Under the Ming dynasty, the traditional Confucian principles of succession were upheld by the Hongwu Emperor's Instructions of the Ancestor of the August Ming. These presented a grave problem when his eldest son died early, leaving a power struggle between a sheltered teenage grandson and his many experienced and well-armed uncles. One of these, the Prince of Yan, eventually overthrew his nephew under the pretense of saving him from ill counsel. His own legitimacy was precariously established: a charred body was procured from the ruins of Nanjing and proclaimed to be the accidentally-killed emperor; the nephew's reign was then condemned and delegitimized and the surviving son kept imprisoned and single; and imperial records were falsified to establish the Prince of Yan as his father's favorite and as a son of the primary wife, giving him primacy over his other brothers.
