The Crisis in Inheritance of Imperial Power and the Formation of Political Structure in the Wei and Jin Dynasties

Chen Yanling

In the Wei and Jin period, the courts were faced with sometime crisis in inheritance of imperial power because the emperors failed to own their direct descendants. The ways of inheritance and successor selected became the key which influenced the structure of aristocrat politics at that time. When a political force of different family name could not overthrow and displace the old dynasty, the imperial power was inherited in a consanguineous way, i.e. the alternative or variation of the lineal primogeniture system such as succession between brothers, or adoption of children of the imperial clan; otherwise, when the force of different family name grew strong enough, a qualitative change in the inheritance of imperial power would be caused, which was called “inheritance between different family names”, i.e. another clan seized imperial power through the so-called “revolution of replacement”. Through the lack of successors of imperial power at times, the two-century historical course of the Wei and Jin Dynasties just continued after several succession, or zigzagged in the regime changes among different clans.