Emperor Hui of Han - Marriage and Children

Marriage and Children

In winter 192 BC, Emperor Hui married Empress Zhang, a marriage that would not yield any children. However, whether Emperor Hui actually had children during or before his reign is a controversial question. The officials, including Chen Ping and Zhou Bo (周勃), who would later overthrow the Lü clan after the deaths of both Emperor Hui and Empress Dowager Lü, claimed that Emperor Hui had no sons—but that Empress Zhang, at Empress Dowager Lü's instigation, stole eight boys from other people, put their mothers to death, and made the children her own. Modern historians have split opinions on the issue, but largely believe that the boys were actually Emperor Hui's sons by concubines and that Empress Zhang did indeed put their mothers to death and make them her own children. (As, for example, Bo Yang pointed out, it would be logically incongruent, if Empress Zhang did steal these children from elsewhere, for her to put only the mothers but not the fathers to death.) Under this theory, the officials denied the imperial ancestry of these children in fear of the fact that they were also descendants of Empress Dowager Lü and her clan, and therefore might avenge the slaughter of the Lü clan—a reason that they themselves admitted. Except for Liu Gong (who was deposed and executed by Empress Dowager Lü), the other children either died young by natural causes or were executed by the officials after they made Liu Heng, the Prince of Dai (Emperor Wen) the emperor.

One can perhaps analogize these princes to the English "Princes in the Tower" -- innocent children who were the victim of dynastic infighting and their own bloodlines.