Introduction: As the saying goes: "The most ruthless imperial family", this sentence is not unreasonable, the thrones of all dynasties have been taken by the victors in a flesh-and-blood battle, these contenders are originally the same root, but they do not hesitate to kill each other for the throne, such as The Tang Taizong Li Shimin, known as the "Emperor of the Ages", is the crown prince who won the throne by killing his brother and killing his brother.
As we all know, after Li Shimin launched the "Xuanwumen Revolution", he got rid of the crown prince Li Jiancheng and the Qi king Li Yuanji and went straight to the throne. However, the old emperor Li Yuan said that it was okay to abdicate, but asked Li Shimin that he must spare his nephews. At first, Li Shimin was carried away by the throne and agreed to this condition without much thought. But just sat on the throne, I regretted it, after all, "cutting the grass to remove the roots", now that the first step has been taken, if they do not get rid of their descendants, the consequences will be endless.
So on June 4, the two teams of people and horses of the Qin King's Mansion rushed towards the Eastern Palace and the Qi King's Mansion, and in the blink of an eye, ten royal sons died in desperate cries, and the annals of history only left their names, but did not record their ages, but most of them had just reached the age of the weak crown, and the small ones might still be learning to speak. Seeing that all the descendants of the crown prince and the king of Qi had been eliminated, Li Shimin's generals wanted to kill all the people in their palace, but Wei Chi Jingde came out to oppose it, believing that the two culprits and their descendants had already been killed, and there was no need to do it again, otherwise it would be impossible to calm people's minds.
Three days later, Li Yuan crowned Li Shimin as crown prince and issued an edict that "from today onwards, all military, political, and all government affairs, large and small, will be handed over to the crown prince for adjudication before proceeding." In any case, Li Shimin succeeded and calmed people's hearts with his iron fist, got everything he dreamed of, and the history of the Tang Dynasty was rewritten from then on, but what about his sons?
During his lifetime, Li Shimin had 14 sons, namely: Li Chengqian the Prince of Hengshan, Li Tai the Prince of Pu, Li Zhi of Tang Gaozong, Li Ke the King of Wu, Li Yan the King of Shu, Li You the Prince of Shu, Li Zhen the Prince of Yue, Li Hu the King of Jiang, Li Fu the King of Zhao, Li Shen the King of Ji, Li Ming the King of Cao, Li Yun the Prince of Jiang, Li Kuan the King of Chu, and Li Jian the Acting King. However, these 14 sons either died early, were hanged, or committed suicide, and only Li Zhi and Li Fu were able to die well.
But in any case, scholars mostly regard the Xuanwumen coup d'état with the viewpoint of "the people are first, the society is secondary, and the monarch is light", and this is the only way for the royal coup.