It pitted the young and newly enthroned Jiajing Emperor against the Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe and most of the scholar-bureaucrats in his government.
In order to perform the proper rituals owed him according to tradition, it was necessary that the Jiajing Emperor be posthumously adopted by his late uncle who has been dead for nearly two decades.
[1] The conflict between the emperor backed by his mother and officialdom backed by the empress dowager was finally broken by memorials to the throne (namely, by newly qualified scholar-bureaucrats Zhang Cong and Gui E) arguing that rituals performed contrary to the emperor's own heart would be against human nature.
Encouraged by this, gradually Emperor Jiajing fostered the idea of "ascending the clan but not the lineage" and grew more presumptuous.
By the end of Emperor Jiajing's one-sided settlement, enemies and dissenters at court were beaten (sometimes to death), imprisoned, or banished.