Xizong Emperor

"The energy of the old generation inspires the new."

The Xizong Emperor (11 February 1414 – 14 December 1482), born Zhu Li Jie, was the third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty who reigned from the age of 10 until his death. Between 1424 and 1430, his mother, Dowager Empress Liqin, ruled as ceremonial regent. He was the first Emperor to open China's doors to European conclaves, and in doing so enriched and advanced the empire both economically and culturally. Xizong is noted for his piousness, his determination, and his exceptional foresight.

Early life
Zhu Li Jie was a son of the Gaozu Emperor and his concubine Liqin. While not the Emperor's principal consort, Liqin is noted for having wielded incredible influence over his harem, and was reportedly behind several plots that led to assassination, imprisonment, and execution within the palace, resulting in the deaths of the Emperor's other concubines and competing heirs, leaving her son liable to take the throne. Furthermore, due to Liqin's contemptible reputation, Li Jie was himself thought to be susceptible to murder attempts. Shortly after his first birthday, Li Jie was exiled from the Ming Palace and ostracized into obscurity. He was furnished with a meagre household, though entrusted with a "remarkable" team of apt ministers and accomplished Confucianists who encouraged the prince's religious zeal, and aided in lessening his timidity, which is said to have caused ample reservations amongst his father's high-ranking officials in Li Jie's ability to rule.

As a young boy, Li Jie was described as courteous, humane, and introverted. He was instructed by mentors who expressed disapproval over the Gaozu Emperor's Ming Palace, where governmental affairs fell into the hands of eunuchs and became increasingly nepotistic. While praised for his sharp curtail of rebellion, Gaozu's rule became gradually more autocratic throughout his tenure and, if not for his untimely death, it is certain his strikingly high esteem would have fallen many echelons below positive. Thus, when Li Jie ascended to the throne, he became the last of the Ming Emperors to establish his court in the Ming Palace, located in present-day Nanjing. Adopting the era name of Xizong, the Emperor's mother ruled as ceremonial regent for close to ten years before Xizong himself assumed the obligations of ruler; one of his earliest decisions was to relocate his court to Beijing.

Liqin's tenure as regent is cataloged as Xizong's "early rule." Indeed, those formative years were not without their fair share of interest and intrigue, adjectives that have persistently followed Xizong's nearly 70 year rule. Xizong took his first concubine at the age of 13, and his relationship with Dao, who was not much younger than he, became well-known in the Ming Palace. She quickly became a favorite of the young Emperor, although was reported to have clashed with the tight restrictions Liqin placed over her son's inner-circle. As early as 1428, it was rumored that Xizong swore to Dao that he would be a monogamous spouse; this was not the custom of Ming rulers, and it caused necessary unrest within the court, as Dao had only birthed a single daughter. Fearing that the Ming line would extinguish with Xizong, high-ranking officials, allegedly unionized by the Dowager Empress herself, revolted against Dao with unimpeachable accusations of witchcraft, an illegal practice at the time. Virtually powerless to the whims of the Regent, Dao committed suicide before punishment could be exacted. Her daughter was ostracized from Nanjing, and her whereabouts have remained unknown, even to her father, in the decades since. Whether she lived past infancy is indefinite.

The Emperor's private grief was said to be "immense," resulting in two years of strictly observed celibacy. Yet, this period of mourning eventually led to Xizong assuming the control of the empire, which allowed him to meet and take Zhu Jingfei as his nominal Empress.

Reign as Emperor
The Dowager Empress' decade-long reign as Regent witnessed witnessed increasingly nepotistic and piffling imperial politics, along with a dramatically centralised state. When Xizong took on the mantle of responsibility in 1430, at the age of 16, he modeled his administration after Confucian ideology and established himself as a diligent, empathetic ruler: one who strictly supervised affairs of state, reduced taxes, and mitigated government spending, often pouring endless hours into appointing and employing wise ministers to imperial posts. Liqin's role in the Forbidden City had diminished drastically by as early as January 1431.

One of Xizong's earliest projects as Emperor included repairing the Great Wall of China. Maintenance of the wall had been inconsistent throughout the history of the Ming dynasty, and in the infancy of Xizong’s own rule, it required significant repair work which he set about completing almost immediately after ascending to the throne––criticised as perhaps ornamentary, but fundamental to China’s image, it too increased the Emperor’s reputation for patronage and foresight. Emboldened by his successes on the home front, Xizong launched ambitious flotillas to expand the Chinese tribute system to other countries; not only to provide offerings to those neighbours which had fallen beneath his ancestor’s scope of influence, but to extol his burgeoning Empire’s glory. Through the conduits of these predetermined trade routes, Xizong authorised the export of porcelain in immense quantities, subsidizing taxes imposed upon tradesmen to perfect the technique necessary to create a staple in Chinese manufacturing. Within his own court, the Emperor tolerated the presence of Christian missionaries and Muslim envoys, whose far-flung tales inspired him to increase China’s already sizable market for book illustration––a decision which became markedly twofold, as it both expanded literacy in the Empire and gave birth to a dependable breed of tradesmen at the mercy of their sympathetic ruler.

Later years
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Legacy
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