Ziying

The last ruler of the Qin, Ziying (died 206 BC), reigned for only about forty-six days, yet in that interval he destroyed the eunuch dictator Zhao Gao and surrendered the dynasty's heartland intact to Liu Bang, the future founder of the Han. His place in the imperial family is uncertain: the sources variously make him a son of the dead heir Fusu, a younger brother or cousin of the First Emperor, or the son of one of the First Emperor's brothers, and the chronology fits some of these reconstructions better than others. He appears earlier in the Shiji as a counselor who unsuccessfully urged the second emperor not to execute the general Meng Tian and his brother.

After forcing the suicide of Qin Er Shi in 207 BC, Zhao Gao placed Ziying on the throne, but with a significant reduction in rank: arguing that the empire had effectively dissolved, he styled the new ruler king of Qin rather than emperor. Ziying concluded, according to the traditional account, that Zhao Gao intended to betray the state to the rebels and to kill him in due course. Feigning illness to avoid the investiture ceremony at the ancestral temple, he drew Zhao Gao into his private quarters, where Ziying and his attendants—his sons, in some versions—killed him. Zhao Gao's clan was exterminated, removing the figure most responsible for the court's self-destruction, but far too late to alter the military situation.

Rebel armies were already through the passes. When Liu Bang's column reached the approaches to the capital Xianyang, Ziying judged resistance pointless. In late 207 or early 206 BC he came out to the Zhidao pavilion near Bashang in the white dress of mourning, his neck in a cord, carrying the imperial seals, and surrendered. Liu Bang refused suggestions to kill him, placed him under protection, and forbade plundering, conduct later remembered to his credit.

The clemency lasted weeks. When Xiang Yu arrived with the main rebel coalition, he executed Ziying along with the remaining Qin princes, massacred the inhabitants of Xianyang, and burned the palaces. With Ziying's death the line of the First Emperor was effectively extinguished, fifteen years after the unification of 221 BC, and the contest for the empire passed to the war between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang.