In ancient China, because it was a feudal dynasty, the rulers attached great importance to the succession to the imperial throne and often implemented the system of "preparing for the establishment of reserves". However, this system has two major flaws:
First, after preparing the crown prince, it is easy for officials to see the wind and steer the rudder, climb the crown prince, and form a party for personal gain. After the crown prince had not yet ascended the throne and the crown prince had succeeded to the throne, these parties were easily divided, causing chaos in the imperial program.
Second, the question of who the crown prince should choose is very important. If a relatively fair and convincing system of crown princes is not formulated, it is easy to attract the dissatisfaction of the ministers, resulting in constant disputes among the princes and turmoil in the government.
At the time of the founding of the country, there were usually two schemes for the succession of monarchs:
One is to pass the throne to the brothers who fight the world with themselves, which is what we often call "brother and brother".
One is to pass the throne to his own son, that is, "the father dies and the son inherits."
However, we all know that the emperor's wives and concubines are numerous, and the children are naturally few. However, the throne is just one, and every child is his own flesh and blood, so who should pass the throne to?
Thus, the system of "establishing a concubine with a long life is not a virtuous, and a son is expensive but not a long one" was born. However, this system has its own inherent and insurmountable drawbacks. In ancient Chinese families, the children born to the wife of the main house were called concubines, and the children born in the side room concubines were called the children of the concubines. Distinctions like this were also part of the ancient Chinese hierarchy.
In the royal family, the competition for the throne between the concubines is even more fierce, and the contradictions are also very sharp. Although the system of primogeniture was established, it could not fundamentally solve the problem of succession to the throne.
In summary, these shortcomings of the imperial succession system were also concerned by the rulers during the Qing Dynasty.
Nurhaci, the founder of the Qing Dynasty, was the eldest son of Li Yan as his heir in the beginning. Later, the eldest son was abolished, and the second son was selected instead of the eldest son, and soon after the second son was deposed. Therefore, it was stipulated that after nurhaci's death, each flag owner would elect a person to serve as the "Great Khan". In the end, Emperor Taiji was elected and, later, called emperor.
After Emperor Taiji's death, his younger brother and son began to compete for the throne, and finally, another son of Emperor Taiji, Fu Lin, ascended the throne with the support of Xiaozhuang and Dorgon, which became the Shunzhi Emperor. The result of this is actually the struggle for the throne between "brother and brother" and "father dies and son succeeds", and in the end, the father dies and the son succeeds and wins the initial victory.
Later, because the Shunzhi Emperor died early, he failed to appoint a concubine as the crown prince, but the idea of father's death and son's succession had become the dominant concept in the royal family. When the Kangxi Ascendant succession to the throne was over, it also marked the succession system of the royal father to the throne, and finally established.
During the Kangxi Dynasty, the San Francisco Rebellion brought about national unrest. In order to stabilize this situation and consolidate his rule, the Kangxi Emperor made the young and ignorant eldest son the crown prince. Decades later, the prince grew into an adult. At this time, the crown prince was already more than thirty years old, so he was not satisfied with the position of "prince" and wanted to ascend to the throne of God, but at this time, Kangxi was still reigning and in good health.
As a result, the contradiction between Kangxi and the crown prince deepened. At the same time, the prince continued to form gangs and factions in private, gradually forming his own power, plus, he was spoiled from an early age, and he looked down on the princes and ministers very much, often insulting and whipping them. At first, Kangxi only turned a blind eye to this situation. Later, Kangxi couldn't bear it anymore and deposed the crown prince.
However, Kangxi only had such a concubine, so for a while, all the princes rose up one after another to compete for the position of crown prince. Forced by such fierce competition among the princes and the helplessness of the ministers to request the establishment of the crown prince, Kangxi had no choice but to re-establish the original prince. However, the prince still stubbornly did not change his gangs. And the other princes were not idle, continuing to fight openly and covertly, framing the prince.
The struggle for the throne among the princes made the Kangxi Emperor feel very annoyed, and in the end, he severely punished the most active members of the princelings to kill chickens and monkeys. Subsequently, Kangxi deposed the crown prince again. In the years that followed, there was a constant struggle for the throne, and many officials split into multiple parties because of the issue of the crown prince, which caused serious political repercussions. Later, in the nine sons of the concubine, the fourth prince became the heir.
After the Yongzheng Emperor ascended to the throne, he learned the lessons of the dispute between the princes in the Kangxi period and decided to implement a new way of establishing reserves, that is, the secret reserve system. In this simple way, the emperor wrote his chosen candidate for the crown prince into two identical secret edicts:
A secret edict was sealed in a small box and hidden behind a plaque at the highest place in the palace in front of the ministers, so as to convey to the people of the country a message that "the prince has been established and the world is stable."
Another secret edict was kept by the emperor himself.
Before the emperor died, he passed on the throne with the name of the crown prince written on these two secret edicts. In this way, even if the emperor encounters an accident and fails to take out the secret edict he has kept, or others cannot find the secret edict, there is also a secret edict after the plaque as evidence. After that, the four emperors of Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, and Xianfeng were all selected to ascend to the throne of God in this way.
The Xianfeng Emperor had only one son, so he had no choice but to be succeeded by this son after his death. The next Tongzhi and Guangxu Emperors did not have sons, so they could only choose their favorite heirs from the side branches of the family.
In fact, in addition to keeping the name of the prince to be appointed secret, it is also necessary not to stick to the concubine and start from the comprehensive evaluation of the princes. When Qianlong first secretly established the crown prince, in fact, he was also influenced by the concept of concubines. And this may be related to the deep affection he has with his wife, so he loves Wu and Wu, and he loves his wife together.
After the death of the concubine, Qianlong conducted in-depth thinking about the system of the eldest son, and after weighing the advantages and disadvantages, Qianlong decided to abolish the traditional system of the eldest son and instead select the crown prince according to the character of the prince. In order to smoothly implement his ideas, Qianlong also wrote a special edict to express his attitude, saying: The saying that the crown prince "does not rely on merit with longevity, and with nobility over longevity" is really absurd.
In fact, if you want to implement the plan of secretly establishing reserves, there is an important link, that is, to break the restrictions of the original primogeniture system. From this point of view, the Yongzheng Emperor was the first emperor to choose the crown prince regardless of his status, concubine and age.
At that time, the identity of the Yongzheng Emperor secretly established the Crown Prince Hongli (that is, the later Qianlong Emperor) was not the most honorable among the many princes, nor was it the oldest, but the Yongzheng Emperor still established the Hongli as the Crown Prince, of which Yongzheng was because he valued the character and talent of the Hongli. The emperors who followed were like this, and among the princes, they considered and selected them in terms of their talents and moral character.
Resources:
["Behind the Dark Box of the Great Qing Dynasty: The Beginning and End of the Secret Storage System", "Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty", "Records of the Qing Dynasty Sect"]