To share one which is well know: the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzheng, was once a begger and monk, anyway without a career. His wife, later empress, was a women with a pair of big feet. At that time, women all have to wrap their feet and make them small. To avoid the relatively of empresses growing powerful and threaten the authority of the emperor, Ming imperors prefer to choose imperial concubine from local families but not royal families in court.