Dynastic History|Zhaoling, Shenyang — A Succession Settled by Council

The man buried at the north end of this park died on 21 September 1643, in the palace a few kilometres south, and left no designated heir. Hong Taiji had spent seventeen years enlarging what his father built. He renamed his people Manchu in 1635, and in 1636 he took the imperial title and changed the name of the state from Great Jin to 大清, the Great Qing. He did not settle who came next.

What settled it was not a will. The Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers met with the banners standing behind each claimant: Hooge, the eldest son, thirty-four; Dorgon, the dead ruler's half-brother, thirty-one; the elder Daišan, sixty. Their compromise was Fulin, a ninth son aged five, enthroned on 8 October 1643 with Dorgon and Jirgalang as co-regents. Within months Jirgalang had ceded ground, and it was Dorgon who led a Qing army through the passes to Beijing the following year. Succession here ran through an assembly of armed relatives rather than through primogeniture, which the later imperial language of unbroken lineage tends to smooth over.

The tomb was begun in 1643 and finished in 1651, the burial precinct covering some 180,000 square metres. In 1927 the Fengtian provincial government opened the surrounding land to the public as 北陵公園, North Tomb Park. It is now one of Shenyang's largest parks, and the spirit way of stone animals leading to the stele tower runs through it, past a lake and municipal planting. The tomb was inscribed as World Heritage in 2004.

📸 Cover: the spirit way and stele tower at Zhaoling, Gary Lee Todd, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons