The palace plot of Renyin year

In 1542 in China, sixteen palace women made an assassination attempt against the Jiajing Emperor. The emperor was a believer in alchemy, and created concoctions to prolong his life. According to some accounts, one of his concoctions was called red lead, made from the menstrual blood of virgins. To produce this substance, girls aged 13-14 were kept in the palace and fed only mulberry leaves and rainwater in order to keep their menstrual blood ‘pure’. The girls would be thrown out if they became sick, and were beaten if they rebelled. 

Furious with this treatment, sixteen women banded together to strangle the Jiajing Emperor in his sleep. The attempt was unsuccessful and one woman alerted Empress Fang as to what had happened. The emperor was revived,  and while he was unconscious Empress Fang saw to it that the palace women were punished. All of them were executed, as were 10 members of their families, and the emperor’s favourite concubine Consort Duan, who had nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. 

The Jiajing Emperor did not stop making his red lead concoction after his brush with death. In 1552, he ordered the age limit be reduced to eight years old for making his medicine. The Jiajing Emperor died in 1567, aged 60.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A portrait of The Jiajing Emperor