The king had now completed his cycle of sixty-one years and the soothsayers were appealed to to read the future. They said evils were in store and he was advised to give amnesty to all but capital criminals, repair the tombs of celebrated men, give rice to the poor and remit three years’ revenue. But gray hairs had not brought wisdom to the king. His time was spent in frivolity and sensuality. The crown prince looked with unfriendly eye on these unseemly revels and when, in the following year, 1297, his mother, the Mongol princess, died, he claimed that her death was due to one of the favorite concubines, and as a consequence the suspected woman was killed. The prince had married a Mongol princess in China and now at her summons he went back to China. The old man, bereft of both wife and concubine, wrote the emperor that he wished to surrender the reins of power into the hands of his son. The emperor consented and in the following year the prince was invested with the royal insignia, while his father was honored with the title “High King.” The new queen was a Mongol and as she came to the Koryŭ capital a new palace was constructed for her. But her royal husband saw fit to follow the example of his forebears and take to himself a concubine. The queen, by her frequent exhibitions of jealousy, lost what little love her lord had ever felt for her. She was not long in letting the state of affairs be known at Peking and soon an imperial mandate arrived consigning the concubine and her father to prison. Then another came remanding both to China. Then a high monk came to mediate between the king and queen. This proved ineffectual and the emperor commanded both king and queen to appear before him in Peking. It was done and the royal seals were put back into the hands of the aged king. The prince and his unhappy queen were kept in China ten years. The close of the century beheld an old dotard on the throne of Koryŭ, so incapable of performing the duties of his high office that the emperor was obliged to send a man to act as viceroy while the old man spent his time trifling with mountebanks and courtesans. The records state that he had lost all semblance to a king. The viceroy whom the emperor had sent was named Whal-yi Gil-sa, and one of his first proposals was to do away with slavery; but objection was raised that then a slave might become an official and use his influence to wreak vengeance upon his former master. So a law was made that only the eighth generation of a manumitted slave could hold office.