Misplaced Pages

Based on work by David Nivison. All dates BC. Square brackets denote legendary dates at the beginning. Also I remove the mourning eras (two years after each king except those who retired), because presumably de facto the reign started earlier, just the "accession" ceremony was done in the third year (as we know from Western Zhou inscriptions). Seriously, read his paper for something more detailed than this.

He only goes as far as the Western Zhou, but I thought I may as well finish the Three Dynasties and give the standard Eastern Zhou dates. Beyond that, we have emperors rather than kings. :) See List of Chinese monarchs.

Of course the early dates are legendary.