Sima Zheng, the Emperor of Jinhui, was the second emperor of the Western Jin Dynasty, and was the son of Sima Yan, emperor of the Jin Dynasty, and his mother was Empress Wuyuan Yang Yan. Sima Zheng was born in 259, was made crown prince at the age of 9, and ascended the throne as emperor in 290, changing his name to Yuan Yongxi. Although he was a leader of the world, he did not really control the affairs of the imperial court, and the government was controlled by Empress Jia Nanfeng, who was two years older than him.
Legend has it that Sima Zheng was an "idiot emperor" because in many cases he said and did things differently from ordinary people. To say that he is an idiot is not to spoil him, it is indeed worthy of the name and reasonable. It is said that once, sima Zheng was playing in the imperial garden, and when he heard frogs calling in the pond, he asked the attendants around him: "Are these frogs calling 'for the public' or 'for private'?" The attendant fooled him and said, "In the land of the officials, it is called 'for the public', and in the land of the common people, it is called 'for selfishness.'" Sima Zheng actually thought that the attendant was right, and immediately gave the attendant a reward of silver.
Another typical example is that one year there was a large-scale, severe natural disaster in the country, and many people starved to death. Emperor Sima Yan of the Jin Dynasty summoned his ministers and the crown prince Sima Zheng to discuss how to relieve the disaster, but Sima Zheng did not understand after hearing the minister's report, and said, "There is no steamed bun to eat, you can eat meat porridge (why not eat minced meat)". The ministers couldn't help but be amused, and Sima Yan was also very angry after hearing this, and drove Sima Zhen out.
It is said that Sima Yan has always suspected Sima Zheng's intelligence, but there is nothing abnormal under many tests. Because Sima Zheng's wife, Jia Nanfeng, was a smart person and would help him cheat every time he tested Sima Yan, Sima Yan never found this problem. Once, in order to test Sima Zheng, Sima Yan issued a test paper for him to do at that time. However, Sima Zheng could not do a single question after getting the examination paper, so he wanted to find a big talent to take the exam. As a result, Jia Nanfeng immediately stopped him, and then found him an average level person to help him answer, and controlled the "score" at no high or low, which did not cause Sima Yan to question.
However, Sima Yan had more than 20 sons, so why did he pass the throne to a mentally problematic Sima Zheng? There are several reasons for this:
First: To pass it on to his son, rather than to his brother Sima You. When Sima Zhao succeeded his brother Sima Shi to the throne, he made a promise to return the throne to his eldest brother's son in the future, but in the end Sima Zhao passed the throne to his son Sima Yan out of selfishness. Therefore, Sima You became a piece of Sima Yan's heart disease.
Second, Sima Yan hoped that his young and intelligent grandson Sima Song would succeed to the throne in the future. This is also a common practice for feudal emperors to pass on the throne, "passing on the sun without passing on the son". However, Sima Yan did not expect that this future successor to the throne would be killed by his daughter-in-law Jia Nanfeng at the age of twelve. Of course this is a postscript.
Third, out of jealousy of Sima Zheng's wife, the Jia Nanfeng family. Jia Nanfeng's father, Jia Chong, was a powerful minister at the time and the founding father of the Western Jin Dynasty. He had two daughters, one married to Sima Zheng and the other to Sima You. It was made clear that regardless of whether Sima Yan passed the throne to his son or his brother, the emperor was the son-in-law of the Jia family. This is also the reason why Jia Nanfeng wants to marry a fool as a husband!
The history books record that Jia Nanfeng's appearance is very ugly, "short blue-black, with defects behind the eyebrows."
Fourth, the feudal hereditary inheritance system. Sima Yan had 25 sons, but the eldest Sima Zheng died of illness when he was 2 years old, and the second sima Zheng met the conditions of the eldest son, and the ascension to the throne was logical, and there was less opposition.
However, it was precisely because of the imprecise succession of Sima Yan's succession to a foolish emperor, which aroused the greed and desire for power of foreign relatives and internal subjects, that Jia Nanfeng and Sima Shiwang took turns to intervene in politics, which eventually led to the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings", which led to the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty. Throughout the life of Sima Zheng, the Emperor of Jinhui, although gui was the emperor, he was always led by the nose of others, like a puppet, and was eventually poisoned to death, and the ending was very sad.