There's a great, if that's the word I want, tradition of poisoning monarchs. Napoleon was snuffed at St Helena with arsenic. George V of England muttered "God damn you" to his attending physician in 1936 when the monarch's attendants, unable to endure a prolonged deathbed scene from his majesty, ordered their lord and liege hurried along to death with a fatal short of morphine and cocaine.
Welp, now another royal can be added definitively to list of poisoned potentates. Apparently Qing Dynasty China's Guangxu Emperor was also rushed toward a very different Mandate of Heaven in 1908 at the tender age of 38. His own beloved step mama, the Empress Dowager Cixi, she who wink-nudged the Boxer Rebellion into fruition, ordered the deed done on her late hubby's heir, sending one of her attendants over to give the last adult Qing emperor a bowl of yogurt laced with arsenic. She knew was dying and I guess the old gal wanted company in Heaven.
More significantly, she knew that if the lad got out from under her thumb he would want to reinstitute reforms in China, moving it away from an antiquated feudalistic sleeping giant. Being the sentimental type, Cixi decided the best way to prevent reforms would be to knock off the young emperor and install Puyi as the tragic "Last Emperor" of the Celestial Kingdom.
Her plan worked for about four years... until Puyi was himself dethroned by Sun Yat-sen. Of course, none of this should come as a surprise; don't all our problems usually begin with family?
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