Early Years
As the nephew of the Hongzhi Emperor, Zhu Houcong was not brought up to succeed to the throne. However, the throne became vacant in 1521 with the sudden death of the Hongzhi Emperor's son, Emperor Zhengde, who did not leave an heir. The 14 year old Zhu Houcong was chosen to become emperor, and so relocated from his father's fief (near today's Zhongxiang, in Hubei Province) to Beijing.
As the Jiajing Emperor, Zhu Houcong had his parents posthumously elevated to an "honorary" imperial rank, and had an imperial-style Xianling Mausoleum built for them near Zhongxiang.
Read more about this topic: Jiajing Emperor
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“And the immortal music of Chopin
Which we had been discovering for several months
Since we were fourteen years old. And coffee grounds,
And the wonder of hands, and the wonder of the day
When the child discovers her first dead hand.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)