Chinese Emperors: Executions and Forced Suicides
I have been reading the history of imperial China, a time when dynasties rose and fell like clockwork in a pattern that seems almost cyclical. I have observed that there were many instances of the death penalty being meted out (either by public execution or by forced suicide) by Emperors and Kings to: Sons, Prime Ministers , Generals and Military Strategists, Eunuchs and even Concubines. This post is a chronicle of a phenomenon that I do not think is found in Western history. The Sons Who Never Made It to the Throne Being the Crown Prince was one of the most dangerous jobs in the empire — proximity to power made you a threat long before you ever wore the crown. • Fusu (Qin, 210 BCE) — eldest son of Qin Shi Huang. A forged edict, engineered by the eunuch Zhao Gao and Chancellor Li Si, ordered him to end his own life. He obeyed without question — and the empire he should have inherited collapsed within four years. • Liu Ju (Han, 91 BCE) — Emperor Wu's own Crown Prince, caught ...