Emperor Xuan of Northern Zhou

Emperor Xuan of Northern Zhou (北周宣帝) (559 – 22 June 580), personal name Yuwen Yun (宇文贇), courtesy name Qianbo (乾伯), was an emperor of the Xianbei-led Northern Zhou dynasty of China. He was known in history as an erratic and wasteful ruler, whose actions greatly weakened the Northern Zhou regime. As part of that erratic behavior, he passed the throne to his son Emperor Jing in 579, less than a year after taking the throne, and subsequently entitled not only his wife Yang Lihua empress, but four additional concubines as empresses. After his death in 580, the government was taken over by his father-in-law Yang Jian, who soon deposed his son Emperor Jing, ending the Northern Zhou and establishing the Sui dynasty. Yuwen Yun was born in 559, as the oldest son of Yuwen Yong, then the Duke of Lu and younger brother of Emperor Ming. He was born at Tong Province (同州, roughly modern Weinan, Shaanxi), as Yuwen Yong was at that time the governor of Tong Province. His mother Li Ezi was Yuwen Yong's concubine. (Yuwen Yong had not yet officially married a wife by that point.) In 560, Emperor Ming was poisoned to death by his cousin, the regent Yuwen Hu. Before he died, he willed that Yuwen Yong succeed him, and Yuwen Yong took the throne (as Emperor Wu). In 561, he created Yuwen Yun the Duke of Lu but did not create him crown prince. Only after Emperor Wu ambushed Yuwen Hu and killed him in 572 did he create Yuwen Yun crown prince. (Yuwen Yun's mother Consort Li was not created empress, as Emperor Wu married Empress Ashina, the daughter of Tujue's Mugan Khan Ashina Qijin in 568.) Emperor Wu often sent Yuwen Yun on tours of the provinces—and when he himself would go on tours of the provinces or go on military campaigns, he would have Yuwen Yun guard the capital Chang'an. In 573, Yuwen Yun married Yang Lihua, the daughter of the general Yang Jian the Duke of Sui, as his wife and crown princess. It was around this time that it came to Emperor Wu's attention that most of Yuwen Yun's associates were men of low character.