The History of China - #236 - Yuan 17: The Golden Prince & The Warrior Queen

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

In the chaos that grips the steppes in the mid 15th century, anarchy reins. Though there are though who call themselves khans, they were merely figureheads controlled by their own prime ministers, the taishis. The once mighty Borjigin Clan has been bled nearly dry, and usurpers are over every hill crest. Into this world of destruction and disarray, two children are born on opposite sides of the vast Gobi. The first is one of the last members of the House of Borjigin, a boy called Bayan Möngke, who will in time become the heir to the office of Great Khan of the Mongols. The other a girl of seemingly little significance, Mandukhai, who will be given to the sitting Khan in marriage as his second queen. Time Period Covered: ca. 1448~1478 CE Major Historical Figures: Northern Yuan: Beg-Arslan Taishi Ismayil Taishi Manduul Khan, "The Old Khan" [ca. 1438-1478] Bayan Möngke Jinong, "The Golden Prince" [ca. 145?-147?] Yeke Qabar-tu Khatun, "Big Nose" [14??-14??] Mandukhai Khatun [ca. 1448-1510] General Une-Bolod [14??-14??] Siker [144?-14??] Boroghchin [ca. 14??-147?] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 236, The Golden Prince and the Warrior Queen. The birds sing and tweet in the blue sky. They are happy and joyful in their souls. Honorable Lady, compassionate and mesmerizing. With the precious words of your forefathers, with the milk-blessed roads of your mothers, the true path, with the power of love for your motherland,

have a fighter spirit in your body. Be steady, as if you were a sword with a sharp blade, From The Song of Women by The Who It was a time of chaos on the steppe. This was hardly anything striking, as in fact, most times on the steppe were times of chaos. The periods of relative order and stability, like that of the era of the great Genghis Khan and his line, were long in the past, and by the mid-15th century, any semblance of the once-glorious empire that he had built on horseback were just stories to be told around the small dung fires at night within the Gur. What had once been a continent-spanning regime had returned to almost exactly what it had been before 1206. Hundreds of small, fractious tribes who would form alliances of convenience and then break them as soon as

they became inconvenient. It was into this chaos in the mid-15th century that a baby girl named Manduhai was born. Where her place of birth was, no one is sure. Some stories have it near Hami in Xinjiang, while others put it much further east, near the modern whereabouts of Hohot. What is certain is that her tribe, and by this point most of the formerly Mongol tribes, lived well south of the Gobi Desert in the arid grasslands of modern northern China and Inner Mongolia. She was born in or around the year 1448, a year given special significance by writers like Jack Weatherford as a powerful zodiac omen, the year of the dragon. Whether she was actually born in this year or not,

however, is speculative. As in the times of Tamajin, counting specific years on the steppe was not nearly as important as in settled agrarian societies. Her name, Mandukai, meant rising or ascending, in the sense of the sun rising in the morning. It would prove to be a very portentous name, indeed. Mandukai was born into the Choros clan, a multi-ethnic conglomerate consisting, among others, of fallen and disused clan names like the Ongud and the Karahetai, along with excellent ones like the Uyghurs, Oirat, and Uriankai. As luck would have it, she was born at the pinnacle of the Choros' power and prestige, under the leadership of the nominal Taishi, or Grand Preceptor, of what remained of the Yuan Dynasty, named Essen. This was just before he was to launch his glorious attack against the Ming Chinese at Tumufort, and thereafter seek to exterminate the last of the Bojigin line, and fatefully assume the title of Great Khan of the Mongols for himself.

In 1451, the year after taking the Ming Emperor Yingzong captive, Essen Taishi appointed Mandukai's father, named Choros Baitemer, to the office of Qingsong, or Grand Counselor. Though this title carried with it great prestige, it did not amount to a great change in the family's lifestyle, which remained that of pastoral nomadic herders. In spite of his position being by the writ of Esen, Mandukai was only about six years old when her father joined many others among the Choros to overthrow and kill Essen when he attempted to usurp and wipe out the last of the Borjigin in 1453-54.

With his death, the unity Essen had been able to hold together evaporated as well. None of the other chieftains or nobles, Mandukai's father included, could maintain control, and it collapsed back into the tribal chaos that was most natural to the steppe once again. The decades to follow were fraught, to put it mildly. Weatherford aptly puts it that, quote, even the Mongol chroniclers could not keep up with the comings and goings of the episodic claimants to the office of Khan, end quote. At times there would be none at all. Then two or more might spring up, and inevitably fight it out, as often as not with all claimants being quickly wiped out, if not by one another, then by rival clans out to avenge some long-past blood vendetta. Ultimately, though, it was just so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

The title of Great Khan of the Mongol Nation held no real meaning, because there was no Mongol nation over which to rule, just scattered, infighting tribes. And into this bedlam and dissolution came those from elsewhere, with more powerful and united forces to subjugate these once mighty people. These disparate warlords came from all across Central Asia, many now bearing names not of Turkic or Mongol origin, but Islamic. Isama, Ibrahim, Ismail, and the Ilk, reflecting the Western Khanate's ongoing embrace of the Muslim faith. Much like the generals of mighty Alexander had divided up his vast empire into competing states upon the great king's death, many of these warlords were former imperial guards themselves, coming from amongst the Kipchaks, Asuds, and Assyrians.

Now they came with armies of their own, no longer beholden to any Borjigian claimant, and staked out their positions of power among the oases of the Silk Road, such as Hami and Turfan, which had long served as the critical trade centers both to and from Ming China to the rest of Eurasia. Nowadays, though, that once thriving world trade had slowed to a mere trickle, due largely to factors as various as disease and plague to banditry and rebel activity. The warlord who set up shop in Turfan was known as Begarslan, who sought to rule by proxy via his daughter. He hoped to find a living heir of the House of Bojagin and marry his daughter to him, and then have them both proclaim Khan and Khatun, thereby allowing him to effectively be the power behind the throne. It's noted that one impediment to this scheme

was that his daughter was considered unattractive, at least by Mongol standards. She was known in the chronicles as Yeke Kabartu, meaning big nose, a notably ugly trait among a people who prided themselves on having very small, almost vanishingly so, noses. Quote, Mongols associated such noses with Westerners, mostly Europeans and Muslims, rather than with East Asians. If nothing else, her Mongol name clearly indicated that Yeke Kabartu's origin, and that of her father, lay beyond the Mongol world. Just as much of a difficulty as Yeke Kabartu's aquiline nose, however, was the small number of male members of the House of Borjigin from which to choose a potential husband. Most of the living clan members were now ineffective old men, with just a few young boys with claims to having been fathered by Borjigin warriors,

who had thereafter been cut down in battle or assassination. From among this pauper's feast, Begarslan selected a modest but tractable man called Mandul to marry his daughter in or around 1464. But, as must have at least sometimes proved to be the case in such arranged-slash-forced marriages, the couple was anything but happy together. They never cohabitated, and, it's thought, never actually consummated their marriage, resulting, of course, in no children. Mandul Khan and Yeki Kabartu Khatun held court as king and queen, but otherwise avoided each other as much as was practicable. Round about the same time, as was common, even customary among Mongol lords of means, Mandul wed again. This was to a girl of about 16, nearly a quarter century his junior,

and she was Mandukai. There was nothing surprising about the match, since she came from a political family, but what makes your personal preference underlay the marriage is not clear. Perhaps she was beautiful and appealed to the Khan, perhaps he simply wanted a wife who was not a foreigner. For nearly a decade, she existed quietly as Mandul Khan's secondary, but clearly more beloved wife, on the sidelines, almost out of frame of the historical tellings. But when her moment came to seize the reins of opportunity and power, she would grab hold and never let go. Mandul Khan is known to never have had any sons of his own. There are the occasional references to young women likened to as his daughters, though whether that was by blood or by convention remains unclear. Regardless, this left him with the open and ever-pertinent question of who his heir was to be.

There were two chief contenders, both distant relatives of the Khan of the Borjigin line. The elder and stronger contender was Unabalad, an accomplished warrior and respected general in his prime, and with, quote, a record of military accomplishments in a time when the Mongols seemed woefully lacking in the skills for which they had once been so renowned. He was a proven leader of men, and one that many would follow without question. Unabalad's only seeming weakness was that he traced his descent not from the great Khan Genghis himself, but rather his younger brother, Khasar. Though the two had been firm allies in life, as the generations went on, a rift had

developed between the fraternal Borgian lines, such that there was, even three centuries later, an undercurrent of distrust that still lingered between the two. For himself, Unabalad dismissed such trivialities, and was quoted as saying that, What matters most was that all the members of the family descended from Huilun's womb, thereby making his ancestor, Hassar, and Genghis Khan equal. The general had managed to survive Essen's ruthless purge of the Borjigins by taking refuge in the ancient homeland of the family, along the banks of the Onan River and far to the north and across the Gobi from Essen's base of power. The other, and decidedly lesser claimant to the title of Khan-to-be, was still more of a boy than a man, green and unproven,

and perhaps of an age with the new queen, Mandukai herself, maybe 14 to 16. He was known as Bayan Monka. Just an infant during Essen's reign of terror, he'd been hidden and spirited away, eventually arriving in Unabalad's own territory in the heart of Mongolia. Owing to his own lineage tracing to Genghis himself, the general could not deny that, in a technical and ceremonial sense, the child was his elder brother and formally honored him as such. He understood, too, that this gave the boy,

though easily a decade or more the general's junior, a stronger claim in the line of succession, as well as a more trusted blood tie to Mandul. Apparently not truly wishing to harm the child, he nevertheless sent Bayan Manka away, as far away as he could, to be placed with and raised by a distant nomad family in one of the most remote and isolated regions of the southern Gobi. Hopefully to be forgotten forever. As such, the boy grew up eking out a meager existence in some of the harshest conditions there are, conditions not unlike those of Mandukai's childhood herself, or indeed a young Temujin once upon a time. In all three cases, life on the edge of existence

did not kill them, but made them harder and stronger. From Weatherford, quote, As herders, quote, ordered fashion, move to a new camp, and rebuild the home. They knew when to bring the animals to shelter before a storm, or how to track them afterward. A child of the steppe was trained for survival, and for constantly making vital decisions. Every morning, the herder steps out of the gir, looks around, and chooses today's path according to the results of last week's rain, yesterday's wind, today's temperature, or where the animals need to be next week. The quest for pasture is the same each day, but the way to it varies. If the rains do not come, the herder must find them. If the grass does not grow, the herder must find where it does.

The herder cannot remain in one place, be still and do nothing. The herder is forced to choose a path every day, time and time again. End quote. Such an existence requires making life-and-death decisions on a daily, even hourly basis, and often with only the barest of indications or even guidance, and no certainty whatsoever. Quote, The herder looks across a landscape of perpetual possibility. No fences or walls bar the way, but neither are there roads to guide or bridges to cross. Surviving not only all these, but several attempts on his young life, Bayan Manka matured into a young man, and then, quite suddenly, into a prince beside.

At 14, he fathered his first child with a commoner girl called Syker. Although they are written of as having been married, the details of that relationship suggest that neither particularly liked the other, nor the child they had produced. Instead, it seems to have been Syker's own father who had engineered the relationship in order to boost his own family's status by becoming the father-in-law and grandfather of Borjigin's. Interestingly, Bayan Manka was not only the scion of Temujin, but also Essen's own grandson on his mother's side, a fact that speaks to the curious and often brutal nature of such family politics on the steppe, given that his own grandfather had sought the boy dead. In any event, such a combination of bloodlines made him a very interesting prospect

in terms of uniting the fractious peoples of Mongolia, and in him, Mandul Khan seems to have seen a far less threatening choice of heir than the fearsome warrior Unabulad, whom the Khan was perpetually afraid would overthrow and kill him. He was summoned, and Bayan Manka arrived at the court of Mandul around the same time as Mandukai became the Khan's second and far more cherished Khatun. Far from seeing in one another kindred spirits and allies, however, Queen Mandukai took something of an instant dislike and even rivalry to the young heir. As the Khan's younger wife, traditionally, she would have been his chief counsel and

partner, both in and out of the Gur. Instead, she found herself almost completely eclipsed within the court by the dashing, flashy, golden prince, Bayan Manka. Mandukai languished in his shadow. He was admired and became the center of court attention, while she seemed ignored by her husband and everyone else. Everyone that was, except for Unabalad. And Bayan Manka took his new title, Jinong, meaning literally golden prince, but in fact denoting his status as heir apparent, quite literally. His favorite outfit

was a richly designed rockade deal robe, embroidered in shimmering gold and silver threads, and lined with squirrel fur. Likewise, he wore a golden belt, an unmissable symbol of his rank and status. Upon assumption of the rank, he likewise took formal possession and guardianship of the Gur shrine to Genghis Khan, and the ancient lord's black holster solda banner, an item he received directly from General Unabalad, who had held it before this moment as the presumed heir. One must imagine it would have been something of a tense exchange. Quickly after taking up his princely raiment and office, Bayan Manka aspired to make his mark on the world, in the fashion of young men everywhere. He longed for adventure, glory, and, well, how better to put it, to make Mongolia great again.

The old Khan, having lived a fairly unadventurous and tame life, at least as far as life on the steps in the 15th century tended to go, was eager to support his heir in this. Though he would refrain from taking part in the raiding and battles himself, he would often accompany the golden prince's war parties. Together, they brought a measure of order to the Mongol heartland and its long-disunited people, along with more than a little glory for all involved. What conquering neighboring steppe tribes did not yield up, however, was much in the way of fortune or riches. All things considered, one tribe was about as poor as any of its neighbors. Fortunately, there was a solution just to the south, on the far side of the Gobi, the limitless wealth of the Oroslup, the Silk Road, and China beyond. Quote,

The crown prince longed for action, and he wanted to break away from the tranquil isolation of the Mongol royal family. He did not seem sure of what he specifically sought to achieve, but he wanted something spectacular. It would not suffice to conquer neighboring clans and fight the endless Mongol feuds. He aspired to follow the heroic tradition of his ancestor, Genghis Khan, to conquer whole kingdoms and assemble an empire. End quote. And as luck would have it, the aged Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Empire, the very same that had once been taken captive by Essen at the Battle of Tumu Fortress, had recently died.

China, it seemed, would likely be thrown into uncertainty and turmoil for a time. A time which, with boldness and luck, Bayan Manka could take full advantage. Too old to make the journey himself, Mandu Khan nevertheless gave his heir blessing to head south with a raiding force, accompanied by his greatest general, none other than Unabalad. For weeks on end, the party rode, from the Orkhon Valley down the Ongi River, following it to its very source in the heart of the Gobi. From there they moved from one oasis and watering hole to the next, until after perhaps two months of travel, they descended out of the Mongolian plateau and into the fertile grasslands of the Yellow River below. Their force was, by virtually any measure, minuscule. A raiding party more than an army, and certainly without anywhere near the manpower, much less technical know-how, to capture or hold even a small Chinese city, with its high

defensive walls. Rather, the Mongol force under Bayan Manka and Unabalad decided to try to unify the southern Mongols of the Ordo Sloop and Inner Mongolia, thereby using the region as a beachhead to conduct further raids deeper into China itself. Centuries before, Genghis had achieved almost exactly this with the Ungud people, who once guarded the borderlands of the ancient Jian Empire. Now, that same guardian function was carried out by southern Mongols, the northerners' own distant kinsmen. Ostensibly, at least, that should make it easier to convince them to turn on their Chinese paymasters. Many more Mongols lived in China under Ming rule than in Mongolia,

and perhaps if unity could be reasserted between the two groups, they might be able to overcome the Chinese once again and restore the empire. The Golden Prince's natural charisma worked alongside the Mongols' long-held and deep desire to bring back the good old days of the Mongol Empire. Not only their want of glory and national pride, but also not a little of desire to raid, plunder, and enrich themselves once again as masters of the world at the sedentary people's expense. They still held themselves to be the sole legitimate rulers, if temporarily embarrassed, and just waiting for the day to come when the winds of fortune would shift again in their favor, and they would once more sweep down to reclaim all that was rightfully theirs. In the evenings over their small fires out in the vast expanse of the steppe,

they would tell endless such stories of impotent Chinese emperors, Mongol concubines, and clever Mongols who had secretly replaced the Zhu imperial family on the dragon throne, and even to this day ruled as secret Mongol potentates, calling themselves Ming, but in truth remaining Yuan. Then they would laugh at their cleverness, devour their freshly hunted mouse or marmot washed down with fermented mare's milk, and dream of the glory of old when they went to sleep in their felt gurs. The Ming ruler that Bayan Mungka and Unabalad would face turned out to be none other than the Chenghua Emperor, of nearly the same age as the young Mongol prince himself, and who we covered at length back in episode 229. If you'll recall, he's the one who was in love with his much older wet nurse, who killed almost every child and other wife he ever had. In any event, the Golden Prince of Mongolia was able to stir up mild enthusiasm

for his dreams of renewed conquest and glory among the southern Mongols. But in spite of his youthful confidence, he was no Genghis. He wasn't even an Essen. More than Bayan Mungka's dreams and promises, though, the southern Mongols were of a mind to go back to raiding their southern neighbors instead of guarding them because of yet another issue we've discussed before, the abysmal treatment and near-nonexistent discipline of the Ming army troops. Ming border guards were known to costume themselves as Mongol raiders and then steal and plunder the very people they were supposed to be protecting, and then blame it all on the savage northern barbarians. The garrison commanders were not only aware of this practice, but took a percentage of the stolen goods and then reported back to Beijing that it was all those darn Mongols' fault. The barbarians were at it again. More than that, when Mongols loyal to the Ming attempted to send tribute to the throne as the good vassals they were trying to be, they were often as not robbed by Ming border guards,

who once again then turned around and blamed it on some other, more savage tribe of Mongols. Thus, they not only were robbed of their goods, but then were blamed for their own robbery. It's not hard to imagine that more than a few of the southern Mongols were itching for a little payback. After all, if you're going to get blamed for being bandits anyway, you might as well at least benefit from the crime. These long-downtrodden border Mongols rose up against Ming authority in 1468 and renewed their biannual pattern of raids into the Southlands. This, of course, triggered a military response from the Ming, at least as much to deal with the uptick raids as it was also about the arrival of this so-called Golden Prince from the North. Again from Weatherford, quote, the main court sent out an expedition to capture the provocateur and reinforce its authority. If they could capture the heir to the title of Great Khan of the Yuan, they might have their ultimate triumph over the old dynasty, which still had not surrendered, end quote.

Though the first expedition in the summer of 1468 failed to root out the prince, a second, larger expedition the following year was able to cut off the food supply to the border Mongols and quickly force their capitulation. Bayan Mungka managed to barely slip this trap, however, and escaped back north across the Gobi to his homeland. Nevertheless, the Ming army was able to capture a local Mongol leader and thereby declare it a glorious victory over the barbarians. Meanwhile, back in the courts of the Khan, up in the Orkhon Valley, Queen Mandukai, Mandul's largely overlooked and forgotten young wife, had been using her apparent invisibility to shore up her own position and

gain some key allies for the trials that would lay ahead. Hers was a tenuous position, especially as the old Khan aged and weakened, but she was not entirely powerless. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and

Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Whoever was to be the successor to Mundul would, by convention and law, be expected to take at least one of his predecessor's wives as his own.

Such practices horrified the Chinese, who saw it as a terrible form of incest, a son marrying what amounted to one of his stepmothers. But in the harshness of the step, it was necessary in order to ensure that the wives of kinsmen would be looked after and cared for in the all-too-common event that their husband never rode back from some raid or battle. By legal traditions set down by Genghis himself, so too did any child born of a married woman become the legal child of her husband, with all the responsibilities that carried as well. What this meant in terms of interpersonal relationships between a queen and an heir was complicated, and potentially dangerous. He would need to curry favor with either the long-disfavored

Yekei Kabartu, or else the younger and more desirable Mandukai. Typically, that relationship was kept at a distance until the death of the preceding Khan, lest a sexual relationship earn his wrath, though queens and princes did not always keep to that idea of polite preceding Khan, lest a sexual relationship earn his wrath, though queens and princes did not always keep to that idea of polite chastity, a dynamic that was considered less of a breach of family etiquette and dictums among the steppe tribes than it would be in most other societies. Mongol women, and especially queens, had a tremendous amount of personal freedom and choice in this process. She could not be simply traded or taken as a wife unwillingly. Moreover, as a fully capable warrior herself, it would typically be a deadly folly to try.

Mandukai had little reason to like or trust the young prince. He had essentially replaced her at court. Her husband confided in the prince, not her. Her husband lavished gifts and power on him, and made the young prince co-ruler, a position that should have gone to the younger and heretofore favored wife. But there was someone at court who shared Mandukai's antipathy toward the golden prince, General Unabalad, who, like the queen, felt that he had been denied his rightful place and inheritance by this brash upstart. As such, an alliance was born out of this mutual loathing for the golden prince, Bayon Manka, and developed between the queen and the general.

Soon enough, rumors of a sexual relationship between the two also began being whispered throughout the royal camp, rumors that once again threatened to cause that ancient rivalry between the lines of Genghis and Khasar to flare up. The elder queen, Yeke Kabartu, was quick to side with the golden prince in this burgeoning factional rivalry between the heir and the spare. Just like Mandukai, her position within the court would likewise be contingent on whether or not she was taken into the household of the next great Khan, and so it behooved her to pick the side opposite her own rival, the younger and more beloved queen. And, soon enough, rumors began to swirl that a sexual relationship between the elder queen and the young prince had developed. This, again, was in itself no taboo or crime in Mongol culture.

Quote, So long as the female in-law had a senior position to him, as both Mandukai and Yeke Kapertu did in regard to Bayan Manka. End quote. On the other hand, it was an unforgivable offense for a senior male member of a family to lay a hand, or even look upon, the spouse of a junior male. What could constitute a crime in this case would be if the Khan suspected that the adultery might present a conspiracy by the older queen and younger prince to usurp and replace him. And, lo and behold, just such an accusation was leveled at Bayan Manka by a servant, who reported that the golden prince was attempting to rob the great Khan of his wife and do evil upon him. When summoned to the old Khan's Gur to answer the charge, Bayan Manka opted for an unusual, and potentially fatal, strategy.

Rather than denying the charge outright, the prince replied that the Khan should not deign to listen to slander from a mere servant. Quote, And this tactic paid off. Mandu acceded to the legal precedent thus laid out, and then turned his wrath upon this servant, who had attempted to betray his masters by seeking to create trouble between brothers and divide them. He ordered the servant's lips and nose cut off, and then had him put to death.

Once again, the old Khan put his faith in his golden prince. The plotters who had it out for Bayan Manka were down, but not out, and they once again began brainstorming for new ways to split the Khan from the prince, and thus get rid of their rival once and for all. Enter, stage left, Ismail, sometimes also known as Isama. Ismail was the apprentice and student of the man who commanded the true power of the remnant Yuan dynasty, Begarslan, the Taishi far to the south. Begarslan was far too busy expanding his own zone of control south of the Gobi, eastward through the Gansu Corridor, to be able to manage the affairs of the Khan's court and its twisted little politics. Ismail, therefore, had been

officially named as Begarslan's replacement as Taishi, and dispatched to court to maintain the southern warlord's influence over the Borjigin Khan and his family. This task he took up with gusto, and upon arriving in the Orkhon Valley, immediately took personal command of the Mongol army, such as it was. At this point, General Una Bolod, having yet another of his cherished positions taken away from him, now decided to call court life quits and retired to his home region. That left Bayan Manka as the sole claimant to Mandul's Khanate, which in the eyes of a young, up-and-coming Taishi like Ismail, meant that he became target number one to get rid of next. Quote, Is, having apparently learned of, or maybe seen himself,

the failed attempt to split the Khan from the Golden Prince, he now rolled out a plan of his own to complete the rupture between Mandul and Bayan Manka, and also potentially fracture Mandul's relationship with Beg Arslan by implicating his daughter, the elder queen, Yeke Kabartu. Ismail approached the old Khan privately, telling him that he had first-hand evidence, I mean he had seen it himself, that the charges made by the servant against the prince were true. Out in an isolated place, he told Mandul, the golden prince and your wife met in conjugal embrace. He then, without pushing or asking for an answer, left the old Khan to stew in the poison that was now percolating through his mind. Next, Ismail approached Bayan Manka, posing as his friend and

confidant, and telling him that he had lost favor with his lord uncle, the Khan. He informed the prince that the Khan had been informed by someone, definitely not me, but someone, of the truth of the executed servant's charges, and that he intended to do evil upon the golden prince to prevent his usurpation. When Bayan Manka scoffed and refused to believe that his uncle would turn against him, Ismail advised him that he would see the proof of his uncle's distrust and anger when someone would be sent to question him and trick him into saying something which could be used against him. Meanwhile, Mandul Khan contemplated what he'd been told with a heavy heart and troubled mind. Seemingly more or less unconcerned with the sexual side of the infidelity between his unloved wife and his very beloved nephew, Mandul seemed only to worry that the boy whom he deeply cared for and thought

of as his own true son may have been plotting rebellion and betrayal against him. He's quoted as saying to himself and those around him, This is the second time I've heard these charges. I myself am not in good health. I am without male descendants, and after I am dead, my queens and people will be his. Maybe the charges are true. He was concerned that the boy might be grasping too quickly for what was not yet his to take hold of. It is bad that, starting now, he should have such excessive desires. At last, he decided to send an envoy to the Golden Prince to, once again, question him about the charges made, a second time, against him.

But more than that, he wanted Bayan Munkar to actually deny them, say that the charges were not true, which he'd not done the first time, and swear that he remained loyal and true to his lord uncle. The envoy arrived at the golden prince's gur and said, the great Khan asks, what reason do you have to be against me? And with that, the mental trap Ismail had set in the prince's mind sprang shut. Here, indeed, was someone sent by the Khan, questioning him, and seeming to want to get him to implicate himself in this alleged crime. Bayan Manka became anxious and angry. He was never much good at future planning or strategy, but had instead gotten by on his winning charm and a big dose of good luck

to solve whatever problems or situation arose. Now here was a problem neither could really help him with, and he froze up. He did the worst thing he could do in that moment. He gazed nervously at the messenger and said nothing at all. When at last the envoy reported back to Mondul, what else could he say but that the prince had become frantic when questioned and refused to answer the charges whatsoever? This was taken, understandably, as evidence of guilt by the Al-Khan. So it's like this then, he intoned sadly. It is true that he has evil intentions against me. His melancholy turned to anger. The people do not need a ruler like him. Back at Bayan Mankazgur,

the prince had finally come to his senses, and he knew that he'd epically screwed up. And he was about to, again. All his short life, the golden prince had responded to danger, from his very infancy being spirited away from his grandfather Essen's murderous wrath, to being surrounded in China by the Ming armies, and now again when facing the wrath of Mandul Khan,

by doing only one thing. Running away, as fast and as far as possible. Had he stayed and tried to explain himself and just said something in his own defense, it's possible, perhaps even probable, that the rift between Mandul and Bayan Manka might have been repaired. But by running, he sealed his image as guilty of treason and rebellion. Mandul Khan approached the commander of his army, Ismail, and ordered him to use it to track down the rebel prince and bring him to justice for his crimes. The treacherous upstart minister was only too happy to do just that, though of course he made a proper show of solemnity that this terrible outcome had come to pass. The golden prince, now branded with the indelible stain of treason, would find that there

were very few indeed willing to help him, and in doing so attain to themselves. For some reason, probably sheer naivety, he decided to make for the southern warlord, Begarslan, Mondul and Ismail's boss, and the father of the queen he was accused of committing treason with. Quote, perhaps with Begarslan's help, they might remove the old khan, and the prince would then marry Yekekabur II, produce an heir with her, and thereby make Begarslan the grandfather of the next khan. End quote. It was not the best thought-out plan ever. But Bayan Manko was a doer, not a thinker. And so, he did.

Not wishing to arrive at this unknown warlord's seat of power, uninvited and unannounced, he sought out the camp of a Borjigin kinswoman named Borokhchin, likely a niece or cousin, and also married to either Beg Arslan or one of his sons, the specifics of which are unclear. He was greeted warmly, but immediately moved inside and out of view. They all knew the prince was in mortal danger if caught. Borokhchin listened to the prince's request, but warned him that his plan was, well, stupid and it wouldn't work. Beg Arslan wouldn't turn on his two trusted servants on account of him, and that the warlord, quote,

much preferred having an easily controlled old man as Khan rather than this impetuous and apparently easily frightened youth, end quote. Nevertheless, for the time being at least, he was welcome to shelter with Balrakchina and her family, as he thought of what he might do next. Unfortunately, the Golden Prince's flashiness and recognizability would wind up biting him in the backside hard. Along with his distinctive style of dress and fancy golden belt, Bayan Manka had always strongly preferred to only ride high-quality light chestnut mares, one of which

was parked outside grazing. Someone saw this distinctive horse and was able to put two and two together. The rebel prince was probably somewhere around here. So they immediately rode off to tell Begarzlan that the traitor prince had been located. The warlord immediately rode to Boragchin's camp to search out and capture the fugitive prince, yet when his search turned up nothing because the family was hiding him, he suspected that the family was, well, hiding him, and demanded of Boragchin where the golden prince was. Not wanting to risk getting caught in an outright lie to her lord, yet unwilling to give up her charge, she answered his question with

another question. And if he does show up here, is it your wish that I hand him over to you? Agitated, Begarzlan snapped back his reply. If I see him near you, I shall eat his flesh and drink his blood, and then stormed away. In an attempt to draw the prince out of hiding, Begarzlan and his party then departed on a hunt. In their absence, and at Borotin's urging, Bayan Manka mounted his chestnut mare and fled, somehow managing to evade the spies the warlord had left behind to watch the camp. Even so, his clean escape was short-lived. In short order, they noticed that the beautiful chestnut horse had vanished, and so therefore the prince must have escaped. They sent word

to Begarslan, who immediately wheeled around and sent a message to Borachin, demanding to know where the horse and its rebel rider had gone. To this, Borachin responded with bravery and impertinence, that she had seen the prince off safely, and why did he wish to harm him, her kinsman, when she'd never done anything against Begarslan? Quote, After sending this reply, she knew that very likely her life would be forfeit.

As such, she sent her two sons away, choosing to remain behind and face the consequences of having stood up against the warlord Begarslan. We don't know the ultimate fate of Borak Chin, for she appears no further in the Mongol chronicles, but it does seem very likely that her fatal supposition proved correct. The golden prince, Bayan Manka, now fled east toward the edge of the Gobi, and to his old homestead as a child where his first wife, Syker, and her family, and their baby, still dwelled. Quote, the Gobi, however, does not keep secrets. Word soon reached the Mongol royal camp that the prince had returned to his former home.

Ismail set out at once with his army, intent on hunting down the fugitive prince. Yet again, Bayan Munkah slipped away, abandoning the family that raised him yet again, and riding further east into the heart of the desert. Ismail and his force arrived and seized everything, whatever few valuables they might have possessed, all of the family's animals, and even took Syker as his wife. Somehow, in all the turmoil, all knowledge of the baby born to the Golden Prince and commoner was lost.

With his work seemingly done, he had, after all, broken the troublesome relationship between Mandu Khan and both of his potential heirs, Ismail decided that it was time to return south and assist his boss in raiding the Chinese borderlands, and enrich himself in the process, of course. But he was sure to leave detachments of agents behind to seek out any sign of the Golden Prince who remained troublesomely elusive, and it wouldn't be long before they found their quarry. Bayon Monka wandered the desert, alone or nearly so. Though he attempted to raise support for himself by beginning to style himself as Great Khan and raise an army, such a gambit proved fruitless. He'd been chased from every home he'd ever known,

and now he had nowhere left to turn. All that remained to him were his beautiful chestnut horse, his fine brocade deal robe, and the golden belt that had so defined his former status and position within Mongol society, but now marked him out as enemy number one. In 1470, he came up with yet another harebrained plan. To ride south to China and seek to enlist the aid of the Ming, who could drive off his enemies and install him as the great Khan that he thought he ought to be. Thus, with nothing better to do, that's what he did. He enlisted the help of a guide to get him from spring to spring

through the desert, but when the guide's family recognized the prince, they convinced the guide to abandon Bayan Manka in the desert rather than help a traitor. Suddenly finding himself truly and very much alone, the Golden Prince wandered through the Gobi, too afraid to approach any of the few springs that dotted the blasted landscape, lest he be recognized by the agents of Ismail and set to flight again. As such, he came quite close to dying of thirst, eventually working up the nerve to approach a young girl and buy from her irog to drink. He didn't tell her who he was, but again his distinctive look marked him out as at least somewhat important. After selling the exhausted prince his irog and seeing him off back into the wastelands, she would tell of this unusual man, richly dressed in shimmering robes and a

golden belt atop a fine chestnut horse, yet riding all alone, to five youths that she apparently knew. And this quintet of desert bandits decided to pay this curious figure riding all by himself a little visit of their own. Bayan Manka's mare was tired and slow, and so in practically no time the five men approached and overtook the golden prince. And what sort of man are you? one called out. Just a traveler, the prince responded shortly, not wanting to reveal himself to these strangers. Then give us your belt, another demanded. Weatherford writes that a man's belt is symbolically very important in Mongol culture. Quote,

The belt was an emblem of manhood, and being made of gold made it both a precious object, but also a high symbol of his royal rank. To rob a man of his clothes, particularly his belt, constituted one of the gravest insults, as well as a financial loss. The very word, beltless, stood as a synonym for woman. It was almost all that the prince had left in this world. End quote. When he refused, the bandits closed in, one grabbing his horse's bridle while the others pulled him down off his mount and murdered him. They took his golden belt and his beautiful horse, though they left his robes, and rode off, leaving his body to rot away in the middle of the Gobi.

So ended the life of the golden prince by Anmanka at around 19 years old. No one was left to mourn him. In the meantime, the aged Mandul Khan died. So too does Yeke Kabartu, his unloved and disgraced queen, disappear from the stories, her fate unknown. That would leave only Mandukai, at age 23, as the sole surviving member of the royal household. And her position was extremely tenuous. Indeed, it seemed hardly better than the prince who now mummified out in the Gobi desert. Quote,

Her first husband was dead, and so was his heir. The widowed queen was only a junior wife from a distant place. End quote. She remained queen of the Mongols, and could continue to rule in her own right, as was the law. But it seemed that the last of the Borjgians had died out at last, and in the most ignominious ways imaginable, 300 years after Tamajan had united them. An old, impotent, childless man choking out his last, and the dead and forgotten body of his final heir being picked apart by desert scavengers. She had no training, no experience for what she should do next, and precious little time to learn. Though she could rule as Khatun, that very position painted a target on her back.

Any and every two-bit wannabe would wish to take her as his own wife, willingly or not, for through her was the only path left to legitimate power over the Khanate, a unique moment in three centuries where the title of Great Khan was open to whoever could claim her hand in marriage. There were three paths set out before her. First and most traditionally acceptable would be for her to accept the hand of General Unaballad, whom she knew, and to at least some extent trusted, and perhaps even loved. Moreover, as at least a collateral line of the House of Borgsgene, he most completely satisfied the expectations of Great Khan.

Her life would remain in Mongolia, and be much as it had been before all this. A rugged, simple, harsh life at the edge of the world. A Mongol life. I will light your fire for you, Unabalad wrote her in his proposal of marriage. I will point out your pastures. The second path would be to wed the Taishi, Ismail, already the de facto head of the empire, and move south of the Gobi to live in greater wealth and abundance, and in a milder climate beside. With his connections to trade caravans, he offered her exotic trinkets and other delights. She would drink grape wine from glass goblets made in Italy and enjoy luscious melons cooled in underground irrigation chambers.

Throughout the winter, she could nibble delicacies sweetened with raisins, and the men around her would wear gleaming white turbans and carry swords of Damascus steel. Yet even these luxuries paled in comparison to the creature comfort offered by the third path. Mandukai could refuse marrying either the Mongol general or the Muslim warlord, and instead ride south, south all the way to China, to formally and finally submit to the great emperor of Ming as the last legitimate ruler of her once mighty Yuan, and request his asylum. The Ming court would treat her as royalty of a fashion that no living person of

the steppe could hope to dream. For simply swearing her loyalty to them, she would live her life as the last widow of the great Khan, quote, a coddled symbol of the final acknowledgement by the Mongol royal family, and thereby the Mongol nation, of the power of the Ming dynasty and the superiority of the Chinese civilization, end quote. If she chose, she could be admitted into the Imperial Harem as a Royal Imperial Concubine, to have her every desire and whim catered to by an army of eunuch servants within the Forbidden City's inner court. If that life did not suit her, she could live in the vast mansion of her own as a widow, with servants and retainers to see to her every need. She could even eventually remarry. And in any case, she would never have another

worry or responsibility throughout her pampered life. So which would it be? Most of her people greatly desired that she choose Unabalad. It would be better for the nation, they told her. Yet even so, she flatly rejected the Mongol general's proposal. You have a tent flap I must not raise, she wrote back to him. You have a threshold I must not step over. I will not go to you. As others had advised her, by marrying outside the lineage of Genghis Khan, she would divide her people and likely set them upon a path of another self-destructive round of civil wars.

Your path will grow dark. You will divide yourself from the people, and you will lose your honored and respected title of Khatun. That counted out Ismail all the more. And as for surrendering herself, her title, and her nation to the Ming, that would be the most disgraceful, selfish, and cowardly choice of them all. Queen Mandukai thought over her three paths carefully. And then, for the first, but certainly not the last, time in her life, she made a decision of her very own. She turned to the advisor who had most strenuously recommended that she marry Unabalut. You disagree with my refusal because Unabalut is a man and I am only a widow.

Just because I am female, you really think you have the right to speak to me, your queen, this way? And with that, her anger peaked. She threw her cup of steaming tea at the advisor. She would choose none of the three paths set before her. She was the queen regnant of the Mongol nation, devoted mother of her people, and would forge a fourth path, one all her own. And so next time, Queen Mandukai will ride down that fourth path at full gallop, carrying with her a most unlikely companion. Because, as you'll recall, the late golden prince Bayanmanka had an heir of his own. An infant boy by the name of Batumanka, last scion of the Borjigins,

who had mysteriously disappeared and reappeared under Mandukai's protection. And together, the two of them will change the steps forever. Thanks for listening. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.