혜제
Empress Dowager Lü got her chance in winter 195 BC. One morning, Emperor Hui was out hunting and wanted to take Liu Ruyi with him. The young prince was then only 14 years old and refused to get up from bed, and Emperor Hui left for the hunt on his own. Empress Dowager Lü heard this and immediately sent an assassin into the emperor's palace to force poisoned wine down the prince's throat. By the time that Emperor Hui returned, his brother was dead. She then had Consort Qi's eyes gouged out, made her ears deaf, drugged her to make her unable to speak and had her arms and legs cut off. The mutilated woman was thrown into a latrine and then fed and kept alive in a pig's bin and was called the "人彘", meaning literally the "human swine". (She would die from the torture.) When Emperor Hui saw his father's favorite and the mother of his beloved little brother in such a condition, he cried out loud and became depressed and sick for about a year. He told his mother that he could not govern the empire, given that he was the son of someone like her who has done such inhuman deed. From that point, Emperor Hui only "indulged himself with wine and women" and no longer made key governing decisions, leaving them to his mother.