Meanwhile, during the Northern Wei...

[khiemtran]

From wikipedia...

When a crown prince is named, his mother, if still alive, must be forced to commit suicide. (Some historians do not believe this to be a Tuoba traditional custom, but believed it to be a tradition instititued by the founding emperor Emperor Daowu based on Emperor Wu of Han's execution of his favorite concubine Consort Zhao, the mother of his youngest son Liu Fuling (the eventual Emperor Zhao), before naming Prince Fuling crown prince.)

Somewhat ironically, it appears the first mother of a crown prince to be spared, Empress Dowager Hu, was accused of poisoning her son, the Emperor Xiaoming, which was the inciting incident for the downfall of the dynasty.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So this was designed to keep the mother from exercising undue influence, you think? Because in general, you'd think that far from wanting to poison one of your offspring that happened to be heir, you'd want to make a tool out of him (y'know, if you're a scheming, power-hungry sort of person...)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think what it did do was to prevent a relative outsider from coming in and quickly becoming dowager empress and hence the effective supreme power until the crown prince was old enough to rule. Which is pretty much what happened. The young emperor was already in a power struggle with his mother at the time he was killed

The first five thousand years of Chinese political history could be captioned "Government is hard. But vital".

Also from wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Xiaoming_of_Northern_Wei)

Exacerbating the situation was the fact that Empress Dowager Hu did not like to hear about news of rebel successes, and therefore her attendants often made up good news, causing her to often refuse generals' requests for reinforcements.

and

She did so, and after initially announcing that Emperor Xiaoming's "son" by Consort Pan would succeed him, admitted that the "son" was actually a daughter, and instead selected Yuan Zhao the son of Yuan Baohui (元寶暉) the Prince of Lintao, two-years in age, to succeed Emperor Xiaoming.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Empress Dowager Hu did not like to hear about news of rebel successes, and therefore her attendants often made up good news, causing her to often refuse generals' requests for reinforcements.

Eep. There's a vicious cycle ya got there -_-

Two-year-olds make the best emperors--if you get to be the regent.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The two-old-olds have never forgotten this.