Traditional
Confucian political theory favored strict
agnatic primogeniture,[note 1] with younger sons displaying filial obedience to the eldest upon the passing of the father. This rather straightforward system was somewhat complicated by
polygamy: since later wives were subordinated to the first, their children – even when born first – were likewise subordinated to hers.
Following
Lu Jia's conversion of
Liu Bang to Confucianism in the early 1st century BC,
Chinese dynasties observed it in theory though not always in practice. Liu Bang himself began to favor
Concubine Qi, a later concubine, to his primary empress,
Lü Zhi,
and doubted the competence of his heir
Liu Ying. Even worse conflicts could occur when invaders – previously observing their own rules of inheritance – began to
sinicize, as happened to the 10th-century
Liao dynasty.
Under the
Ming dynasty, the traditional Confucian principles of succession were upheld by the
Hongwu Emperor's Instructions of the Ancestor of the August Ming. These presented a grave problem when his eldest son died early, leaving a power struggle between a sheltered teenage grandson and his many experienced and well-armed uncles. One of these, the
Prince of Yan, eventually
overthrew his nephew under the pretense of saving him from ill counsel. His own legitimacy was precariously established: a charred body was procured from the ruins of Nanjing and proclaimed to be the accidentally-killed emperor; the nephew's reign was then condemned and delegitimized and the surviving son kept imprisoned and single; and imperial records were falsified to establish the Prince of Yan as his father's favorite and as a son of the primary wife, giving him primacy over his other brothers.
Names
As taizi, the crown prince would possess a name separate both from his personal name and from his later
era name,
temple name and
posthumous name.
^In fact, this was at odds with China's oldest recorded traditions: the
Shang clan survivors who ruled
Song after the rise of the
Zhou pointedly practiced
agnatic seniority, favoring a father's surviving brothers over his offspring.