Yongle Emperor - Legacy

Legacy

Many have seen Yongle as in a lifelong pursuit of power, prestige, and glory. He respected and worked hard to preserve Chinese culture by designing monuments such as the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, while undermining and cleansing Chinese society of foreign cultures. He deeply admired and wished to save his father's accomplishments and spent a lot of time proving his claim to the throne. His military accomplishments and leadership are rivaled by only a handful of people in world history. His reign was a mixed blessing for the Chinese populace. Yongle's economic, educational, and military reforms provided unprecedented benefits for the people, but his despotic style of government set up a spy agency. Despite these negatives, he is considered an architect and keeper of Chinese culture, history, and statecraft and an influential ruler in Chinese history.

He may have suffered from undisclosed impotence in his later life. He is remembered very much for his cruelty, just like his father. He killed most of the Jian Wen palace servants, tortured many Jianwen Emperor loyalists to death, killed or by other means badly treated their relatives. His successor emperor freed most of them alive. In 1420, he ordered 2,800 ladies-in-waiting to a slow slicing death, and watched, because he thought one of his favourite Joseon concubine had been poisoned. However, unlike his father, he did not kill most of his generals, and he entrusted power to eunuchs like Zheng He, with serious consequences for subsequent Ming emperors. He showed some regrets over his cruelty, built the Yongle bell, but still had about thirty beautiful women hanged to be buried with him after he died.