唐順宗

He had waited twenty-five years as crown prince, and a stroke in 804 left him unable to speak before his father died. The reformers he had gathered around him ran the Yongzhen reform in his name for six months — an attempt to take the palace armies back from the eunuchs — and were destroyed. He was made to abdicate and died the following year.

The Yongzhen reformers abolished the palace requisitions that let eunuchs seize goods in the markets, dismissed corrupt officials and moved on the army commands. That last step is what finished them: the eunuchs forced the succession, exiled the reformers to remote prefectures — among them the writers Liu Zongyuan and Liu Yuxi, whose best work came out of that exile — and the whole reform lasted less than half a year.

His consort Empress Wang, honored as Zhuangxian, was the mother of the son who replaced him and lived on as empress dowager through his reign.