Zhu Youlang

He inherited the title Prince of Gui (桂王) from his brother and lived an obscure life as a minor member of the Ming imperial family until the rebellions of peasant armies, which resulted to the fall of the imperial capital, Beijing, and the suicide of the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, after the peasant rebel leader Li Zicheng captured Beijing in 1644.

Six weeks later, on 5 June, the army of the Manchus, a people from beyond the Great Wall, entered the city and proclaimed the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing.

[2] In the following two years, as the Qing extended their control over northern China, the remaining Ming loyalists attempted to regroup in the south, but in rapid succession the Hongguang, Longwu, and Shaowu emperors were captured and executed.

[3][4] Zhu Youlang succeeded to the throne with approval by his fathers widow and principal wife Empress Dowager Wang, who was his own adoptive mother, and during his first five years of reign, she acted as his adviser, and it was said that she was "...versed in letters, aware of current events, analytical about tasks and clear in her reasoning.

[4] This success, however, caused the Qing to place the entire region in the hands of the extremely capable former Ming official Hong Chengchou, who was named governor-general of five provinces.

In 1658 Zhu Youlang retreated to Kunming in Yunnan, from where he sought refuge under the protection of Pindale Min (1608–1661), ninth king of the Taungoo dynasty of Burma.

The Chinese devastated the land around Ava but failed to capture it, thanks to the defence offered by Pindale's mercenary Portuguese artillery (led by a mysterious Mi-thari Kattan, which might be a Burmese attempt at an otherwise unknown "Mister Cotton").

[6] Accordingly, on 22 January 1662, the last monarch of the Southern Ming, together with his sons and grandsons, were put on boats and forwarded to Wu Sangui's camp near Ava.

[7] Thinking that he was being taken to his longtime military protector Li Dingguo, the forlorn emperor only realized his real destination when he arrived at Wu's camp.