Thanks to his father's loyal partisans, Tugh Temür did restore the line of Khayishan (Emperor Wuzong) to the throne but persecuted his eldest brother Kusala's family, and later expressed remorse for what he had done to him.

Tugh Temür sponsored many cultural activities, wrote poetry, painted, and read Chinese classical texts.

He mandated and closely monitored the compilation called "The Imperial Dynasty's grand institutions for managing the world"; through this textual production, he proclaimed his reign as new beginning, which took stock of the administrative practices and rules of the past and looked forward to a fresh chapter in Yuan dynastic governance.

[3] But his reign was brief, and his administration was in the hands of powerful ministers, such as El Temür of the Qipchaq and Bayan of the Merkid who had helped him to win the succession struggle in 1328.

As the persecuted sons of Khayishan Külüg Khan, Tugh Temür and Kusala still enjoyed a measure of sympathy among the Borjigin princes and, more importantly, the lingering loyalty of some of their father's followers who had survived various political purges.

At the same time, however, his elder brother Khutughtu Khan Kusala gathered support from princes and generals in Mongolia and Chagatai Khanate and entered Karakorum with the overwhelming military presence.

[8] Kuśala thanked El Temür and appointed him grand councillor of the right wing of the Secretariat with the title darqan taishi.

Because Tugh Temür's accession was so transparently illegitimate, it was more important for his regime than for any previous reign to rely on liberal enfeoffments and generous awards to rally support from the nobility and officialdom.

[10] And he also sent Muqali's descendant Naimantai to Eljigidey, who strongly supported Kusala, to give the royal seal and gifts in order to mollify his anger.

As the persons who had been chiefly responsible for making the restoration possible, they acquired a measure of power and honour that had never before been attained by any official in the Yuan.

[14] Because a budget deficit of the government drastically increased, and reached 2.3 million ding of paper currency in 1330 alone, Tugh Temür's court attempted to curtail its spending on such items as imperial grants, Buddhist sacrifices, and palace expenses.

The added costs of the war against the loyalists and the suppression of the revolts by the ethnic minorities, and natural disasters heavily taxed resources of Tugh Temür's government.

The war in Yunnan continued with doubtful success, but the Imperial general Aratnashiri having collected an army of 100,000 men, defeated the Lolos and other mountaineers, and killed two of their chiefs.

Lo yu, one of the rebel chiefs in Yunnan, had escaped to the mountains; he collected a body of his people, and, dividing them into sixty small parties, overran the country of Chunyuen, where they committed frightful devastation.

The conduct of the Emperor caused much discontent, and Yelu Timur, son of Ananda who attempted to take the throne in 1307, in conjunction with the heads of the Lama religion in China, formed a plot to displace him; but this was discovered, and they were duly punished.

Posing as a cultivated sovereign of the Yuan, Tugh Temür adopted many measures honouring Confucianism and promoting Chinese cultural values.

Concentrating so many talents in one governmental organ to perform various literary, artistic, and educational activities was unprecedented not only in the Yuan dynasty but also in Chinese history.

But its most important achievement was its compilation of a vast institutional compendium named Jingshi Dadian (Chinese: 經世大典, "Grand canon for governing the world").

The purpose of bringing together and systematizing all important Yuan official documents and laws in this work according to the pattern of Huiyao (Chinese: 會要, "Comprehensive essentials of institutions") of the Tang and Song dynasties was apparently to demonstrate that Yuan rule was as perfect as that of earlier Chinese dynasties.

Due to the fact that the bureaucracy was dominated by El Temür, whose despotic rule clearly marked the decline of the empire, the actual impact of the Academy of the Pavilion of the Star of Literature on the government as a whole was limited.