I'm having difficulty finding comprehensive (English) resources that delve into the daily minutiae of life for emperors in Imperial China - things like daily routine, weekly schedules, regular rituals/ceremonies/duties, etc. How often they met with siblings, friends, family, concubines; recreation and freedom of movement; and how these differed for different emperors. I'm especially interested in the Tang/Song dynasties.
I've only been able to find Patricia Buckley Ebrey's Emperor Huizong, and while I love the depth and detail, it's much more politically-focused and the content is organized more around the developments in court governance and politics rather than Huizong himself. I think I saw a book on Li Shimin, but again, it focused on politics.
Does anyone know of any good books, please? (If there really aren't many, books fitting on the topic on emperors of other dynasties are fine too, or even Chinese TV dramas that accurately depict the daily life of emperors.)
Thank you very much in advance!
I think I answered a similar question once (and pretty sure I recommended the same Emperor Huizong book that you mention, so I'll skip that one!) It's not easy to find this type of content (at least in English) on the Tang dynasty in particular. Given the nature and focus of the extant historical record, it's much easier to find monographs and journal articles analyzing Tang and Song poetry, the politics of literati officials at court, the political dynamics facing each court at given times, and military affairs. Charles Benn's China's Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty does cover aspects of court life, although it covers a much broader span of content as well. This might be a good choice to at least get a glimpse of what you're looking for.
Another suggestion would be to explore journal articles that cover aspects of court life. Unfortunately, the details you're looking for will often appear in the background of narratives focused more on the topics I mentioned above. This article on Tang Taizong's court is a decent example: you get a good sense of the relationship between the emperor and a favored consort, including a poetry exchange, but the focus is more on the literature and anything else is just ancillary detail that comes on the side. This article perhaps comes closer to what you're looking for, providing some solid depictions of Sui-Tang court activities (and imperial family relations) from the perspective of following the palace's design (and here's a longer piece with a similar focus, from the same scholar). There's also a piece by Ebrey called "Remonstrating Against Royal Extravagance in Imperial China" that you can access with a free JSTOR account that offers some very illustrative examples of imperial "misconduct" in daily life.
Although dramas covering these eras often take significant liberties in presenting court life, the 2020 drama Serenade of Peaceful Joy seems to be generally seen as a realistic rendition of Song court life from the perspective of an emperor and his immediate family.