Zhao Xian

Also known as Songgong Di · Yingguo Gong

Zhao Xian, whose given name the histories write with a rarer character, was a son of Emperor Duzong and was born in 1271. When Duzong died in 1274 the chief minister Jia Sidao and others placed the boy on the throne, the Deyou era began the next year, and his grandmother Grand Empress Dowager Xie governed for him. After Jia's army collapsed at Dingjiazhou in 1275, the Mongol commander Bayan closed on Lin'an early in 1276 and the court surrendered with the state seal; that spring the boy and his mother Empress Dowager Quan were taken north to Dadu, and Khubilai made him Duke of Ying. In 1288 he was sent to Sakya in Tibet to study Buddhism and became a monk under the name Hezun. In 1323 Emperor Yingzong of the Yuan ordered his death in the Hexi region, when he was fifty-three by Chinese reckoning. His brother Duanzong, enthroned at Fuzhou, had honoured him in absentia, and he is known as Emperor Gong of Song.