Early Career
Fu Deng was born in 343, to Fu Chang (苻敞), a distant grandnephew of Former Qin's founder Fu Jiàn, while still under Later Zhao rule. After Fu Jiàn founded Former Qin in 351, Fu Chang served as a general and a commandery governor. During the reign of Fu Jiàn's cruel and whimsical son Fu Sheng (r. 355–357), Fu Chang was executed, but he was posthumously honored after Fu Sheng was overthrown by his cousin Fu Jiān. Fu Jiān was impressed by Fu Deng's abilities, and when he grew older, Fu Deng was made the county magistrate of the capital Chang'an. Later, however, for unspecified faults, he was demoted to be the county magistrate for Didao (狄道, in modern Dingxi, Gansu).
After Former Qin began to collapse in 384 and Fu Jiān was killed by the Later Qin general Yao Chang in 385, Fu Deng became a subordinate of the general Mao Xing (毛興), who sought to control all of the provinces in the west still nominally under Former Qin rule, but his soldiers became weary from all of the battles and assassinated him in 386, replacing him with Wei Ping (衛平), a very old general who was the head of the clan. However, these soldiers soon became convinced that Wei was too old to accomplish much, and they deposed Wei and replaced him with Fu Deng. Fu Deng submitted a report of these events to Fu Jiān's son Fu Pi, the new emperor, and Fu Pi commissioned him as a provincial governor and created him the Prince of Nan'an.
The battles between Fu Deng and Yao Chang after the former replaced Wei Ping coincided with a time of droughts and famines. Fu Deng called the killed enemies shóushí (熟食, "cooked food" or "readied food") and told his soldiers, "Fight in the morning and you will have meat to eat in the evening. Why worry about hunger?" The soldiers followed his order, ate the corpses, and had the force for battles. Hearing this, Yao Chang hurried to call his brother Yao Shuode (姚碩德) for help, saying, "If you do not come, we are going to be eaten off by Fu Deng."
Later in 386, Fu Pi died in battle against Jin, and the territory under his direct control (modern Shanxi), as well as his officials, fell into the hands of the Western Yan emperor Murong Yong. His official Kou Qian (寇遣) escorted his sons Fu Yi (苻懿) the Prince of Bohai and Fu Chang (苻昶, note different character than Fu Deng's father) the Prince of Jibei to Fu Deng's domain. Fu Deng, after mourning for Fu Pi, proposed to have Fu Yi declared emperor, but his subordinates all opined that given the state Former Qin was in (down to holding not much more than the territory under Fu Deng's control), the state needed an older emperor; at their suggestion, Fu Deng himself took the throne. He made Fu Yi his crown prince.
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