Early Life
Xiao Cha was born in 519, as the third son of Xiao Tong, then the crown prince to Liang Dynasty's founder Emperor Wu. His mother was Xiao Tong's concubine Consort Gong. He was considered studious, concentrating particularly on Buddhist sutras, and as Emperor Wu was a devout Buddhist, he was happy that his grandson studied sutras in this manner. When Emperor Wu created Xiao Tong's sons dukes sometime between 520 and 527, Xiao Cha was created the Duke of Qujiang.
In 531, Xiao Tong died, but instead of creating Xiao Tong's oldest son Xiao Huan (蕭歡) the Duke of Huarong crown prince to succeed him (as was expected under Confucian principles of succession), Emperor Wu created Xiao Tong's younger brother Xiao Gang crown prince instead. However, he felt that he did not treat Xiao Tong's sons fairly, and therefore he created them princes—in Xiao Cha's case, the Prince of Yueyang—and gave them honors only slightly subordinate to their uncles. Because the capital commandery of Eastern Yang Province (東揚州, modern central and eastern Zhejiang), Kuaiji Commandery (會稽, roughly modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang), was the richest commandery of the entire empire, he rotated them as the governor of Eastern Yang Province, and Xiao Cha was thus rotated there sometime before 546. However, despite these special treatments, Xiao Cha was still angry that he and his brothers were passed over by Emperor Wu. He saw that Emperor Wu, late in his long reign (since 502), was ruling over an imperial regime that was becoming inefficient and beset by factionalism between Emperor Wu's sons, and therefore, when he was made the governor of Yong Province (雍州, modern northwestern Hubei) in 546, he thought that this would be a good chance for him to establish a power base of his own, and therefore he cultivated the loyalty of the people to him by governing carefully.
Read more about this topic: Emperor Xuan Of Western Liang
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