Contextualising conflict provides further testimony of children’s legitimacy as rulers between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. This chapter turns to narrative accounts of dynastic challenge, opportunistic conflict and kidnap to address the problematic association between child kingship and magnate violence. Evidence for the appearance and escalation of conflict while a boy was king has often been accepted without sufficient critical scrutiny. The chapter shows that attempts to remove children from their royal positions were rare, and that conflict often upheld their legitimacy to rule rather than undermining it. Applying the arbitrary label of violent opportunism to all instances of conflict when a child was king oversimplifies the complex range of reasons for magnate disputes. Instead, conflict could be, among other things, a legitimate response to royal succession, a habitual aspect of the negotiation of disputed property and rights, or a product of recurring quarrels over hierarchy and prominence. The child king’s presence and active participation could, once again, convey a significant and authoritative weight.

This reassessment of guardianship terminology interrogates how medieval writers described the administrative, governmental, tutorial and emotional responsibilities of a boy king’s guardians. Analysing the vocabulary used to describe child kingship in royal documents, letters, chronicles, annals and various other sources rapidly reveals the inadequacies of the terms ‘regent’ and ‘regency’ before the fourteenth century at the earliest. Those writing while a boy was king, or in the years immediately after, made a sharp distinction between the conception of royal rule, on the one hand, and the duties, actions and responsibilities of those supporting the child ruler, on the other. This chapter interrogates, in turn, how writers distinguished between the terminology of royal rule, government and administration, education and nurture, and legal wardship and protection. Although ideas concerning the guardianship of minors prominently influenced representations of child kingship, this was only one aspect of a much broader conception of a child’s rule and the protection they and their kingdom required.

Medieval societies did not exclusively and inflexibly conceive kingship as the remit of a mature man, even if adult male rulers were more typical. This introduction shows the urgency and timeliness of looking beyond the ‘unspoken hegemony’ of adulthood to understand the intersections between childhood and kingship. Focusing first on the interconnectedness of representation and reality, the chapter highlights the necessity of uniting an emphasis on children’s lived experiences as political actors with an examination of cultural representations of ideas about childhood and rulership. The introduction then turns to consider three essential components which shape this study’s methodology: a comparative approach, a diachronic analysis and a holistic approach to the sources. This section argues for the importance of contextualising child kingship within a wider comparative framework which accounts for political, social, cultural and legal change. It also sketches the benefits of adopting a broad approach to the source material which incorporates chronicle, documentary, didactic, epistolary, legal and literary sources.

The Qurʾan, and the problems of its interpretation, is even more central to Islamic political culture than is the Bible to the Latin west and Byzantium. It became accepted in the mid-ninth century that interpretation of the law and many case rulings should be the preserve of the ʿulamaʾ. So although the caliph was revered as the guardian of the faith and supreme leader, his rule was not engrained in the courts of law and the maintenance of property rights and inheritance in the manner of western or Byzantine rulers. This partly accounts for the relatively poor survival rate of archival holdings. Yet narratives and prescriptive texts can shed light on actual practices and help chart change over time, from the caliphate’s imperial palaces to the predominance of Turco-Mongol warlords in the later middle ages. Evidence is particularly full for the Ilkhan rulers of Iran and those of Egypt and Transoxania. Their entourages brought new ideas and practices to Islamic political culture without abandoning core elements of Islamic ideology. The Ottomans’ conquest of Asia Minor and, above all, of Constantinople created the most enduring blend of Islamic traditions and new modes of rulership.

Dio often portrays effective rulership in negative terms, defining a ruler's traits, policies, and associates by deficits when he sees a great vacuum at the center of power, an emptiness in an unsatisfactory emperor such as Commodus, waiting to be filled with unsuitable notions from the worst people. His history offers an array of faults to contemplate, many and specific, whereas positive terms are few and with little variety. Substandard rulers share negative traits typical of a tyrant’s behavior: cowardice, deceit, emptiness, gluttony, greed, pretense, overall unworthiness characterized by nullity: excessively improper, insatiate, shameless, unclean, unholy, lawless, senseless, impious, unseemly, uneducated. The only traits not negative in form are terrible indeed: savage, blood-guilty, cruel. The historian describes those of whom he approves with a few positive phrases – a good man, worthy, excellent – but here again goodness is oftener defined by what it is not: not greedy, deceptive, vicious, or any of the other things that unsatisfactory people are. The first part of the chapter offers a general account of specific traits and vocabulary. It is followed by a chronological review of specific leaders: some prominent Republican figures, especially dynasts of the Late Republic, and the emperors from Augustus through Elagabalus.

Chapter Two explores how court officials tried to come to terms with Zhu Di’s deep engagement with the steppe and its leaders. Zhu Di’s five steppe campaigns were more than military conflicts. Zhu Di visited the sites – sometimes ruins – of former Yuan palaces and lodges. He offered commentary on the Yuan ruling house, which accentuated his status as successor to the Great Yuan and as a ruler uniquely qualified to pass judgment on fellow sovereigns. Zhu Di’s actions challenged civil officials in many ways. They had to praise a sovereign who openly flouted the founder’s precedents. They celebrated the emperor’s newest subjects, men who drank blood, consumed raw liver, and exulted in physical strength. Court ministers’ writings depicted a style of rulership obviously connected to men from afar in ways that simultaneously satisfied their sovereign’s demands and minimized dangers to the polity and to themselves.

The Conclusion offers observations about what the study’s main findings reveal about Ming rulership and the Ming throne’s place in east Eurasia. It argues that the Ming throne actively sought allies in Eurasia through political patronage, economic support, and a rhetoric that highlights the ties of good faith and loyalty between the emperor and Mongol nobles at home and abroad. The Conclusion also briefly critiques New Qing History exceptionalism, suggesting that the Ming throne’s engagement in Eurasia is one chapter in a far longer story of China’s deep ties to neighboring polities.

Using the unusually rich historical sources generated by the Tumu crisis, Chapter Four offers a reconstruction of Ming rulership in east Eurasia in the mid-fifteenth century. Chapter Four demonstrated that the fifteenth century’s first half saw a multigenerational, multifaceted competition among Mongol, Oirat, and Ming ruling elites to turn the Chinggisid legacy to their advantage. Each developed a genealogy or pedigree of rulership, which it advertised to its neighbors. The best-documented example, that of the Ming dynastic house, trumpeted the superior attributes of the rulership of Zhu Yuanzhang and his descendants. Just as emphatically, the Ming throne denied the qualifications of rival lords such as Toqto’a-Buqa and Esen. The Ming ruling family and its close supporters tried to persuade several audiences, including Jurchen chieftains, the Choson throne, and Oirat and Mongol leaders, of its historical vision of the past and the present.

Chapter Three is a group biography of Mongols in the early Ming throne’s service. Zhu Di and his advisers depicted Esen-Tügel’s decision to join the Ming dynasty in 1423 as a submission, which proved Zhu Di’s superior attributes of rulership. The emperor’s martial prowess, munificence, and ability to recognize men of outstanding ability regardless of their origin won the allegiance and service of a proven Mongol warrior and leader. As was often the case, this dramatic moment – an oath of personal fealty – commanded chroniclers’ attention, but the bigger story had yet to unfold. Imperial patronage continued for much of the remainder of the fifteenth century. It took material form in housing, wages, and personal gifts. It also came in the guise of tax exemptions, prestigious titles and posts, opportunities for advancement, and the throne’s conspicuous protection. Successive emperors displayed their favor through material, financial, political, and honorific means. Such patronage extended to hundreds of Mongolian men, their families, and their descendants for decades and decades. Men from afar embraced this face of rulership. At the same time, it was a pattern of behavior that many civil officials rejected, in part because they felt that such generosity came at their expense.

The introduction discusses the core issues and organization of the book. It argues that despite long-standing stereotypes about Chinese isolation, the Ming court was fully engaged in foreign relations in Eurasia and that relations with Mongol nobles in particular figure prominently in the perception and representation of Ming emperors’ identity and style of rulership.

Zhu Di’s experience as imperial prince shaped his rule’s style and substance. He interacted with Mongolian men as subordinates, advisers, allies, negotiating partners, rivals, and traitors. He was known among them as Lord of Yan. Breaking with his father’s example, Zhu Di repeatedly campaigned in person on the steppe as emperor. There he met with steppe leaders, hosted banquets, conducted grand hunts, and organized vast military reviews. He spoke openly of his motives and objectives on the steppe, not just to audiences at home but also with Korean, Jurchen, Mongol, Moghul, and Timurid leaders. He inserted himself into a Chinggisid world as east Eurasia’s premier ruler and patron.

Chapter Five uses the Tumu crisis to shed light on two more facets of Ming rulership in east Eurasia. The first is the Ming court’s deep commitment to secure allegiance among neighboring elites, and the second is the striking commensurability between the Ming throne and Mongol (including Oirat) nobles. Both issues throw into relief contemporary awareness that Ming rulership did not occur in isolation but rather coexisted with other centers of power and authority. Ming rulers strove to shape the perceptions and actions of neighboring lords, great and small. Drawing on its military, economic, ritual, and rhetorical resources, the Ming court established itself as east Eurasia’s premier patron. The Oirats’ rise showed that the Ming court’s influence might be challenged, but in the mid-fifteenth century, no one – even Esen – seriously contemplated toppling, much less replacing, the Ming dynasty.