 Less than two months after Yuan Zhao was declared emperor, Erzhu had captured Luoyang and put Empress Dowager Hu and Yuan Zhao under arrest.After Empress Dowager Hu tried, unsuccessfully, to defend her actions before Erzhu, Erzhu had her and Yuan Zhao thrown into the Yellow River to drown.Traditional historians treat Yuan Zhao ambiguously, and subsequent Northern Wei emperors never explicitly officially declared whether he was an emperor or not.