The Son of Heaven was twenty-eight years old now. He’d become emperor at six, under the guardianship of the empress Cixi, and then entered long training in the ancient Confucian curriculum. He had spent a deprived childhood under his tutor, the cold and austere Weng, in the cheerless expanses of the Forbidden City, with a series of bullying eunuchs focusing his mind on the responsibilities of rulership.
