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. To show Prince Kung, however, that they bore
him no ill will, the Empresses adopted his daughter as their own,
raising her to the rank of an imperial princess, and though the
Prince has long since passed away his daughter still lives, and
next to the Empress Dowager has been the leading figure in court
circles during the past ten years' association with the
foreigners.
During her son's minority, after the dismissal of Prince Kung as
joint regent, the Empress-mother year by year took a more active
part in the affairs of state, while the Empress as gradually sank
into the background. She was far-sighted. Having but one son, and
knowing the uncertainty of life, she originated a plan to secure
the succession to her family. To this end she arranged for the
marriage of her younger sister to her husband's younger brother
commonly known as the Seventh Prince, in the hope that from this
union there might come a son who would be a worthy occupant of
the dragon throne in case her own son died without issue. She
felt that the country needed a great central figure capable of
inspiring confidence and banishing uncertainty, a strong,
well-balanced, broad-minded, self-abnegating chief executive,
and she proposed to furnish one. Whether she would succeed or not
must be left to the future to reveal, but the one great task set
by destiny for her to accomplish was to prepare the mind of a
worthy successor to meet openly and intelligently the problems
which had been too vast, too new and too complicated for her
predecessors, if not for herself, to solve
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