After Removal
Yang Yong was put under house arrest at his palace and still given proper supplies, but Yang Guang was put in charge of having Yang Yong guarded. Yang Yong made repeated requests to personally appeal to Emperor Wen, but each request was blocked by Yang Guang. Yang Yong, desperate, often climbed onto trees to holler at Emperor Wen's palace, seeking to have Emperor Wen hear his cries. However, when Emperor Wen heard the cries, Yang Su falsely reported that Yang Yong had become irreparably psychotic after his removal. As a result, Emperor Wen never saw Yang Yong again.
In 602, Empress Dugu died. Thereafter, Emperor Wen began to have relationships with his concubines, particularly favoring Consort Chen (the sister of Chen's final emperor Chen Shubao) and Consort Cai.
In either 602 or 603, after Yang Yong's younger brother Yang Xiu the Prince of Shu was similarly accused of crimes and deposed, the official Pei Su (裴肅) submitted a petition to have Yang Yong and Yang Xiu be released from house arrest and given small fiefs, a proposal that Emperor Wen was tempted by, but ultimately did not accept.
In summer 606, Emperor Wen, while visiting his vacation palace Renshou Palace (仁壽宮, in modern Baoji, Shaanxi), grew gravely ill. Traditional historians allege (but admit that they did not have conclusive proof) that while Emperor Wen was growing ill, Yang Guang tried to rape Consort Chen. When Consort Chen revealed this to Emperor Wen, Emperor Wen became angry and wanted to depose Yang Guang and restore Yang Yong. However, Yang Guang and Yang Su had the two officials that Emperor Wen entrusted this task to—Liu Shu (柳述, the husband to Yang Yong's sister Yang Awu (楊阿五) the Princess Lanling) and Yuan Yan (元巖) -- arrested, and Emperor Wen soon died, a death that most historians attribute to assassination by Yang Guang's associate Zhang Heng (張衡).
Emperor Wen's death was kept secret for eight days, before Yang Guang announced it and took the throne (as Emperor Yang). Emperor Yang sent Yang Su's brother Yang Yue (楊約) back to Daxing. Once Yang Yue was back at Daxing, he forged an edict from Emperor Wen, ordering Yang Yong to commit suicide. When Yang Yong refused, Yang Yue strangled him, and only after Yang Yong died declared Emperor Wen's death. Emperor Yang posthumously created Yang Yong the Prince of Fangling, but did not allow any of Yang Yong's sons, who were reduced to commoner rank when Yang Yong was deposed, to inherit the title. In 607, Emperor Yang had Yang Yong's sons put to death.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Yong, Yang |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Chinese emperor |
| Date of birth | |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | 604 |
| Place of death | |
Read more about this topic: Yang Yong
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“If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,—and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)