在郑玄的礼学体系中，王朝举行天神祭祀时之所以要用祖先配享，是为了体现人道附于天道。然在治平元年有关明堂配享的争论以及北宋的具体实践中，以祖先配享天神的主要意义落在了尊祖敬宗上，反映出相较君主得天命而治天下的观点，宋人更愿相信天下是由祖宗开创并保有至今的。此观念也影响到了濮议。濮议中，执政与台谏两派虽意见不同，但他们都默认英宗入继大统乃“为仁宗后”。根据三《礼》对宗法制的记述，为人后只适用于继承大宗，天子有绝宗之道，故为后义不可用来评判英宗与仁宗的关系。天子绝宗建立在天子与天的密切联系之上，该观念背后蕴含的是礼家对天子身份“公共性”的畅想。台谏派与执政派将天子视为天下之大宗，说明在他们看来，天下从属于天子之家，天下是赵宋祖宗之天下。此外，濮议双方有关灾异的争论显示出宋人灾异观中以人心代天心的现象，这是“祖宗天下”观念形成的大背景。

In Zheng Xuan's ritual system, the reason why the royal dynasty used ancestral companionship in the worship of the heavenly deities is to reflect the subordination of human morality to the heavenly way. However, in the debates concerning the Mingtang sacrificial companionship in the first year of Zhiping, as well as in the specific practices of the Northern Song Dynasty, the primary significance of using ancestral companionship in the worship of the heavenly deities was to honor the ancestors. This indicates that compared to the view that the monarch governs the world by virtue of a heavenly mandate, the Song people were more inclined to believe that the world had been established and preserved to the present day by their ancestors. This concept also influenced the Pu Yi. In the Pu Yi, although the ruling and supervisory factions had differing opinions, they both implicitly agreed that Emperor Yingzong's succession to the great unified system was to be the heir of Emperor Renzong. According to the records of the patriarchal clan system in the San Li, the principle of "being an heir" only applies to the inheritance of the great clan (Da Zong). The Son of Heaven has the way of being absolutely independent of the patriarchal clan, hence the principle of being an heir cannot be used to judge the relationship between Emperor Yingzong and Emperor Renzong. The concept of the Son of Heaven being absolutely independent of the clan is based on the close connection between the Son of Heaven and Heaven, and it implies the ritualists' vision of the "public nature" of the Son of Heaven's identity. The supervisory and ruling factions regarded the Son of Heaven as the great clan of the world, which, in their view, meant that the world was subordinate to the emperor's family, and the world belonged to the ancestors of the Zhao Song dynasty. Additionally, the debate over calamities between the two sides of the Pu Yi reveals the Song people’s perspective on calamities that the will of the people is substituted for the will of Heaven, which constitutes the broader context for the formation of the concept of "Ancestral Reign."