Atharaphelun t1_iqz0in1 wrote on October 4, 2022 at 3:16 AM

>The house of Shang survived though. Some of them revolted after the fall of their dynasty, but others were granted land. The state of Song) was ruled by the Shang descendants as a vassal state of Zhou. There was more brother-to-brother succession of the throne in the state of Song, compared to other Zhou states.

Confucius himself was in fact a descendant of the ruling house of the State of Song himself, and by extension, the royal Zi clan of the Shang dynasty. All of Confucius' descendants in our time, therefore, have traceable lines of descent going all the way back to the royal clan of the Shang dynasty.

>They established a strict primogeniture (father-son succession) system that had not been the case during the Shang dynasty.

Just to clarify, the term primogeniture just means the oldest child inherits. The term you're looking for is agnatic primogeniture, in which the oldest son inherits, as opposed to cognatic primogeniture, in which the oldest child regardless of gender inherits, or enatic primogeniture, in which the oldest daughter inherits.

DaKeler t1_iqz74wy wrote on October 4, 2022 at 4:17 AM

Yes! Confucius descended from the second to last king of Shang, Di Yi (帝乙), whose youngest son succeeded and ruled (incompetently) until the Zhou famously, and rather dramatically, overthrew and killed him.

Di Yi's first and second sons successively were the ones granted land by the new Zhou government according to the "Two Crownings and Three Respects" system (二王三恪) to carry on the rites of Shang. The first son's line tapered off after a while, but second son's line was the one that gave rise to most of the remaining rulers of Song and, more importantly, was the one that ultimately produced Confucius.