A Ming emperor fought his court for three years over who his parents were
To make his succession legal, Ming officials wanted the new Jiajing Emperor to become the adopted son of a previous emperor, turning his real parents into uncle and aunt. He refused. The quarrel, known as the Great Rites Controversy, raged for three years and ended with his opponents banished, exiled or dead.
Zhu Houcong was born on 16 September 1507 in Anlu, in central China, the eldest son of a provincial prince known for poetry and calligraphy, who taught him the Confucian classics himself. He was never meant to rule. But in April 1521 his cousin, the Zhengde Emperor, died without an heir, and Houcong, just recently confirmed as Prince of Xing, was the nearest male relative. The trouble was a succession rule reserving the throne for an empress's descendants; his grandmother had been a concubine.
Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe's solution was adoption. The teenage prince would have none of it. Arriving in Beijing, he refused to enter as an heir apparent, insisting he had been summoned as emperor, and was enthroned on 27 May 1521, reportedly choosing his own era name. He demanded imperial rank for his parents, and a faction led by Zhang Cong backed him. Yang was forced out in 1524; when hundreds of officials protested outside the audience hall, they were beaten at court, 17 died, and the rest were exiled. The episode established an emperor who made decisions on his own judgment, which critics saw as despotic.
His reign stretched to 1567. From 1542 he lived not in the Forbidden City but in the West Park, surrounded by eunuchs, Taoist priests and trusted ministers, in palaces modelled on a Taoist land of immortals. Chasing eternal life, he sent priests across the country for rare minerals; the resulting elixirs contained arsenic, lead and mercury and may have shortened his life.
Beyond the palace walls the pressures mounted. Altan Khan united the Mongols and, refused open trade, raided up to the outskirts of Beijing in 1550, while pirates plagued the southeast coast, peaking in the 1550s. Yet the economy grew in farming, industry and trade. Travelling south after his mother's death, he was shaken by the starving refugees he saw, released silver for relief, and later asked exam candidates why poverty persisted despite his faithful rituals.
Source: Jiajing Emperor
