Emperor of Xing

The emperor is never given a name, and the story reveals little of how he looks beyond his advanced years and declining health. Commentary has noted that his face is drawn to evoke Qin Shi Huang, the first ruler to unify China, a monarch likewise obsessed with cheating death.

Through May Chang's eyes, her father comes across as a cold and grasping man. She is convinced that once he learned a Philosopher's Stone could be forged from living souls, he would slaughter any number of his subjects without hesitation to obtain one. That ruthlessness is later complicated, however. After repeated attempts on his life eroded his mind, the man who remained was a distortion of his true self, and once he was restored he was appalled by what he had become.

As emperor, he receives a concubine from each of the fifty clans that make up Xing, fathering a child by every one of them and thereby binding his bloodline to the whole nation. Word of his weakening health ripples outward, prompting both Ling and May to cross into Amestris in pursuit of the secret of eternal life, each hoping to lift the standing of their own clan. The deterioration of his sanity, brought on by plots against him, is eventually uncovered by Ling, and the emperor recovers his former mind. By 1917 he has stepped down, passing the throne to Ling, his twelfth son, a succession credited both to Ling's newfound Philosopher's Stone and to Ling having cured the poison that afflicted him.