In fact, the politics of foreign relatives does not only take place in the imperial court, but also in the family, which is rooted in the ethics of the Chinese.
Regarding this point, we have many folk sayings that are very vivid, such as "Uncle is called a kiss, break the bones and connect the tendons", "Worship the prime minister, don't forget your uncle", "On the Jiang Taigong, on the ground, the uncle is the uncle". Of course, in addition to my uncle, there is also my aunt, who said that "I have read thousands of books, and my aunt is the closest to me", "The Great Wall is long, and my aunt is more than my mother". But despite this, it is difficult for the aunt to become a relative, and it is the uncle who becomes a relative.
said that it was the uncle's family, but in fact, it was the mother's family. The emperor represents his father's family, and his aunt belongs to his father's family. Compared with his father and aunt, his mother's family is a foreign surname, so he is a relative.
Not to mention that in ancient times, when men were superior to women, that is, in modern times, after a woman gets married, she can often rely on her mother's family, and her mother's family is her relatives.
Family and country are the same on the issue of foreign relatives.
At the beginning of a dynasty, the emperors are all strong, and at this time, the relatives are mostly a kind of help from the imperial family, but as time goes by, the emperor's life becomes corrupted, the life span will become shorter and shorter, and the sons will become younger and younger. It is naturally difficult for the young son to become the emperor to take power, the father is dead, and the only person he can rely on is his mother, and the only thing his mother can rely on is his mother's family, that is, his mother's father, his mother's brothers, and his mother's nephews.
It is natural for a relative to become a force.
And the relatives who have seized the power will not be willing to make the older nephew emperor if possible, and will be willing to set up the younger emperor so that they can continue to be in power.
Therefore, relatives have become a stubborn disease that is not easy for dynasties.
The Western Han Dynasty showed such signs very early.
Liu Bang's queen Lu Pheasant showed the heart of an extraordinary woman's careerist from the beginning, she could tolerate Liu Bang's indifference to her, but she would not let go of power.
Initially, this ambition led her to help Liu Bang conquer the world, and when she got the world, she focused more on consolidating power.
As powerful emperors, Liu Bang and Liu Che have both worked hard to eliminate the danger of their relatives.
Liu Bang made a white horse oath with everyone who played hooligans, and everyone who was not the king of the Liu family could be punished and killed.
When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty Liu Che was about to die, he faced his youngest son Liu Fuling, who was only nine years old, and he knew that after his son became the emperor, the power would definitely be his son's mother, Mrs. Gouyi, and she would reuse her mother's family, and the power of the Liu family would fall, so Liu Che had to kill Mrs. Gouyi, whom he liked very much and was very beautiful.
But Liu Bang and Liu Che's actions can stop a certain person, but they can't ** all their relatives.
This is a dead knot that ancient dynasties could not untie, and it is also a common disease of China's ethical society.
Therefore, after Liu Bang's death, the queen Lu Pheasant, as the queen mother, monopolized power in the second, third, and fourth emperors, reused the Lu family's children, abolished the oath that non-Liu family could not be crowned king, and let a large number of Lu children be crowned kings.
Among them, the second emperor Liu Ying is the son of Lü Pheasant, and the third and fourth emperors are the grandsons of Lü Pheasant.
After the death of Lu Pheasant, the children of the Liu family killed all the relatives of the Lu family in one fell swoop, let the power return to the Liu family, and set up Liu Heng, an older son of Liu Bang, as the emperor.
When the emperor is older, he can restrain the relatives, so Emperor Liu Hengshi of Han Wen has no trouble with his relatives.
But by the time of his son, that is, Emperor Liu Qi of the Han Dynasty, the power was in the hands of his mother Empress Dowager Dou from the beginning, and Empress Dowager Dou appointed Dou's children without exception, such as Empress Dowager Dou's nephew Dou Ying.
And when Emperor Liu Qi of the Han Dynasty died, he passed the throne to his son Liu Che, who was only 15 years old, and his biological mother Wang Huan's half-brother Tian Wei naturally became the prime minister, and then Liu Che reused his empress Wei Zifu's younger brother Wei Qing, and Empress Wei's sister's son Huo Quai.
However, the talented Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty still had the ability to control his relatives.
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty thought that by killing his son's biological mother, Mrs. Gou Yi, he could help his son Liu Fuling eliminate the harm of his relatives, but it was difficult to do.
There is no mother's family, but there is a queen's family, so the wife's father, that is, Liu Fuling's father-in-law, Shangguan Ji, became a minister, and Empress Shangguan's maternal grandfather, Huo Guang, Huo Quai's younger brother, also became a minister.
Later emperors became younger and weaker, and the dictatorship of relatives became a norm.
The 10th Emperor Liu Ai, who had been born as a commoner, had a sense of inferiority complex and isolation when he became emperor, and he only felt safe when he appointed his relatives, such as Shi Gao, the younger brother of his grandmother Shi Liangdi, and Xu Yanshou, the uncle of his wife, Empress Xu, to power.
And by the time of the twelfth emperor Liu Biao, first his father-in-law Xu Jia was in power, and later it was the younger brothers of Liu Biao's biological mother, Wang Zhengjun, who were in power, they were Wang Feng, Wang Gen, and Wang Yin.
By the time of the thirteenth emperor Liu Xin, Liu Xin's younger brother Fu Xi and Liu Xin's maternal grandmother, Fu Xi, the younger brother of the Empress Dowager Fu, and Ding Ming, the younger brother of his biological mother, the Empress Dowager Ding, were in power.
By the fourteenth and fifteenth emperor Liu Jizi, it was Wang Mang who was in power when Liu Ying.
And Wang Mang is the nephew of Liu Jizi's Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun, and is the father of Liu Jizi's wife, Empress Wang, and the father of Liu Ying's aunt, the Empress Dowager.
When the Liu regime was the last two emperors, it naturally passed into the hands of his cousin Wang Mang.
As the empress dowager, Wang Zhengjun used his nephew Wang Mang to successfully kill or drive away all the Qi people surnamed Fu and Ding, and also successfully prevented Liu Jizi's relatives, that is, Liu Jizi's mother, the Wei family, from coming to the capital, and firmly controlled the power in the hands of the Wang family.
The Western Han Dynasty had been mired in the dictatorship of foreign relatives from the second emperor after its establishment, and this dictatorship lasted until the fifteenth emperor, Liu Xin.
There is no doubt that two-year-old Liu Xin cannot control his own fate, and therefore cannot dominate the fate of the Western Han Dynasty.
The slip of the Western Han regime into the new dynasty established by Wang Mang became a historical inevitability.
And in this historical inevitability, foreign relatives have always existed in history as a political force, and their influence threatens the stability of a dynasty.
But there is no antidote to such a dead knot.
Just like a family, the mother's family is too involved in the family affairs of the daughter and son-in-law, which will generally greatly affect the stability and harmony of the family.
An important reason why the mother's family interferes too much in her daughter's family affairs is that the son-in-law lacks assertiveness and is difficult to take charge of himself, and the daughter is very dependent on the support of her parents' parents and brothers.
Just as the emperor will become younger and less capable as time goes by, there is often a great danger of power transfer when relatives are a kind of dependence.
The Western Han Dynasty came to an end quietly in this kind of trouble.