Family Background and Accession To The Throne
Liu Hong was a hereditary marquess—the Marquess of Jieduting. (A "ting marquess had a march that would be one village or, in rarer cases, two or three villages.) His was a third generation creation, as his father Liu Chang (劉萇) and grandfather Liu Shu (劉淑) were both Marquesses of Jieduting as well. His great-grandfather was Liu Kai (劉開), the Prince of Hejian, and a son of Emperor Zhang. His mother Lady Dong was Marquess Chang's wife.
When Emperor Huan died in 168 without a son to be heir, his wife Empress Dou Miao became empress dowager and regent, and she examined the rolls of the imperial clan to consider the next emperor. For reasons unknown, her assistant Liu Shu (劉儵) recommended Marquess Hong, and after consulting with her father Dou Wu and the Confucian scholar official Chen Fan, Empress Dowager Dou made him emperor, at age 12. Empress Dowager Dou continued to serve as regent. Emperor Ling posthumously honored his father and grandfather as emperors, and his grandmother as an empress. His mother, because of Empress Dowager Dou's presence, was not honored as an empress or empress dowager, but as an imperial consort.
Read more about this topic: Emperor Ling Of Han
Famous quotes containing the words family, background and/or throne:
“Our children need to be able to see us take a stand for a value and against injustices, be those values and injustices in the family room, the boardroom, the classroom, or on the city streets.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only businesswise-merely as retail differs from wholesale.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)