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Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 61, The Forgotten God King.

Last time we left both of our fifth century Chinese empires in a real bind. Both of them, within a year of one another,

had had their respective emperors brutally assassinated and their

dynastic stability thrown into question.

In the north, Wei was faced with the distinct possibility of winding up usurped by a court e eunuch and going the way of so many other northern

dynasties before it. And in the south, with Emperor One's death, so to end the golden era of the southern

states known as the reign of Yuenja, heralding a decline into ultimate

infighting and eventual collapse.

Today though, we're going to be exploring one of the often forgotten eras of Northern China,

the one right after Emperor Taiwan's death. And make note, this isn't exactly what I'd planned on going in.

This episode was one that I'd thought was going to cover some nobody, an emperor that was little more than a fly-by in terms of importance.

Someone who was a kind of placeholder, who we'd spend maybe half an episode on before moving down south to see what was going on in Leo Song. But the more I researched it and the more information I

came across the more it became bleedingly obvious that Emperor Wanchung of Northern Wei, far from

being some placeholder, was actually one of the linchpins of the entire Northern

Wei state, both during his reign and in the century to follow.

And in large part, the reason he's so often forgotten by just about everybody, Chinese and

non-Chinese alike, is that that his reign and indeed his entire life was completely

overshadowed by the Emperor who came before. His own grandfather, Emperor Ty Wu, who will get

someone referring to a little while later on as East Asia's

...