Emperor Xian of Han
Emperor Xian reigned over the Han for thirty-one years and ruled it for none of them. He was put on the throne at eight by the warlord who had sacked the capital, burned its libraries and marched the population west, and he was a possession from that moment. When that warlord was murdered the boy emperor escaped east through a countryside emptied by war, living for a time in a ruined building and eating what his remaining courtiers could beg. In 196 a rising commander took him in, moved the court to his own base, and understood better than his rivals what the emperor was worth: not obedience, but legitimacy. Every order that commander issued for the next twenty-four years went out in Xian's name, which made his enemies rebels rather than competitors. The arrangement is the origin of a phrase still used in Chinese about holding the emperor to command the nobles, and it worked. It survived the defeat at the Red Cliffs that ended any chance of a quick reunification, and it outlasted the protector himself. What it could not survive was the protector's son, who had no interest in the fiction. In 220 Xian was required to abdicate in favour of that son, who declared a new dynasty and gave the retired emperor a duchy, a comfortable estate and fourteen more years of life - a mild ending by the standards of what usually happened to deposed Chinese emperors, and a deliberate one, since the new regime wanted the abdication to look like the orderly transfer of a mandate rather than a seizure. It did not work. Two rival kingdoms declared themselves within two years, each claiming to be the legitimate successor, and the empire that had held for four centuries spent the next sixty in three pieces and the following three hundred years divided. The Han did not fall in a battle; it was signed away by a man who had never been permitted to govern.
- Lived: 181 CE – 234 CE
- Nationality: Chinese
- Roles: head_of_state, monarch
