Emperor Hui of Han
[3] Huidi was personally kind and well-intentioned, simple, hesitant, soft-hearted and generous, unable to escape the impact of his mother's viciousness.
[4] During Chu–Han Contention, while Liu Bang fought a five-year war with Xiang Yu for supremacy over the Chinese world, his mother, his sister, and he did not initially follow his father to the Principality of Han (modern Sichuan, Chongqing, and southern Shaanxi); rather, they stayed in his father's home territory, perhaps in his home town of Pei (沛縣, in modern Xuzhou, Jiangsu) deep in Xiang's Principality of Western Chu, presumably with his grandfather Liu Taigong.
In 196 BCE, Gao even issued a decree to the effect that any official knowing of a virtuous man must so report on penalty of being fired (unless they were too old or sick).
Liu Bang was well aware of the reputation of these four sages, and when he became emperor Gao, the four refused his ardent entreaties to assume positions of importance in his newly established government.
Lü Hou got the advantage: she went to the powerful official Zhang Liang, who said, “His Majesty had long heard about the Four Whiteheads of Mount Shang and wanted to invite them to serve the country.
If the Crown Prince could obtain the support of the Four Whiteheads of Mount Shang, then His Majesty would not depose him.” Lü Hou then applied her forces of persuasion.
Upon finding out who they were and what their position was, Gaodi went to Lady Qi and told her: “I cannot appoint your son as the successor because the Crown Prince has already obtained the support of such capable people.
Prince Ying was instead put in charge of home territories around the capital Chang'an, assisted by Confucian scholar Shusun Tong (叔孫通) and strategist Zhang Liang (張良).
Empress Dowager Lü wanted to kill Liu Ruyi, but was afraid that any attempt might also harm her own son, and therefore could not carry out her plot for several months.
Empress Dowager Lü heard this and immediately sent an assassin into the emperor's palace to force poisoned wine down the prince's throat.
She then had Consort Qi's eyes gouged out, made her ears deaf, drugged her to make her unable to speak and had her arms and legs cut off.
The mutilated woman was thrown into a latrine and then fed and kept alive in a pig's bin and was called the "人彘", meaning literally the "human swine".
When Emperor Hui saw his father's favorite and the mother of his beloved little brother in such a condition, he cried out loud and became depressed and sick for about a year.
In c.December 194 BC,[12] when Liu Fei, Prince of Qi—his older half-brother—made an official visit to the capital, they both attended a feast put on by Empress Dowager Lü.
As Liu Fei was about to drink the poisoned wine, Emperor Hui, knowing his mother's murderously jealous temperament and remembering how his other brother had died, suddenly reached for the second cup, which the Empress did not intend.
[6]: 31, 33 Hui had a eunuch lover by the name of Hong Ru, who was favored so deeply that many officials attempted to imitate his style of dress in the hope of gaining the emperor's attention.
Modern historians have split opinions on the issue, but largely believe that the boys were actually Emperor Hui's sons by concubines and that Empress Zhang did indeed put their mothers to death and make them her own children.
(As, for example, Bo Yang pointed out, it would be logically incongruent, if Empress Zhang did steal these children from elsewhere, for her to put only the mothers but not the fathers to death.)
