In February of the first year of Ganxing (1022), Zhao Zhen of Song Renzong succeeded to the throne and became the fourth generation emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty. Until the eighth year of Jiayou (1063), the Northern Song Dynasty was ruled by this emperor for 4 1 year, which became an important link in the history of the Northern Song Dynasty.
To be fair, when Song Gang died, everyone's evaluation of the emperor was still relatively general. However, after a few years, Zongshen began a vigorous Xi-Ning reform, and everyone suddenly found that compared with an enterprising emperor like Zongshen, Emperor Renzong seemed cuter.
So Song Renzong's image began to shine in the miscellaneous words series of the reform reactionaries, and people began to constantly exaggerate or even fabricate the glorious deeds of Emperor Injong, and many later well-known short stories of Injong began to appear in this issue of Notes of Song People.
For example, "Emperor Injong heard the sound of singing and dancing in the folk restaurant outside in the harem, and the imperial secretary complained that the emperor was cold and cheerless here, but he was so happy outside. Injong laughed and said that it was because I was so cold and cheerless here that I could be so happy outside" and so on.
Renzong's image in this kind of notes is getting bigger and bigger, bigger and bigger, and more and more fake. Ministers repeatedly criticized him for "singing and dancing, drinking and laughing too much" in the harem, and "drinking too badly, and rewarding him tens of thousands of dollars". How can such an emperor be "cold and clear" around him?
In fact, the real Song Renzong is more like ordinary people like you and me, a little smart, a little hobby, a little advantage and a little trouble.
He is thrifty but not extravagant, but he pays well; He is open-minded and has a strong desire for women; He is the root of what some courtiers in the Northern Song Dynasty called "following the disadvantages of the past", but he is also an unjust monarch described by others as "sacred, higher than previous lives".
He is in sharp contrast with the versatile emperor Hui Zong a hundred years later. Later generations commented that Emperor Hui Zong was "everything can be achieved, but he can't be a king alone", but he was "a Pepsi who could do nothing but be an official".