When the Tongzhi Emperor died heirless in 1875, his mother Empress Dowager Cixi was the one who selected the next emperor. But instead of making the deceased emperor adopt an heir from the generation below himself (in this case this would have been a nephew of the Tongzhi Emperor) as the rules of imperial succession dictated, she picked one from the same generation. The new emperor was Zaitian (the Guangxu Emperor; 1871–1908), the son of Prince Chun, a half-brother of Empress Dowager Cixi's late husband, the Xianfeng Emperor (r. 1850–1861). She assured her opponents that as soon as the new emperor had a son, he would be adopted into the Tongzhi Emperor's line. However, as the Guangxu Emperor died heirless too, Empress Dowager Cixi also chose his successor, Puyi, in 1908.