Royals › Monarch / Emperor
King Nan of Zhou
Last Zhou king, who reigned fifty-nine years from the western half of a divided royal domain and died in 256 BC, the year Qin took the Western Zhou
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 Ji Yan
- Roles
- Monarch / Emperor
King Nan of Zhou, personal name Yan, was a son of King Shenjing and reigned for fifty-nine years, from 314 to 256 BC. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says that in his time the royal domain was split between two petty states, Eastern Zhou and Western Zhou, and that the king moved to Western Zhou. The court could only manoeuvre among the great states, which pressed it for troops and even for the Nine Cauldrons. In 256 BC the lord of Western Zhou joined an alliance against Qin and marched out through the Yique pass; King Zhao of Qin sent his general Jiu against Western Zhou, its lord went to Qin to beg pardon and surrendered thirty-six towns with thirty thousand people, and King Nan died the same year. Yan Shigu's commentary on the History of the Han (Hanshu) quotes Fu Qian as saying the king fled up a terrace to escape creditors, the origin of the idiom about debts piled as high as a terrace.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown–256 BCE