乾隆帝 — 清高宗

Sixty years on the throne and three more as retired emperor, deliberately one short of his grandfather's record. He doubled the empire with the Dzungar and Xinjiang campaigns, commissioned the Siku Quanshu — and used the same project to censor and destroy thousands of books. His last two decades were dominated by Heshen, the most spectacular embezzler in Chinese history.

The Macartney embassy of 1793 was received and dismissed in his reign; the treasury he left was already hollow.

Empress Xiaoxianchun, whom he married at fifteen and lost in 1748, is the woman the poetry keeps returning to — he wrote about her for the rest of his life.