He was the son of
King You of Zhou and
Queen Shen (). King You had exiled Queen Shen and Ji Yijiu after the king became enamoured with his
concubine Bao Si and made her
queen and his son
Bofu his heir. As a result, Queen Shen’s father, the
Marquess of Shen, joined with the
Quanrong nomads and local satellite
states to overthrow King You. In the
Battle of Mount Li King You and Bofu were killed, and Bao Si was captured. Ji Yijiu ascended the throne. At about the same time, Jī Hàn (), Duke of Guó (), elevated Jī Yúchén () to the throne as
King Xie of Zhou (), and the Zhou Dynasty saw a period of having two kings until King Xie was killed by
Marquis Wen of Jin () in 750 BCE. The Xinian manuscript, however, has challenged this traditional narrative. It seems to indicate that King Xie (also known as King Hui, or the King at Xie) was originally accepted by many of the regional lords over King Ping. After Marquis Wen of Jin killed Xie, there was not an officially accepted King of Zhou for 9 years, until, in 741 BCE, Marquis Wen recognized Ping. Three years later, in 738 BCE, Wen helped Ping move to Chengzhou. King Ping moved the
Western Zhou dynasty's capital east from
Haojing to
Luoyang, thus ending the
Western Zhou and beginning the Eastern Zhou dynasty and the
Spring and Autumn period. He is the first Zhou king to be mentioned in the chronological account of the
Zuo Zhuan. Over 14 centuries after King Ping’s death,
Tang dynasty Empress regnant
Wu Zetian claimed ancestry from King Ping through his son Prince Wu, and changed the dynastic name to Zhou, which was reverted to Tang after her death. ==Family==