Background
Yuan Lang was born in 513, as the third son of Yuan Rong (元融) the Prince of Zhangwu, a key official in the Northern Wei imperial government who was a distant relative of the then-reigning Emperor Xuanwu. His mother was Lady Cheng. (It is unclear whether she was Yuan Rong's wife or concubine.) In 526, while fighting the agrarian rebel leader Ge Rong (葛榮), Yuan Rong was killed in battle, and Yuan Lang's older brother Yuan Jingzhe (元景哲) inherited the title of Prince of Zhangwu. Yuan Lang was said to be intelligent in his youth.
In 529, at age 16, Yuan Lang became an army officer, serving on the staff of Yuan Su (元肅) the Prince of Lu Commandery, who was the governor of Si Province (肆州, roughly modern Xinzhou, Shanxi). In spring 531, he became the governor of Bohai Commandery (勃海, in modern Cangzhou, Hebei).
At the time that Yuan Lang became the governor of Bohai Commandery, the imperial government was dominated by members of the paramount general Erzhu Rong, who, after Emperor Xiaozhuang had killed Erzhu Rong in 530, overthrew and killed Emperor Xiaozhuang, installing Yuan Ye and Emperor Jiemin successively. In summer 531, the general Gao Huan, believing the Erzhus to be corrupt and to have lost the support of the people, rose in rebellion at Xindu (信都, in modern Hengshui, Hebei), and while initially he claimed to be merely wanting to overthrow the Erzhus and still recognizing Emperor Jiemin, he soon, at the urging of his general Sun Teng (孫騰), came to believe that he needed to have an emperor under his control who could issue edicts as he wished. In winter 531, he therefore declared Yuan Lang, whose Bohai Commandery was under his control by that point, emperor, even though Yuan Lang's lineage was distant from that of recent emperors and was not even an imperial prince himself.
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