The Jiajing Emperor — Ming Shizong

A cousin brought in from the provinces, who spent his first twenty years forcing the court to accept that his own father was an emperor, and his last twenty-five in a side palace pursuing Daoist immortality. In 1542 a group of palace women tried to strangle him in his sleep; the attempt failed by a knot, and he never held court in person again.

The state was run by his chief ministers while the coast was raided by pirates and the Mongols reached the walls of Beijing.

Three of his empresses share one silk: Chen, who died after he shoved her in a rage; Zhang, deposed; and Fang, who saved his life in 1542 and was left to burn in a palace fire fourteen years later.