宋真宗

He rode to the front in 1004 and then signed the Treaty of Chanyuan with the Liao: fixed borders, formal equality, and an annual payment in silk and silver. It held for a hundred and twenty years, which was cheaper than a war, and his own officials treated it as a humiliation for the rest of his life.

He spent his later years manufacturing heavenly omens to compensate, at enormous cost.

Empress Liu, who began as a street entertainer from Sichuan, became the first Song empress to govern as regent — for eleven years, in an emperor's robes.