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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

24. Another of This Great Ruler’s Sons Liked Torturing and Murdering Concubines

Pottery model of a Han palace. Wikimedia

Prince Tuan might have been bad, but his brother, Prince Chu, was worse. Chu once had one of his concubines whipped, then personally chopped off her head. He had another concubine tortured with red hot irons. When his wife accused one of his concubines of cheating on him with an artist, prince Chu had the accused whipped, then gathered the rest of his harem and made them burn her with hot needles.

However, princes Tuan and Chu were relatively tame compared to their brother, Prince Chien, who was an out-and-out sadistic monster. Unlike Prince Tuan, who did not like women and felt sick looking at them, Prince Chien liked women. Unfortunately, Chien liked women in a variety of sick ways, to their misfortune. Chien carried on i-n-c-e-s-t-o-u-s relationships with his own sisters – raping some of them when they did not willingly submit to his advances. That was just for starters.

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.