The Zhou Dynasty had two major systems - the system of primogeniture and the system of division and sealing. Even if the eldest son is incompetent, he will still be canonized as a prince.
It was thought that under such a "pedantic" system, a dynasty would soon come to an end, but the fact is that the Zhou Dynasty, which established the system, was the longest reigning dynasty of many dynasties in China. It shows the superior wisdom of the ancients.
So who is this ancient man divine? He is known to everyone - Zhou Gongdan.
He assisted the two generations of monarchs of King Wu of Zhou and King Cheng of Zhou, during which time he not only assisted King Wu in his two fells, but also produced ritual music that has been passed down to future generations.
At that time, the Shang Dynasty practiced the inheritance system of "father dies and son succeeds", "brother dies and brother endures" or "uncle and nephew inheritance", why did Zhou Gongdan bother to open up another path?
Prophet Zhou Gong
The system of blood succession initially implemented in the Chinese dynastic era was the system above, which allowed a dynasty to remain in the hands of its own family, but at the same time, during the reign of this system, in order to seize imperial power, brothers killed each other one after another.
Finally, the system of blood succession was abolished in 2338 BC, and the Zen concession system of the Five Emperors era entered the stage of history, that is, the previous emperor ceded the throne to the next virtuous person.
This system can also be subdivided into two categories, one is to cede the throne to blood relatives, which is inner Zen, and the other is to have a different surname, which is called Outer Zen, which means that the dynasty of the Zen giver will be replaced by the next one, and a new dynasty will rise.
How could such a wise and just system come into being in a feudal era?
In the ancient era of the Five Emperors, materials were poor and productivity was very backward, and if human beings wanted to survive, they had to live together and work together, and at this time, they needed to elect impartial and capable people as leaders to command and dispatch, distribute food evenly, and lead their subordinates to resist the invasion of foreign enemies.
Later, in the Zhou Dynasty, Zhou Gongdan drew on the advantages and disadvantages of the two era systems and established a succession system in which the eldest son of the concubine was the crown prince, which not only avoided the death of fratricidal brothers, but also justified in name and in fact as the eldest son of the empress.
At the same time, he also established a system of fiefdoms, in which the king allocated the territory to the children of the royal family or to meritorious people, who were appointed as kings and also guarded their own territory, and the appointed lords had to pay taxes and pay tribute, make pilgrimage reports, and guard the territory for the distant kings and obey the orders of the Son of Heaven.
Moreover, the vast majority of the clan kings are royal clansmen, which means that all parts of the world are always in their own hands. The system of division and sealing he established paved the way for the emperor to better maintain his rule.
Moreover, these two systems greatly prevented the sons of the king from competing for royal power, so that the power of the Zhou Dynasty was divided and even the country was lost.
Zhou Gong's gift
It is also worth mentioning that the gift of Zhou Gong is also from Zhou Gongdan. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, the marriage customs of men and women were chaotic, and the phenomenon of private meetings was very widespread.
Duke Zhou consciously delayed any longer, and wanted to correct the problem of people's customs in the future, I am afraid that it would be difficult to ascend to the sky, so he personally went out to formulate the etiquette on marriage.
He subdivided the matter of intercession to marriage between men and women into 7 steps, and demonstrated wedding etiquette with his wife and taught the public.
But when it comes to Dunlun, that is, to guide the step of having sex, you can't really demonstrate it with your wife. After hesitating, Zhou Gongdan saw that his son was tinkering with a few gourd scoops, and suddenly had an idea.
He summoned people to school the next day, and once again personally demonstrated the 7 steps of the wedding, taking out an unopened gourd at this step, metaphorically comparing the chaotic unity of man and woman before separation, and then splitting into two, one prostrate and one down, and the husband and wife are in harmony, harmony between yin and yang, and order.
This is the origin of the gift of Zhou Gong. Later, the primogeniture system established by Zhou Gongdan also withdrew from the stage of history after the changes of successive dynasties.
How did such a dynasty inherit the throne?
Nine sons take the throne
The Qing Dynasty did not have a clear system of succession to the throne, let alone inherit the primogeniture system of Zhou Gongdan, which led to the well-known incident of the nine sons seizing the throne.
In 1675, Kangxi established his second son, who was two years old, as the crown prince, and it was not expected that the increasingly elderly crown prince gradually became arrogant and domineering because of his high position, and even formed a party in the court for personal gain, secretly colluding with his biological mother's uncle Suo Etu, committing the Kangxi taboo, resulting in a downhill relationship between father and son.
With the growing power of Soetu, and the determination to support the crown prince was high, there was a tendency to rebel, and Kangxi felt that if he did not remove Suoetu's power, he would definitely raise tigers in the near future.
Shortly thereafter, Soetu was sent to Zongren's mansion and died in prison a few months later. This made the relationship between the crown prince and Kangxi tense, and the relationship between father and son broke down.
Five years later, in 1708, Kangxi deposed the 35-year-old crown prince at Burha Palace. The battle for the nine sons began, and all the princes appeared in turn.
After the crown prince was deposed, the eldest son, as the eldest son of Shu, knew that he was not liked by his father and would definitely not have a chance with the throne, so he proposed to Kangxi to make the eighth brother who befriended him crown prince, while advocating that he could kill the deposed crown prince on his father's behalf.
Kangxi was very chilled by his son's behavior and has been guarding against him ever since.
Not long after that, the third son revealed that the eldest son of Shu had secretly used the art of Weizhen to harm the deposed crown prince, and the eldest son was imprisoned by Kangxi, and the eighth son, who was like a brother with the eldest son, was also imprisoned.
After only a year, Kangxi, who was obsessed with his second son, returned the crown prince to him, but less than three years later, the former was exposed for party smuggling.
So, the second son was deposed again. This time, he was detained until his death and was not released.
The third son, who was originally eager to move the throne, had no intention of fighting for it after several such turmoils, and withdrew from the throne himself.
In the process, the released eight sons united with the nine sons and the ten sons to turn the gun in support of the fourth brother's own brother Fourteen sons, and the thirteenth son sided with the four brothers.
The fourth son had always belonged to the princelings, and even the first time the prince was deposed, he dared to intercede for the prince, until the prince was deposed for the second time, he knew that this time the other party could not fight back Jedi, so he began to explore the high position on his own and establish his own henchmen.
At this point, the situation became a relatively fixed form - four sons and one party - eight sons and one party. Until 1722, Kangxi died of illness in Changchunyuan, and Longkodo announced that his four sons would inherit the throne.
At that time, the fourteenth son was far away in the northwest, and the eight-son party could not compete with the fourth son, and the position of the crown prince was no longer able to return to heaven. After the fourth son Yongzheng succeeded to the throne, the eight sons and the party were persecuted one after another.
In order to prevent the tragedy of the nine sons from taking the throne again, Yongzheng later implemented the system of secretly building reserves until the emperor died, and the edict could not be made public.
Until the fall of the last feudal dynasty in China, Zhou Gongdan's primogeniture system did not reappear.