Guāng’s
daughter, Huò Chéngjūn, as his new queen, but Emperor Xuān decided on Xǔ Píngjūn.
-73 BC- Huò Guāng offers to step down as regent since at this
point he was getting quite old and felt that Emperor Xuān was certainly old
enough (and wise enough, too) to rule the empire on his own, but the emperor
refuses to accept Huò Guāng’s resignation.
In fact, Emperor Xuān continued to defer to Huò Guāng on many matters of
the state, as well as continue the appointments of various members of the Huò clan
to positions of power in the government.
-71 BC- Empress Gōng’āī is pregnant, so Lady Xiǎn knew she had to
strike fast; she has Empress Gōng’āī poisoned, killing both her and the baby.
-The death was believed
to be an accident due to a mistake made by the empress’ nurse, so Lady Xiǎn
actually got away with this (with the help of her husband most likely doing a
cover-up as well).
-70 BC- Lady Xiǎn’s plan worked- Emperor Xuān marries Huò Chéngjūn,
making her the new empress.
-Apparently, Empress Huò’s
spending habits and lifestyle were much more extravagant than the previous
empress (which makes sense).
-68 BC- Huò Guāng dies, although his clan still continues to live
luxuriously and enjoy much power and influence in the government (even
rivalling that of the royal family!).
-67 BC- Liú Shì (son of Emperor Xuān and Empress Gōng’āī before Emperor
Xuān was enthroned), age 7-8, is named crown prince (which I’m sure pissed off
the Huò clan).
-After this, Emperor Xuān starts to become hip to the rumors that the Huò
clan had been working behind the scenes for years to try and take power from
the royal Liú clan, and had even maybe had a hand in the death of Empress Gōng’āī
and his unborn child.
-66 BC- Lady Huò finally admits to her other clan members about being
behind the murder of Empress Gōng’āī.
This is an important detail because even though many members of the Huò
clan may have been unaware of Lady Huò’s crime, they now knew that if Lady Huò got
busted by the emperor then they were ALL going to be executed! So, they had no choice at this point but to
eliminate Emperor Xuān so they could survive!
-However, this didn’t work out, and soon the entire
plot was uncovered and the entire Huò clan was executed (with the exception of
Empress Huò, who was placed under house arrest before eventually being exiled,
and after that she just ended up committing suicide).
-Emperor Xuān ended up being a solid ruler- he was patient, fair, honest,
and wise.
-His foreign policy was
also one of peace, and he worked hard in order to establish good relations with
his neighbors, including the barbarian kingdoms of the Héxī Corridor and
surrounding territories/states.
-64 BC- Emperor Xuān marries his consort, Lady Wáng, making her Empress Wáng (AKA Empress Xiàoxuān or Empress Dowager Qióngchéng
(later)), although it seems like he did this more out of necessity than actual
love or romance since he’d already had so much drama with his past empresses. The emperor and his new queen apparently never
really saw each other outside of like formal events and stuff.
-59-56 BC- the Xiōngnú Empire
splits into three warring factions led by the chanyus Rùnzhèn, Hūhánxié, and Zhìzhī.
-In order to defeat their rivals, each of the
chanyus attempted to make an alliance with the Han dynasty.
-This allowed
for Emperor Xuān to play the factions against each other and spend less
resources managing the border since the Xiōngnú armies were no longer united in
fighting against the Han Empire since they were just fighting each other for
the most part during this time.
-53 BC- With Chanyu Rùnzhèn defeated, Chanyu Zhìzhī gathers
his forces to ultimately crush Chanyu Hūhánxié’s forces. Sensing imminent defeat, Hūhánxié decides to
head south and defect to the Han Empire.
-Emperor Xuān honored his request for asylum, and ended up actually granting him a pretty
high-ranking title among the Hàn nobility!
In fact, the emperor even went so far as to give Chanyu Hūhánxié
military assistance in his fight against Chanyu Zhìzhī, and soon Zhìzhī was
driven out to the western reaches of the Xiōngnú Empire as Hūhánxié conquered
vast areas of land with the help of his new Hàn forces.
-49 BC- Emperor Xuān falls ill and dies.
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