Wanli's Grandfather Takes the Dragon Throne

1505

The Zhengde Emperor, eccentric and fourteen, inherited Ming China from the austere Hongzhi. He built a pleasure palace called the Leopard Quarter, adopted a Muslim name, and roamed the frontier brawling with his bodyguards while Confucian ministers tore their hair in the Forbidden City. The Zhengde Emperor's eccentricities revealed the tension between imperial prerogative and bureaucratic control that would plague the late Ming.