With a name that sounds like it came straight from a late night in the writers’ room for The Mandalorian, and a backstory that has inspired both romance novels and epic tales of martial valor, the Manchu prince Dorgon is perhaps one of the most intriguing figures in Qing history despite—and this was something of a sore point—never becoming emperor.
Dorgon was instrumental in the Manchu conquest of China and was the most powerful man in the empire for over a decade. Yet his life was cut short in its prime. On December 31, 1650, Dorgon died (possibly murdered) while on a hunting trip near present-day Chengde in Hebei province. He was only 38 years old, and his death caused a smoldering political feud to ignite into a hotly contested struggle for power within the Qing imperial clan.