Jiajing Emperor

Zhu Houcong was born a cousin to the Zhengde Emperor in 1507, so his selection as successor in 1521 blindsided the court - the previous emperor had died without an heir. The government's choice immediately sparked the Great Rites Controversy, a three-year fight over how to legally justify his accession; the new emperor won, and his opponents were banished or executed. In 1542 he moved out of the Forbidden City into the West Park, building a sprawl of palaces and Taoist temples modeled on the Land of Immortals, staffed by loyal eunuchs and priests. His hunt for life-extending elixirs took a dark turn: he dispatched Taoists across the empire to gather minerals for potions laced with arsenic, lead, and mercury, and his interest in young girls deepened. Meanwhile, Altan Khan united the Mongols in the 1540s and, after the emperor refused trade and reinforced the Great Wall, raided down to Beijing's outskirts in 1550; wokou piracy surged along the southeast coast despite harsher trade laws. The economy grew through it all, even after the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, and Wang Yangming's individualist philosophy spread as the old Confucian order loosened. He died in 1567, p