Shunzhi Emperor

When his father Hong Taiji died in 1643, a council of Manchu princes selected five-year-old Fulin as the second Qing emperor and installed two regents to hold power. In November 1644, he was enthroned in Beijing as the first Qing ruler over China proper. For seven years, the prince regent Dorgon ran the conquest - chasing down the fallen Ming dynasty's loyalists, pushing them into the southwest, enforcing the hated "hair cutting command" of 1645 that forced Chinese men to shave their foreheads and braid queues like Manchus. After Dorgon died on the last day of 1650, the young Shunzhi began ruling in his own right, trying to curb corruption and clip the Manchu nobility's wings with uneven results. By 1661 his armies had crushed the last Ming resistance under Koxinga and the Prince of Gui, but that February smallpox killed him at twenty-two. His third son became the Kangxi Emperor and reigned sixty years; the father's reign remains the least-documented stretch of Qing history.