Eunuch (court official) in the context of "Achillas"

The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family, collectively called the Southern Ming, survived until 1662.

The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang-Ming Zuxun, a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted to curtail his uncle's power, prompting the Jingnan campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One eunuch, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa. Hongwu and Yongle emperors had also expanded the empire's rule into Inner Asia.

The parakoimōmenos (Greek: παρακοιμώμενος, literally "the one who sleeps beside [the emperor's chamber]") was a Byzantine court position, usually reserved for eunuchs. The position's proximity to the emperors guaranteed its holders influence and power, and many of them, especially in the 9th and 10th centuries, functioned as the Byzantine Empire's chief ministers.

Emperor He of Han (Chinese: 漢和帝; pinyin: Hàn Hédì; Wade–Giles: Han Ho-ti; 79 – 13 February 106) was an emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty who ruled from 88 to 106. He was the 4th emperor of the Eastern Han, and the 20th emperor of the Han dynasty.

Emperor He was a son of Emperor Zhang and, the then Empress Dou. He ascended the throne at the age of nine and ruled for 17 years. It was during Emperor He's reign that the Eastern Han dynasty began its decline. Strife between consort clans and eunuchs began when Empress Dowager Dou (Emperor He's adoptive mother) made her own family members important government officials. Her family was corrupt and intolerant of dissension. In 92, Emperor He was able to fix the situation by removing the empress dowager's brothers with the aid of the eunuch Zheng Zhong and his half-brother Liu Qing the Prince of Qinghe. This in turn created a precedent for eunuchs to be involved in important affairs of state. The trend would continue to escalate for the next century, contributing to the eventual end of the Han dynasty in 220. Further, while Qiang revolts, spurred by corrupt and/or oppressive Han officials, started during his father Emperor Zhang's reign, they began to create major problems for the Han during Emperor He's reign and would last until the reign of Emperor Ling.