Late Ming, 1641: My Father Is Zhu Changxun, Prince of Fu

“You claim to be the son of Prince Fu. Are you the son of Zhu Changxun, who weighed over three hundred jin, was killed when the city fell, and was said to have ended up on a chopping block as ‘fortune and prosperity’?” “I am.” “Then why is your name Hong Youzhen?” “Hong means red, and red is Zhu. You means ‘from’; Zhen means the pillar of the state. What more is there to say?” The seventeenth day of the first month in the fourteenth year of the Chongzhen reign, the year of Xinsi. At that time, Li Zicheng had captured Yongning and was besieging Luoyang, throwing Henan into turmoil; Zhang Xianzhong had captured Xiangyang and killed Prince Xiang, rampaging across Huguang; The Qing army had just taken Songshan and Jinzhou, leaving the Ming’s elite troops along the Nine Frontiers utterly destroyed. The lands beyond the pass no longer belonged to the Ming. As for the Chongzhen Emperor’s future suicide by hanging at Coal Hill; As for Li Zicheng’s future proclamation of himself as emperor in Xi’an; As for the Qing army’s entry through the pass later that same year and its establishment of the capital in Yanjing; Those were not matters Hong Youzhen, trapped in Luoyang under siege by Li Zicheng, had any reason to think about. Several years later, Yanjing was pacified and the ancestral temples restored. Hong Youzhen ascended the steps in imperial robes and crown, offering sacrifices to the late emperor and his ancestors. His voice rang through heaven and earth. “With my humble person, I shall inherit the ancestral rites of the Great Ming and ascend the throne as Son of Heaven!”