Son of a singing girl who became empress, heir for thirty-one years. He struck off the investigator's head with his own hand, held Chang'an five days, and hanged at Hu.
You wretch of Zhao! Was it not enough for you to set a king and his son at odds in Zhao? Must you set my father and me at odds as well?Liu Ju, the Crown Prince, over the head of Jiang Chong whom he struck off with his own hand, 91 BCE; Hanshu, juan 45, Biography of Jiang Chong (the same curse in juan 63, Biographies of the Five Sons of Emperor Wu)
Appears in
Relations
- Emperor Wu father — His father made him heir at seven and set him the Gyang Chun in the rival reading, and in the end wrote his chancellor the order to clear the streets of him.
- Jiang Chong enemies — The commissioner dug paulownia figures among the column bases of the eastern palace, and the prince cut him down and cursed him as the man who had already divided one king and son.
- Shi De client — His Junior Tutor, the only voice the record keeps from inside the eastern palace, who argued the household must strike before it was struck.
Myth vs record
The crown prince made war on his father to seize the throne and died a rebel.
Ban Gu files him under the severe posthumous name li, but the same chapters twice say he was frightened and could not make himself clear, and that the digging had reached his courtyard while his father lay ill at the summer palace with no answer going back. He held Chang'an five days and hanged himself in a storehouse at Hu two hundred li east of the walls. The dynasty never treated him as a criminal: his grandson came out of a gaol to the throne and rebuilt and endowed his tomb-park (Hanshu, juan 63; juan 8; juan 66).