@Tboi_01 In a stroke of luck or misfortune, however you interpret it all of the previous emperor’s siblings died from a plague leaving him the only surviving heir to the throne, thus promoting his mother to empress who was the one in control as he, traumatized, was a complete failure
@Tboi_01 To make a long story short, the previous empress was originally a low ranking concubine who couldn’t defend her son from the advances of the high and mid ranked consorts and it’s heavily implied he was sexually abused by those consorts because of his beauty