The Truth Behind the Last Empress of China

Gobulo Wanrong was born on November 13, 1906, in Beijing. She came from a family that was considered the perfect pedigree for royalty. Her father, Rongyuan worked as a minister in the Imperial Court, whilst her mother was also from a highly prominent clan.

When Wanrong was only two years old her mother passed away from what was called 'childbed fever' but what we now refer to as postpartum depression. For the rest of her childhood, she was brought up by a stepmother.

Wanrong was extremely fortunate enough to have a father who believed education to be of great importance and made sure that his daughter had an education as prestigious as his sons. In that way, he was quite progressive. He sent Wanrong to an American school in Tianjin.

It helped that Rongyuan was extremely wealthy, and so his children lacked for nothing. Wanrong left the school accomplished in both English and the piano. She was also considered a great beauty, which added to her eligibility.

In 1922 the Emperor Puyi of China, who was only 16-years-old at the time, began to search for a bride. At the time he had been overthrown as emperor but retained the wealth, prestige, and title.

Wanrong's father and stepmother wanted their daughter to be chosen as Puyi's bride, and so her name was added to a list of potential brides. He first chose another woman named Wenxiu, but his advisors weren't keen on the idea, so made his second choice - Wanrong.

Puyi had been spoiled from the day he was born, and this had turned him into a nightmare of a man. He was incapable of doing anything for himself and had a dark side to him that became very hard for Wanrong to ignore.

Puyi was a cruel man and was prone to having the eunuchs that served as his staff beaten regularly. His advisors tried to get the emperor to ease off on the men but to no avail. Puyi even confessed that "my cruelty and love of wielding power were already too firmly set for persuasion to have any effect on me." This did not bode well for Wanrong.

Wanrong was married to Emperor Puyi in 1922. It consisted of three lavish ceremonies, and the bride wore a traditional mask during the proceeding's entirety. She also wore a crimson outfit adorned with a dragon just to add to the pomp and ceremony.

As disturbing as it was to have two teenagers wed, it was made even more disturbing by the fact that Puyi married his first choice Wenxiu on the same day. Wenxiu was only 12 years old when she became just one of the emperor's consorts, alongside Wanrong.

After all the ceremonies had been completed it was now time for the Emperor to consummate the marriages with his two brides. This event would take place at the Palace of Earthly Tranquility on the infamous Dragon Bed. This would be the first time that Puyi would see Wanrong's face.

Official historical record states that Emperor Puyi walked into the matrimonial chambers, and upon seeing his two young brides, his terror and inexperience made him run away and did not consummate the marriage. Rumors of his possible homosexuality have since surfaced, including the disturbing details that include his desire for young girls as well the sodomizing of equally young pageboys.

Not only was he a terror in the bedroom, but he was also a horror to live with during the daylight hours. Wanrong was forced to experience the very worst of her husband. He was notably immature and often played pranks on his wife.

He was also cruel and childlike and would burst in on her private meetings, which meant she had no life of her own, and would call her incessantly complaining to his wife that he was lonely during the day.

As well as having a cruel and difficult husband, Wanrong was also struggling with her new position as Empress. They lived in the Forbidden City, and it came with its own rules and etiquette.

The Forbidden City, a palace complex in Dongcheng District, Beijing had certain expectations of the new Empress, and she was determined to prove her worth. It is said that she pulled a few all-nighters studying up on the rules and regulations of what was both strict and stifling in its formality.

Wanrong was barely a teenager when she was married, and all of a sudden she was forced to live in a foreign city and deal with a husband who was cruel and demanding. She also had to share her husband with a much younger Wenxiu.

During that time it's not surprising that she took up smoking opium. It wasn't uncommon to smoke the drug, and Wanrong joined the population of the Forbidden City who smoked regularly. Her husband was all too pleased with his wife's new habit as he believed it made her more manageable.

In 1924 a mere two years after their marriage, another coup took place, forcing the Emperor and his wives out of the palace, and Puyi's ancestral home. They were shockingly given only three hours to vacate the premises.

The Emperor, Wanrong, and Wenxiu moved out of The Forbidden City and took up residence in the Quiet Garden Villan in Tianjin. For a short period, the threesome spent pleasant days horse riding, dancing, and entertaining guests.

Whilst living together in The Forbidden City Wanrong and Wenxiu seemed to get along, but when they were forced to flee and live outside the palace walls tensions started to rise.

They began to turn on one another as they vied for Puyi's affection and individual attention. When the Emperor brought home gifts he had to bring one for each of his wives, or else they would complain. Both women became increasingly demanding of his time and his gifts.

Some rumors claim that Wanrong and her husband Emperor Puyi never actually consummated their marriage after the events of the disastrous wedding night. This has been given as the reason why Wanrong never produced an heir.

Another reason that may have caused Wanrong to seem barren was her prolific opium use. She was smoking daily, and her fellow consort Wenxiu was believed to have uttered the following warning: "why should you take opium? You'd better stab at your belly."

Wanrong's physical health began to suffer not long after her opium addiction became more public knowledge. She had never been a particularly robust woman, but now she was suffering from irregular menstruation and several chronic illnesses.

One of her husband's cousins even revealed that the Empress not only suffered from physical illness but from mental illness as well. The cousin claimed that this was genetic. Her mental health was so concerning that she was found wandering her home naked upon occasion.

Though Wanrong and Wenxiu had experienced tensions and considered each other their rival, they were also the only friends they had. Both women had not bargained for a life in exile, and after the 1924 coup, and years away from The Forbidden City, Wenxiu had finally had enough.

In 1930 Emperor Puyi's second wife filed for divorce. Wanrong remained with her husband for the few luxuries that were still available to her, but she now had the extra responsibility of taking care of a husband who felt abandoned. They would both refer to the incident of Wenxiou's divorce as "treason".

After Wenxiu left Emperor Puyi started to make some very questionable choices. In 1931 Japan offered Puyi the position of the ruler in Manchukuo, otherwise known as Manchuria. His wife tried desperately to dissuade her husband from taking on the role, but he ignored her pleas.

When she was eventually sent to join her husband in Japan she was met with people that didn't want her to see her husband at all. Wanrong began to believe that Puyi had been killed, and that was why she was not allowed to see him.

Her husband had enemies and so did his wife, and one of them was Puyi himself. After finally reuniting in Japan the couple became more and more distant from one another. It is rumored that they hadn't shared a meal in over three years.

The Japanese were also not favorable towards her - mostly due to her initial reluctance to move to Manchukuo. It was so serious that she was not even invited to her own coronation on March 1, 1934. They believed she was a traitor and would end up humiliating Puyi.

Life for Wanrong in Japan was proving to be a living nightmare. She was lonely and despised by the people, and ignored by her husband. Not long after the coronation, she attempted to flee Manchukou - several times.

It was not uncommon for officials visiting the state to receive a surprise visit from Wanrong begging to have them help her leave. If she had managed to leave she may not have fallen into a heavy opium addiction that certainly did not positively aid her recurring feelings of isolation and depression.

Wanrong felt helpless, and somehow knew she was never going to get away from her husband. She began to betray him in even more disastrous ways - she started having extra-marital affairs. Two of the men she became involved with were Puyi's personal aides.

Li Tiyu and Qi Jizhong both had affairs with Empress Wanrong within the palace. Puyi eventually realized what was going on, and had both banished from his home on separate occasions. It was during this time that he began contemplating divorce.

In 1940 Wanrong discovered that she was pregnant, which certainly put an end to all those barren rumors. The problem was that it was certainly not her husband's as they had never consummated their marriage.

It turned out that she had conceived during her affair with the Emperor's aid, Li Tiyu. At this point, her lover had already been banished, and so Wanrong gave her husband an ultimatum: he must accept the child as his own, or else allow it to live away from the imperial system and out of the palace.

After Wanrong gave birth to her daughter Emperor Puyi committed the most horrendous and violent crime one can imagine. He had the baby taken away from her mother immediately and killed. When she begged for the child he lied to her.

In one version Puyi lied to his wife and told her that the child had been taken to a hospital where she was being taken care of by a nurse. What really happened though was that Puyi told Wanrong exactly what happened to her baby, and it was this final act that caused the Empress to finally give in to opium completely.

After the devastating circumstances of her daughter's death - at the hands of her husband - Wanrong's addiction to opium grew even more serious. From the day she learned of her child's fate, it is said that she remained in an opium-induced haze for the rest of her life.

She was smoking up to two packets of cigarettes a day and they were mostly laced with large quantities of opium. The chronic smoking caused her teeth to blacken, and she was so out of it most of the time that she had no idea what she was doing.

Wanrong's behavior became more and more erratic. Her actions (or lack thereof) were seen as rebellious - she had stopped washing her face and hair, cutting her fingernails, and dressing appropriately. At dinner parties, she started gorging on food but was never aware of this afterward.

She had become skinnier despite the binge eating and began to notice that her eyesight was starting to fail her, and she struggled to walk. Mentally Wanrong was suffering - she ran around outside in her pajamas, forced servants to eat food smeared in her menstrual blood, and would send the staff to buy lottery tickets regularly.

These were very dark and difficult days for Wanrong, and Emperor Puyi was to blame for all of it. This meant nothing to him, and it was around this time that he began to make plans to divorce his wife, and he would have gone through with it if the Russians hadn't invaded in 1945.

Puyi was forced to abandon his throne and made plans to get a chartered plane out of Manchukuo. On August 16, 1945, realizing that there was no space on the plane for anyone else other than himself and his advisors, Puyi abandoned Wanrong in the now captured city.

Emperor Puyi and Empress Wanrong took on English names when they were initially made to flee The Forbidden City. They chose the names "Henry" and "Elizabeth" respectively, and they did so because they were hopeful of their future as royals.

In other words, the couple hoped, and believed, or rather Puyi hoped and believed, that by giving themselves those particular names they would one day become as great as the namesakes, King Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth I.

After being abandoned by her husband in Manchukuo, Wanrong tried one last-ditch attempt at saving herself. She, along with a group of other royal women who had been left behind tried to flee to Korea, a plan that proved unsuccessful.

In January 1946 the women were all captured by Chinese Communist guerillas and thrown into jail. Li Yuqin, Puyi's concubine was also among the captured women. Eventually, some of the women would be released to their families, including Li Yuqin, who offered Wanrong a place in her mother's home. Wanrong had nowhere to go, and Li Yuqin's mother refused to help the Empress, so she remained with the army.

After Puyi abandoned Wanrong she was left with only a very small stash of opium to sustain her addiction. The supply didn't last long, and it soon ran out whilst she was imprisoned. She began to experience horrific withdrawal symptoms.

According to witnesses Wanrong rolled around the floor of her cell screaming and moaning like a madwoman. To add insult to injury the Empress's whereabouts became known to the public, and her jail cell became a site for curious bystanders. People would come from miles away just to watch her as if she was in a zoo.

The withdrawal symptoms caused Wanrong to hallucinate, and she became delusional. At one point she believed she was still the Empress and began demanding that the guards bring her fresh clothing, baths, food, and more opium. Of course, she received none of this, except for jeering and laughter from her onlookers.

Her delusions got even worse and Wanrong started screaming and crying for her daughter - the baby whom her husband had killed. She received no sympathy from the people guarding her and those that traveled from afar to watch her through the bars of her cell.

It was no secret that the people of China hated Emperor Puyi. Those that were guarding Wanrong saw her as merely an extension of the evil dictator, and since they couldn't get their hands on Puyi, they exacted their revenge on his wife.

The guards chose to do nothing as she raved and moaned on the floor of her cell. One of the guards was even meant to have declared that Wanrong wouldn't last long and that they shouldn't continue to waste food on her.

On June 20, 1946, Wanrong died at the age of 39. Days before her death she had been witnessed lying on the floor of her cell with a plate of food lying untouched not far from her body. It is most likely that she died of malnutrition. She died in worn-out clothes with a big smoke rod in her hand that she had used for many years, it is supposed that her body was found disheveled, wrapped in a torn mat in a stinky ditch before she finally had a proper burial.

But people also say her remains were never found, and it is probable that when she died her corpse was taken and tossed into the hills close to where she was imprisoned in Yanji, Jilin province. Her brother would perform a burial ritual for her in 2006 by burying a photograph of her. The ritual was performed so that she could finally rest in peace.

Three years later Saga Hiro who had spent some time sharing a cell with Wanrong sent a letter to Emperor Puyi to let him know of the death. He had known nothing of her demise, and upon reading the letter he was quite emotionless.

Though he was an unconscionable man who had treated Wanrong horrifically, Puyi chose never to discuss the story of her daughter and what exactly happened to the child. One can only hope that perhaps he felt some sort of remorse.

Now let's move on to Puyi's story. Keep reading to find out about China's last emperor.

35 Sumptuous Facts About Puyi, China's Last Emperor Not many leaders from around the world can say that they’ve reached power as a toddler. But Puyi, the last emperor of China, was named the leader of his empire at the young age of two years old, hence the nickname of the “toddler king.” When Puyi rose to power, the Qing empire was basically crumbling down, so he certainly had a challenge ahead of him, though he could barely talk or walk at that stage.

It didn’t take time until a major revolution would make him another fallen ruler. But his journey in power was not over yet, and his life would be characterized by greed, ruin, and defeat.

Puyi was born on February 7, 1906, and from the moment he was born, a life of charm and luxury was basically thrown at him. He came into a privileged family, as his uncle was the Emperor of China at the time, and his parents were also pretty significant.

His parents were Prince Chun and consort Youlan and had quite a good position in the Chinese court. While everything seemed to be perfect when young Puyi was born, he was about to suffer from a traumatic tragedy soon enough.

For years, many wondered if Puyi’s uncle, the Emperor of China, would ever produce an heir. But as time went by, it became clear that he wasn’t going to, so when he suddenly died in 1908 with no heir to the throne, no one really knew what was about to happen.

That was when the influential Dowager Empress Cixi, a Chinese noblewoman of the Manchu Yeh Nara clan, suggested that Puyi became the new Emperor. Mind you, that the young boy wasn’t even three years old at the time.

While the idea of a child Emperor seemed quite unproductive to many, there wasn’t really anything anyone could do. So just like that, at the age of two years and ten months old, little Puyi became the new emperor in 1908. But his transition to becoming Emperor was incredibly brutal, especially for a small child like him.

He was titled the Xuantong Emperor and was literally kidnapped into the throne. Without any warning or notice, officials arrived at his home on the evening of November 13, 1908, and told his parents that Puyi was now the country’s new Emperor.

His parents were caught by surprise but had little to no power in the situation. The palace guards told the family that the little Emperor was now required to leave his home in order to live in the royal residences located in the Forbidden City.

Immediately, the little two-year-old began resisting, screaming, and fighting the guards who were taking him away from the only life he had ever known. A life of safety and luxury next to his parents would no longer belong to him, as apparently, he now had to lead his people.

No matter how much Puyi protested the situation, the guards eventually managed to pick up the little boy. But Puyi’s parents’ reaction was quite surprising and almost gut-wrenching. While their son was literally screaming and having a full mental breakdown at the young age of two, Puyi’s parents stayed silent and almost didn’t protest at all.

They watched the guards take their son into the palanquin, and saw him being taken away into what seemed to be one of the worst moments of his life. Puyi’s wet nurse, a woman called Wang Lianshou, was allowed to accompany the little boy as he was taken to the palace, while his parents stayed behind.

Upon finally arriving at the Forbidden City, Puyi was taken to see the woman who had appointed him in the first place, the powerful Dowager Empress Cixi. Every single second since he stepped foot into the palace was terrifying to him, and though he was young, he was able to recollect that moment for the most part of his life.

According to him: “I still have a dim recollection of this meeting, the shock of which left a deep impression on my memory. I remember suddenly finding myself surrounded by strangers, while before me was hung a drab curtain through which I could see an emaciated and terrifying hideous face.”

As soon as Puyi saw the Dowager Empress Cixi he was horrified. He began howling and crying for his nanny, which displeased the Dowager Empress very much. She told the guards to give the kid some candies to try to stop his tantrum, but that didn’t work at all, to which the Dowager Empress said: “What a naughty child. Take him away to play.”

The Dowager Empress could simply not understand what all the fuss was about, and so she remained completely stone-faced and quite annoyed at the circumstances. Surprisingly, Cixi would die on November 15, less than two days after she met the young emperor.

Just like he had been basically ignored by his own parents, young Puyi would go on to be ignored by almost everyone in the palace. Everyone acted as if business was as usual, while the young boy waited for the unknown. Just a little bit less than a month after his time in the palace, Puyi was about to have his official coronation.

To him, this was yet another personal nightmare, to which he manifested his protest during almost every single second of the ceremony. But once more, no one really cared.

His father, Prince Chun, was able to attend the coronation, but not even that made Puyi feel calmer. His father grabbed him in his arms and carried him out to the Dragon Throne, where tons of people watched with curiosity. The sound of festivities and traditional drums startled Puyi, who instantly began crying loudly once more.

His father didn’t quite know what to do, so he simply whispered in his son’s ears: “Don’t cry, it’ll be over soon.” But it wasn’t going to be over anytime soon, in fact, this was just the beginning.

Though Puyi was obviously going through a series of traumatic events for any age, his time on the throne was about to make him a spoiled brat. Every single day he would wake up to a bunch of royal food prepared especially for him by a ton of servants. During these meals, he would have access to literally any delicacy he wanted, and if that wasn’t enough, he also got custom-made clothing for his little royalty, one for each day.

Apparently, as a royal, Puyi was never supposed to repeat his clothing, so unique clothing for each day of the week was in order for the young royal. It’s safe to say that that type of treatment wasn’t going to make him the most generous and humble emperor.

As he grew up and eventually adapted to the lavish life he lived in the palace, Puyi became almost completely disconnected from his family. In fact, for seven whole years, the young man would not see his own mother. He was basically raised by his wet nurse, Wang, who stayed with him and took care of him for the most part of his young years.

She would be sent away when he turned eight years old, and he wouldn’t be able to see her for years until he finally met her again and learned of all the sacrifices she had made to raise him.

Because of the lack of proper figures disciplining him, Puyi was quickly becoming a person with no proper manners. Every single adult around him in the palace was a stranger to him, and they didn’t have the authority to pass him any educational values.

Every time they saw him they would kneel down to him, including grown men and women who were more than five times his age. That slowly allowed him to understand how much power he had over others, deeply contributing to the problematic path he was about to embark on.

With complete power and no one who would say the words “no” to him around him, Puyi was increasingly becoming someone that many would call cruel. He began doing some of the most horrific things one can think of, with one of his favorite hobbies becoming the humiliation of others at any opportunity he could find.

In any given situation, he would decide to have people beaten up, and it didn’t matter how small the infraction may have been. Mistreating people became a hobby of his, and the more he did it, the more he wanted to continue doing worse things.

What’s worse, is that Puyi truly enjoyed seeing people suffering as a result of his orders. He would sit there and savor every single moment that his eunuchs were flogged, sometimes for hours and hours of satisfaction. If he got bored, he would literally get his gun and fire pellets at his servants, just so he could bring in some action.

Basically, the young boy had grown into a sadist and was now completely out of control, since no one could go against his actions. And that wasn’t even the worst he could be.

For years, Puyi’s level of cruelty literally terrorized everyone in the palace, with servants and anyone else who lived there never knowing what his next moment of torture would be. Some would even say that historical accounts of the emperor don’t get close to what he was capable of doing.

While going against the emperor was basically illegal, many of Puyi’s advisors often begged him to stop torturing people, to which he once said: “Flogging eunuchs was part of my daily routine. My cruelty and love of wielding power were already too firmly set for persuasion to have any effect on me.”

When he reached the age of 16 in 1922, Puyi was expected to marry. As an eligible bachelor and someone with great power, there were several suitors who hoped to be picked by the emperor, only they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Plus, Puyi wasn’t just a sadist emperor at that point, even though he was already sixteen, his level of emotional intelligence was up for debate. And yet, many Dowager Empresses took on the important role of finding the perfect bride for Puyi around Forbidden City.

The Dowagers looked into all of the “best” families in the area to find a bride that would be suitable for the role and eventually found some. There was absolutely nothing romantic about how Puyi and his new bride became engaged. There were no love poems, no meeting each other’s families, no date, nothing, only the objective of finding someone who would bear the emperor’s heirs.

So the Dowagers would come back with photographs of potential suitors and tell Puyi to choose the one he was the most pleased with. That’s when things got pretty awkward.

As he skimmed through all options in front of him, there was one woman in particular that caught Puyi’s attention, and it wasn’t quite the woman the Dowagers had expected. The photograph showed a young woman, who was actually a 12-year-old child. Immediately, they advised him to choose someone else, and surprisingly he did.

He would settle for another young woman named Gobulo Wanrong, a 16-year-old stunning woman who seemed to be perfect to marry. The poor woman had no idea what was coming for her, and in no time, an announcement of the emperor’s engagement to Gobulo was all over national newspapers.

Puyi liked to believe that he was a pretty modern man, no matter how many traditional values he was still set to follow. The young emperor was an avid fan of what he considered the “modern West.” He was obsessed with watching Western films, rode his bicycle throughout the city, and even cut off his hair.

Within this “modern” side of him, a weird obsession started approaching as his wedding date became nearer. Puyi had something for the University of Oxford, and one of his biggest goals in life was to become a student there. He was only engaged to Wanrong for a couple of months when he decided that he needed a plan to conquer everything he wanted.

On the morning of June 4, 1922, Puyi was determined to give up his throne and run away to Oxford. His obsession with becoming a college student was so big that he had already thought about what he wanted to write to his people as a resignation letter. In the midst of his excitement, he told his Oxford tutor, a man called Reginald Johnston about his plans.

Unfortunately for Puyi, Johnston went against his wishes, and as soon as he heard about the emperor’s plan he decided not to help him. So when Puyi asked for his help to call a cab, he refused, and Puyi couldn’t simply head to the streets of Beijing by himself.

That was the start and the end of Puyi’s failed plan to escape the throne. He would have to accept his fate and go on with marrying his future wife. Puyi and Wanrong would start their wedding celebrations on October 21, 1922. The celebrations would last for a while and would include everything lavish one could possibly think of.

In one of the ceremonies, Wanrong was forced to kowtow to the emperor six times just to show him that she was and would always be subservient. Celebrations also included many important guests, food, and the most expensive decor they could find. The only thing was that Puyi continued to be a terrible person, and his manners during the celebrations were utterly embarrassing.

Since it didn’t seem like Puyi had the capability of connecting himself emotionally to anything, he showed absolutely no emotion toward his future wife during their wedding celebrations. He even shared later on that the moment Wanrong walked down the aisle was probably the very first time he was even interested in what she looked like.

But that wasn’t all. Remember the 12-year-old kid he had been interested in the first time he saw the photographs of potential wives? Well, he didn’t give up on the idea of marrying her.

Since he could basically do whatever he wanted, Puyi decided to marry Wanrong and 12-year-old Wenxiu too. In fact, he would end up marrying them on the same day, with Wenxiu becoming his second wife and Wanrog his first. If that wasn’t awkward enough, and probably traumatizing for the young women, the weddings still had to be consummated in the evening when they all returned to the palace.

As scary as it may have been, both girls were getting ready for the wedding ceremony when something incredibly strange happened.

Believe it or not, when it was time to consummate the two marriages, Puyi actually ran away from the room. Though no one knows where he went, we do know that Puyi was so immature that he probably got cold feet, and as we’ll find out later on, there was also something even more scandalous about him running away.

He eventually came back and started right away asking his wives to do strange things, especially his first wife, Wanrong. He was known for bursting into her private meetings out of the blue, playing a bunch of distasteful pranks on the young woman, and constantly calling her for no reason at all.

Not surprisingly, a difficult rivalry developed between Wanrong and Wenxiu during the months following the weddings. Things became really low quite fast, especially because Puyi showed a preference for Wenxiu most times. The young women started writing feisty letters to each other, with some of them even being quite insulting.

And since Puyi was just a spoiled boy, he didn’t quite know how to deal with the situation. So what did he do? He actually decided to ghost one of his wives. Although he had initially preferred Wenxiu, he eventually started ignoring her and in no time, he simply ghosted her.

At that point, his marriages weren’t the only things that weren’t working out for Puyi. After a government coup took place in 1912, his level of power had become very little. Though some very loyal enthusiasts attempted to get him back to power or to at least gain some influence back, nothing worked.

Puyi had become basically insignificant, which as we can imagine, he didn’t deal very well with. If that wasn’t enough, his wife, Wanrong, had begun taking opium for her harsh headaches, a habit that Puyi would encourage until it led to tragedy.

His eunuchs realized that Puyi had less and less power as time went by, so they started taking items from the palace that made it utterly empty. It seemed like they were slowly preparing the place to be ready to expel the insignificant emperor.

Once the government decided it was no longer necessary to keep Puyi as the country’s figurehead, they blatantly took all of his titles away. Right after that, they told him to leave Forbidden City and to never come back. In three hours, Puyi and his two wives had to pack all of their things and leave their life of luxury in the palace.

Though this could have been a fresh start for the three of them, it didn’t take that long until both Wanrong and Wenxiu weren’t so impressed with the boring life they were forced to lead. That only led the rivalry between both of them to increase, since they had a ton of time to fight with each other for their husband’s affection.

While that happened, societal pressures also started coming up, as Puyi and Wanrong hadn’t produced an heir yet. The two of them would never produce an heir together, and several rumors about their relationship have suggested that they have never even consummated the marriage.

Wanrong’s opium consumption started spiraling out of control until the people around them could no longer ignore it. The young woman was clearly addicted, and her husband did nothing but encourage her to continue with the habit, since he found her more “manageable” that way.

The situation became tense, and Puyi and Wanrong started having almost daily fights that would sometimes become quite violent. Little did Puyi know that the situation with Wanrong wasn’t the worst thing yet. Wenxiu was about to give him the blow of his life, and he wouldn’t know how to deal with it at all, unsurprisingly.

Wenxiu had grown so unimpressed with her new life as a civilian, and with the lack of attention, she received from Puyi, that she decided to leave him. Puyi felt incredibly betrayed by the situation, and instead of dealing with it by making things right with Wanrong, he decided to find a rebound instead.

Hand in hand with his failed marriages, Puyi had also become nothing in the political sphere. The Japanese realized how vulnerable and malleable he was, and decided to use him for their political purposes.

In 1931, Puyi was given the option of becoming a puppet king in Manchukuo, basically agreeing to pose for the throne while having no power at all. With nothing to lose at that point, Puyi accepted the offer and was instantly named a traitor by the Chinese. For years, he would be completely controlled by the Japanese who took their sweet time to let the new puppet leader see his own wife, who was obviously against the entire thing.

Puyi and Wanrong didn’t even get to live in a palace, they were given accommodation in the old Salt Tax Administration building of a city that was the opposite of luxurious.

Everyone, including his own father, attempted to persuade Puyi to get out of the Japanese scheme while he could, but he didn’t listen. Puyi was basically trapped at home, with no power and no life. So to cope with it, he brought back his sadistic ways and started torturing his servants, and becoming incredibly cruel to his wife who was losing it.

Wanrong tried to run away several times, and when she failed to do so, she ended up diving into the opium addiction even further and even had a few affairs with her husband’s own aides. Scandalously, she fell pregnant from one of them, and could no longer hide the affairs from Puyi.

Wanrong told Puyi that he should either recognize the child as his or that he should let her raise her child by herself anonymously, away from the royal grounds. But Puyi decided to do neither of those and instead, did something horrible. He waited for Wanrong to get to full term and have her child and then arranged for the baby to be kidnapped from her mother and killed.

He would somehow hide all of this from Wanrong, telling her a lie regarding the baby’s fate, though other historical accounts say that she eventually found out and never forgave him. And yet, they never managed to divorce each other, accepting instead to live a life of misery next to one another.

In 1945, Puyi was forced to give up his puppet throne, this time by the Soviets. He decided to flee and abandon his wife in the midst of WWII. Wanrong would be taken captive in 1946 by Chinese guerrillas, and due to the harsh withdrawal from opium and the mental difficulties she endured in prison, she eventually passed away in June 1946. When Puyi heard the news, he didn’t shed one tear.

He had become a Soviet prisoner by then, and the Chinese could barely wait to execute him. Eventually, the Soviets agreed to make a deal with the Chinese Communist Party and sent Puyi back to his land. Instead of executing him, they got Puyi to convert to communism, and to become a comrade and another political puppet. He would eventually die at the age of 61 of kidney cancer.