Liu Hong (156–189), sovereign of Later Han, known to history by his posthumous title as Emperor Ling, died on May 13, 189. He was thirty-four sui by Chinese reckoning (thirty-two or thirty-three in Western terms), he had reigned just over twenty years, and his death brought on a crisis which marked the end of the dynasty and a division of the empire.

Emperor Ling had been Placed upon the throne as a child in 168 by the Dowager Dou and her father Dou Wu, who planned to rule in his name and reform the government on ideal Confucianist lines. Later that year, however, the eunuchs of the harem destroyed the Dou family, and in 169 they eliminated their other opponents at court and in the capital. A proscription was maintained against the so-called men of faction for the next fifteen years.