The Daoguang Emperor — Qing Xuanzong

Personally frugal to the point of patching his own robes, and completely unequal to what arrived in his reign. He sent Lin Zexu to destroy the opium at Canton in 1839; the British fleet answered, and the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842 opened five ports, fixed an indemnity and ceded Hong Kong. It is the start of what Chinese history calls the century of humiliation.

He died two years before the Taiping rebellion, which killed more people than the First World War.

Three of his empresses are in the collection: Xiaomucheng, who died before he took the throne, Xiaoshencheng, and Xiaoquancheng, the mother of the next emperor, dead at thirty-three.