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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: condition is not unknown in Chinese history.
But if her humiliation was great, that of our boy-prisoner was
still greater, for he was compelled to witness an edict,
proclaimed in his own name, which made him say that as there was
no hope of his having a child of his own to succeed him, he had
requested the Empress Dowager to select a suitable person who
should be proclaimed as the successor of Tung Chih, his
predecessor, thus turning himself out of the imperial line. That
this could not have been her choice is evidenced, further, by the
fact that just as soon as she had once more regained her power,
she surrounded herself with progressive officials, turned out all
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