Yuan Zhao (元釗) (526 – May 17, 528), also known in history as Youzhu (幼主, literally "the young lord"), was briefly an
emperor of the
Xianbei-led Chinese
Northern Wei dynasty.
Background
Yuan Zhao was a son of Yuan Baohui (元寶暉) the Prince of Lintao, who was a grandson of
Emperor Xiaowen
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother (empr ...
(via his son Yuan Yu (元愉)) and therefore cousin to
Emperor Xiaoming, the reigning emperor at the time of Yuan Zhao's birth in 526.
Reign
In 528, Emperor Xiaoming was poisoned to death by his mother
Empress Dowager Hu after trying to curb her power and trying to kill her lover Zheng Yan (鄭儼). Emperor Xiaoming was sonless, and while Empress Dowager Hu initially tried to pretend that
Emperor Xiaoming's daughter, by his
concubine Consort Pan, was actually a son, she soon realized that she could not carry on the deception, and she named Yuan Zhao emperor—selecting him due to his young age so that she could control him.
The general
Erzhu Rong, with whom Emperor Xiaoming had conspired against Empress Dowager Hu, refused to recognize Yuan Zhao as emperor, quickly descending on the capital
Luoyang with his troops and declaring a son of Emperor Xiaowen's brother
Yuan Xie,
Yuan Ziyou
Emperor Xiaozhuang of Northern Wei (, 507–531; r. 528-530), personal name Yuan Ziyou (), courtesy name Yanda (彥達), was an emperor of China of the Xianbei-led Northern Wei dynasty. He was placed on the throne by General Erzhu Rong, who refuse ...
, emperor (as Emperor Xiaozhuang). Less than two months after Yuan Zhao was declared emperor, Erzhu had captured Luoyang and put Empress Dowager Hu and Yuan Zhao under arrest. After Empress Dowager Hu tried, unsuccessfully, to defend her actions before Erzhu, Erzhu had her and Yuan Zhao thrown into the
Yellow River to drown.
Legacy
Traditional historians treat Yuan Zhao ambiguously, and subsequent Northern Wei emperors never explicitly officially declared whether he was an emperor or not. He was not given an imperial
posthumous name or
temple name, but neither was his imperial status declared null. The official history of Northern Wei, the ''
Book of Wei
The ''Book of Wei'', also known by its Chinese name as the ''Wei Shu'', is a classic Chinese historical text compiled by Wei Shou from 551 to 554, and is an important text describing the history of the Northern Wei and Eastern Wei from 386 to 5 ...
'', written during the succeeding
Northern Qi, did not list Yuan Zhao in its imperial biographies (and indeed, did not have a biography for him or his father at all), listing the events during his brief reign under the biography of Emperor Xiaoming, but used the term ''beng'' (崩) to describe his death,
[''Book of Wei'', vol. 9.] a term reserved for the deaths of emperors and empresses.
Ancestry
Notes
References
* ''
Zizhi Tongjian'',
vol. 152.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yuan, Zhao
Northern Wei emperors
526 births
528 deaths
6th-century Chinese monarchs
6th-century murdered monarchs
Deaths by drowning
Murdered Chinese emperors
Murdered Chinese children
Child rulers from Asia
Rulers who died as children