|Reign||30 June 1398 – 13 July 1402|
|Zhu Wenkui, Crown Prince Hejian
Zhu Wengui, Prince Huai of Run
|Family name: Zhū (朱)
Given name: Yŭnwén (允炆)
|Era name and dates|
|Jiànwén (建文): 6 February 1399 – 29 July 1402|
|Emperor Rang (讓皇帝, 1644)
Emperor Hui (惠皇帝, 1736)
|House||House of Zhu|
|Mother||Empress Dowager Lü|
|Born||5 December 1377|
|Died||13 July 1402
The Jianwen Emperor (Chinese: 建文帝, p Jiànwéndì; 5 December 1377 – 13 July 1402) was the second emperor of the Ming Dynasty in China. His personal name was Zhu Yunwen (朱允炆). The era name Jianwen meant "Establishing Civility" and represented a sharp change in tone from his grandfather's era of "Great Martiality" (Hongwu). His reign did not last long: an attempt to restrain his powerful uncles led to the Jingnan rebellion and usurpation by the Yongle Emperor. Although the new emperor presented a charred body as Zhu Yunwen's, rumors circulated for decades that the young emperor had escaped his burning palace in a monk's robe. This rumor is credited by some[who?] as having prompted Zheng He's voyages of exploration to the Indian Ocean. Some historians believe that Jianwen Emperor did indeed escape Nanjing and the Ming official history texts were altered by officials in the Qing dynasty to please their emperor.
Early Life 
His father Zhu Biao was the son and crown prince of the Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming Dynasty. When Zhu Biao died young in 1392, the Hongwu Emperor – after several months' deliberation – upheld the strict rules of primogeniture laid out in his instructions to the dynasty and favored the bookish and 14-year-old Zhu Yunwen over his other sons, despite the powerful feudal grants he had provided them throughout the empire.
The Jianwen era (1398 – 1402) was short.
Upon the advice of his Confucian scholars, he continued his grandfather's policy of restraining the court eunuchs and began clawing back territory and forces from his uncles. Over the course of 1399, he demoted or arrested several and prompted the suicide of one.
Reacting to this, the Prince of Yan Zhu Di captured and coöpted the Prince of Ning Zhu Quan – between the two of them, he now possessed the bulk of the empire's large northern army. He also won the support of several Mongolian tribes by torching his brother's capital at Daning and evacuating the province. Feigning sickness and madness, Zhu Di succeeded in convincing the Jianwen Emperor to release the three sons of his held hostage in Nanjing: almost immediately upon their arrival, the emperor attempted to arrest Zhu Di himself and the prince launched the Jingnan Campaign against the court.
Aided by eunuch spies and turncoat generals, the Prince of Yan succeeded in capturing the emperor's Yangtze fleet and entered the capital Nanjing through an opened gate in 1402. Although his propaganda had portrayed him as the Duke of Zhou, who famously supported his young nephew King Cheng by waging war on the king's evil advisors, Zhu Di's entrance to the capital was almost immediately followed by the torching of the imperial palace and the presentation of three charred bodies as the emperor's, his consort's, and his heir's. The Jianwen era was declared void and its records systematically altered or destroyed, while the prince established himself as the new Yongle Emperor. Thousands of scholars and their families who opposed these measures were executed – the most famous were Fang Xiaoru and three others remembered as the Four Martyrs.
Many rumors stated that the Jianwen Emperor – on his own or thanks to the Hongwu Emperor's foresight – managed to escape the sack of Nanjing disguised as a monk. Some records[which?] reported that one year after he became emperor, the Yongle Emperor sent two agents to discover him; one did and chatted with the escaped emperor but did not return him. Passages in the official History of Ming even present the initial impetus to Zheng He's voyages as discovering whether countries to the south had provided him haven. Still other records[which?] relate that decades later the Jianwen Emperor returned to the imperial palace and lived the rest of his life in obscure retirement.
The bodies presented as the imperial family by the Yongle Emperor were not given a full burial and there is no known grave of the Jianwen Emperor. He was initially denied a temple name and left unhonored at Ming family shrines. The Prince of Fu, self-proclaimed emperor of the Southern Ming, granted him the temple name Huizong (惠宗) in 1644, but this name is not generally remembered or accepted in the official Chinese histories.
- Lady Lü (呂氏) (1321–1414), daughter of Lü Changben (呂昌本) and Zhu Biao's second wife, honored as Empress Dowager after her son ascended the throne
|Formal Title||Maiden Name||Birth||Death||Father||Mother||Issue||Notes|
|Empress Xiao Min Rang
|1378||13 July 1402||Ma Quan
|–||Zhu Wenkui, Crown Prince Hejian
Zhu Wengui, Prince Huai of Run
|Crown Prince Hejian
|30 November 1396||unknown||Empress Xiao Min Rang||–||–||Believed to have perished in the palace fire that also killed his parents|
|Prince Huai of Run
|Empress Xiao Min Rang||–||none||Survived the palace fire that was believed to have killed his parents and brother; lived in obscurity for the rest of his life mostly under house arrest at Guang'an Palace at Fengyang|
- On 30 July 1402 the Jianwen era was officially abolished by the new emperor, and the former Hongwu era was reestablished until the beginning of 1403 when the Yongle era officially started.
- This name was provided by the Prince of Fu, self-proclaimed emperor of the Southern Ming, in 1644. The full title was "Sìtiān Zhāngdào Chéngyì Yuāngōng Guānwén Yángwǔ Kèrén Dǔxiào Ràng Huángdì" (嗣天章道誠懿淵功觀文揚武克仁篤孝讓皇帝).
- This name was provided by the Qianlong Emperor in 1736. The full title was "Gōngmǐn Huì Huángdì" (恭閔惠皇帝)
- This name was provided by the Prince of Fu.
- Supposed to have died in the burning of the Imperial Palace. However, it is widely believed that he survived and lived underground for many more years as a Buddhist monk.
- Dardess, John. Ming China, 1368-1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire. Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. ISBN: 1442204915, 9781442204911. Accessed 14 Oct 2012.
- The Ming Ancestor Tomb
Jianwen EmperorBorn: 5 December 1377 Died: 13 July 1402
The Hongwu Emperor
|Emperor of China
The Yongle Emperor