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Haitei
In this post last year talked about honorary imperial titles given to (or claimed by) people who weren't actually emperors. Today I am going to write about something at the other end of the scale: the word 廃帝, haitei (or fèidì in Chinese, the original source), which refers to a deposed ex-emperor. As you might expect, it is not a polite term: one translation of the characters would be "discarded/abandoned emperor," using the same 廃 as you see in words like haikyo 廃墟 "ruins".
The first weird thing about this word is that, to judge from Wikipedia, English-language Chinese historiographers translate it "Emperor Fei," treating the "Deposed" part as if it were actually a name rather than a title or descriptor. Maybe this reflects how things were done in the original Chinese sources: once you were deposed, your official name was changed to Deposed, and that's how people referred to you. Or, it might just be a weird style quirk introduced by some 19th-century European scholar who didn't quite understand what he was translating. Or maybe it's a descriptor like "Emperor regnant"? Anyone know?
The Japanese wikipedia page lists some haitei for Vietnam, Korea, and Japan as well as China — although note that both of the Japanese examples, now Emperor Junnin and Emperor Chūkyō (previously known as "Awaji Haitei" and "Kujō Haitei" respectively), were relieved of their shameful haitei status by the Meiji government in 1870 as part of the general imperial history sprucing-up of that time.
(Another interesting point: Emperor Chūkyō was also known as the "latter Haitei", the "former" being Emperor Junnin. Even though they were separated by 500 years, "former" and "latter" makes sense in Japan because the imperial lineage is understood as one long-lived house fending off pretenders rather than several competing houses jostling for the top.)
Today, the best-known haitei is probably Pǔ yí 溥儀, last emperor of the Qing dynasty and therefore of China (later notoriously called back into service as figurehead for Japan's puppet state in Manchukuo). Interestingly, the designation of Pǔ yí as a haitei was (according to Wikipedia) a revolutionary thang; those sympathetic to the old order preferred the face-saving sontei (xùndì) 遜帝, "abdicated emperor" (e.g.).
Related terms: shōtei 小帝, "little emperor" or "Emperor Shao", for emperors deposed or killed at a very young age (think pre-teens), and matsutei 末帝, "last emperor" or "Emperor Mò[dì]", for emperors who were the last in their line before their holdings were taken over by another imperial line. (Pǔ yí gets this one sometimes too.)
Avery:
So that lascivious American biography of Pu Yi and its accompanying inaccurate movie should have not been titled "The Last Emperor" but rather "The Fallen Emperor" or "The Deposed Emperor" or something like that. If the author had at all cared about how Chinese people see history, that is.