In November 1861, Yixuan sided with Prince Gong and the two dowager empresses and launched the Xinyou Coup to seize the regency from Sushun and his faction.

Yixuan personally led imperial forces to arrest Sushun and bring him back to Beijing, where he was executed.

As a consequence of the Xinyou Coup, Yixuan found himself elevated to the highest ranks in the imperial court.

Zaitian was adopted into the Xianfeng Emperor's lineage; this meant that he was nominally no longer Yixuan's son.

Since filial piety is a highly revered value in Chinese culture, it meant that Yixuan, the biological father of the reigning emperor, would be endowed with the highest honours and privileges.

However, Yixuan perceived himself to be in an extremely dangerous and uncomfortable position, given the prickly nature of Empress Dowager Cixi and her obsessional paranoia of any potential threat to her status.

In the following years, with the disgrace of his sixth brother Yixin (Prince Gong), Yixuan unwillingly became the second most powerful figure in the imperial court after Empress Dowager Cixi.

In 1885, Empress Dowager Cixi appointed Yixuan as "Controller of the Admiralty", putting him in charge of supervising the building of a new imperial navy.

Before her adopted son, Emperor Guangxu, took over the throne in 1889, Cixi wrote out explicit orders that the navy should continue to develop and expand gradually.

In actuality, China's defeat was caused by Emperor Guangxu's lack of interest in developing and maintaining the military.

This was unacceptable for the very superstitious Cixi, as obsessed as ever with thwarting any challenge to her power, and so she promptly had the tree felled.

The tomb and surrounding area appears in Quentin Tarantino's 2004 film Kill Bill: Volume 2 as the home and training grounds of the legendary Shaolin monk Pai Mei.