Fusu

Fusu (died 210 BC) was the eldest son of the First Emperor of Qin and his expected successor, whose death by an engineered command cleared the way for the dynasty's rapid collapse. Little is recorded of his early life, including the identity of his mother. The Shiji presents him as the most capable and humane of the emperor's many sons, though this characterization may owe something to the narrative needs of historians writing under the Han, for whom Fusu served as the virtuous road not taken.

According to the traditional account, Fusu fell from favor by remonstrating with his father, objecting to the persecution of scholars in 212 BC on the grounds that such severity would unsettle a newly unified realm. The emperor responded by sending him north to Shang commandery to serve as supervisor of the army of Meng Tian, the general overseeing the frontier walls against the Xiongnu. Whether the posting was a punishment, a precaution, or a form of apprenticeship with the empire's best army has been variously interpreted; it placed Fusu beside one of the most powerful military men in the state.

When the First Emperor died at Shaqiu in 210 BC while touring the east, the eunuch Zhao Gao, keeper of the imperial seals, conspired with the chancellor Li Si and the emperor's young son Hu Hai to suppress the emperor's final letter summoning Fusu to the capital. In its place they forged an edict in the dead emperor's name accusing Fusu and Meng Tian of disloyalty and ordering both to take their own lives. Meng Tian suspected fraud and urged Fusu to verify the command before obeying. Fusu, by the Shiji's account, replied that a son ordered to die by his father had nothing to verify, and killed himself. Meng Tian refused, was imprisoned, and was later forced to die as well.

The consequences were immediate and large. Hu Hai was enthroned as Qin Er Shi under Zhao Gao's control, and the purges that followed destroyed much of the imperial clan and officer corps. When Chen Sheng and Wu Guang raised the first great revolt against the Qin in 209 BC, they claimed, falsely, to be acting in the name of Fusu, evidence of the reputation he held among the population. Within four years of his death the dynasty his father founded had ceased to exist.