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The Dark Side of Great Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2020 33 min

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23. A Great Imperial Dynasty Filled With Monsters

Emperor Jing of Han raised some horrible kids. Wikimedia

Prince Chien enjoyed tormenting his wives and concubines. Some of those who displeased him – and there was no telling what might displease the psycho prince from one day to the next – he forced to sit naked in trees for days on end. Others, he forced to keep time to a drum all day long. Yet others, he simply starved to death. He also liked drowning young boys and girls in a palace lake, as their desperate thrashings amused and aroused him.

Princes Tuan, Chu, and Chien were not the only degenerates in that family. Ancient Chinese sources hold that quite a few of Emperor Jing’s relatives were sick sadists. According to contemporary sources, male members of the great imperial family routinely had i-n-c-e-s-t with their sisters and other female relatives, and were not above raping any married woman that caught their eye.

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.