Royals › Monarch / Emperor
Zhu Youtang
Ming Hongzhi emperor, hidden from a jealous consort as a child, who purged his father's favourites, relied on ministers such as Wang Shu and Liu Jian, and kept only one empress
In a side chamber of a palace, a yellow ceremonial robe embroidered with a dragon hangs on a wooden stand, its hem worked with waves and rocks, before a carved folding screen, while a black lacquer chest sits on a low table by a lattice window and no person is in view.
Also known as Ming Xiaozong · Hongzhi Di
- Roles
- Monarch / Emperor
Zhu Youtang, third son of the Chenghua emperor, was born in 1470 to Lady Ji, a palace record keeper, and was hidden as a small child to protect him from the emperor's favourite, Consort Wan; only at five was he presented to his father, and he was named heir apparent in 1475. He came to the throne in the ninth month of 1487 and reigned as Hongzhi from the next year. He promptly dismissed the grand secretary Wan An and the occultist Li Zisheng, made Wang Shu minister of personnel, and brought Liu Jian, Li Dongyang and Xie Qian into the Grand Secretariat. His reign produced the supplementary penal regulations of 1500 and, in 1502, the first compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Ming (Da Ming huidian). He kept a single consort, Empress Zhang, and took no concubines. He died in the fifth month of 1505 at thirty-four, with the temple name Xiaozong, and was buried in the Tai mausoleum; his son Zhu Houzhao succeeded him.
Life and times
Dates 1470 CE–1505 CE