Spanning over 2000 years, from the great First Emperor, buried with his terracotta army in the 3rd Century BC, to the last emperor, enthroned in the Forbidden City in 1911, this book details the lives and personalities of all 157 Chinese emperors.



Spanning over 2000 years, from the great First Emperor, buried with his terracotta army in the 3rd Century BC, to the last emperor, enthroned in the Forbidden City in 1911, this book details the lives and personalities of all 157 Chinese emperors. Weathering centuries of violent change, the Chinese emperor remained at the centre of the largest political unit in the world, the Middle Kingdom. This extraordinary group of men - and one woman, Wu Zetian - had virtues and failings that were magnified by their exalted position. Some were villainous debauchees, or simply weak, leaving the control of the empire to their eunuchs, concubines or dowager empresses. Others were great warriors, literary scholars and painters. The book includes: biographical accounts of all 157 emperors of China, from Qin Shihuangdi, the great "First Emperor", to Puyi, the four-year-old last emperor; timeliness throughout with at-a-glance visual guides to the length and important events of each emperor's reign; datafiles for every emperor listing key information, such as name at birth and in Chinese calligraphic script, wives and concubines, manner of death and location of tomb; extensive quotations from contemporary sources; numerous sidebars and special features ranging from the Great Wall of China to the opium wars; and illustrations including portraits of the emperors, art treasures from imperial tombs and maps, detailing, for example, the Silk Roads and the maritime expeditions of the Ming Dynasty.