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The Dark Side of Great Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2020 33 min

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony - Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Susan B. Anthony, left, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. NJTV

26. This Great Chinese Emperor Raised Perverted Monsters

Emperor Jing (reigned 157 BC – 141 BC) was among the great rulers of China’s Han Dynasty. He consolidated imperial control by crushing feudal aristocrats who tried to run their fiefdoms as de facto independent realms. His reign was seen as a good one, and he governed with a light hand. He lowered taxes and lifted other burdens from commoners, and paved the way for the Han Dynasty to reach a pinnacle under his successors. Unfortunately, in his own household, Emperor Jing raised monsters.

First of those was prince Tuan, who had some sexual hangups. One of the main tasks of a royal prince was to sire sons to ensure the dynasty’s continuity. However, Prince Tuan could not get it up with his wives and concubines, and suffered what Chinese texts described as a “withering of his potency”. Tuan became physically ill whenever he approached a woman. In itself, that was just unfortunate. How he dealt with it, though, was savage.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.