[11][12] Li Hongji, a withdrawn and troubled young man, resented his crown prince uncle, whom he saw as a political enemy standing in his way.

Fearing the possible results of this family enmity, Li Congjia tried hard to be inconspicuous and focused on the arts, including poetry, painting and music.

Lady Zhou was not only highly educated but also multi-talented in music and the arts and the young couple enjoyed a very intimate relationship.

The resistance war did not end until spring 958, after Li Jing ceded all prefectures north of the Yangtze River to his powerful northern neighbor.

Knowing the limit of Southern Tang's military strength and trying hard to be subservient to the northern court, Li Yu immediately sent a high official Feng Yanlu with a letter — whose language was of extreme humility[17] — to inform Song of his succession.

Things got to a rocky start: during his accession to the throne Li Yu built a golden rooster, a symbol of imperial power, the news of which infuriated Zhao Kuangyin.

[16] Such an embarrassing relationship would define Li's entire reign, as tribute payments, both regular and irregular, drained the Southern Tang treasury.

Li would mourn his son by himself so as not to sadden his wife more than necessary,[11] but Queen Zhou was completely devastated and quickly deteriorated in health.

[14] When the queen finally succumbed to illness, Li mourned so bitterly until "his bones stuck out and he could stand up only with the aid of a staff.

Lin Renzhao, the Southern Tang military governor of Zhenhai Command (鎮海軍) centering in Wuchang (in modern Hubei), believed the opportunity golden to attack the Song cities around Yangzhou (in modern Jiangsu) as the main Song army would be a long distance away and already severely fatigued.

"[9] What Li was perhaps unaware was a year before, the Song military had gotten hold of an important chart with detailed measurements of Yangtze River crossing points, provided by a Southern Tang defector named Fan Ruoshui.

Chancellor Chen Qiao angrily reacted to Lin's death: "Seeing loyal ministers killed, I don't know where I will die!

[9][10] Li was an incompetent ruler who spent more time on literature and art, with little regard to the Song dynasty that was eyeing its weaker neighbor.

[21] In a later poem, Li wrote about the shame and regret he had on the day he was taken away from Jinling (as translated by Hsiung Ting[22]): He was poisoned by the Song emperor Taizong in 978, after he had written a poem that, in a veiled manner, lamented the destruction of his empire and the rape of his second wife Empress Zhou the Younger by the Song emperor.

The roughly 40 (some of which incomplete owing to damaged manuscripts) cí poems possibly written by Li Yu are summarized in the table below.

A few poems have been set to music in modern times, most notably the three songs in Teresa Teng's 1983 album Light Exquisite Feelings.

For example, "Dirge for the Zhaohui Queen Zhou" is rhymed and almost entirely in regular four-character metre, resembling the fu form a millennium before.

As one Song Dynasty writer noted: "The large characters are like split bamboo, the small ones like clusters of needles; altogether unlike anything done with a brush!