Four Principles

Polygamy as institution and set of constraints can be summed up in one sentence: It was all about making the unlikely situation of many women marrying the same man appear natural and acceptable. A man did not very easily become a polygamist. Polygamy was something that always had to justify itself. Sheer might was not enough. Justifying itself and making something unlikely appear natural and acceptable could only occur if there were principles, rules, and guidelines, which are what constitute polygamy as a hallowed institution. There were at least four core principles in Chinese polygamy.

The first institutional principle was the strict distinction between main wife and concubines. Her marriage rites were superior to the concubines'. The main wife was the number-one man's main counterpart. She was inferior to him and his parents, but superior to all other wives. Her job above all was to bow to the higher purpose of the principle of polygamy and guide the other women to do so as harmoniously as possible.

The second core principle was that women must not be jealous. Women, especially the main wife, had to rise above jealousy. They could do so because they were living for a higher purpose, which supposedly displaced the feelings of jealousy and rivalry.

Rising above jealousy in turn relates to a third core principle, which was the prohibition against passionate intimacy. Passionate attachment radically destabilized the polygamous hierarchy. Love and passion, like jealousy, detracted from the higher purpose. The man must therefore have had no favorite; no one woman could monopolize the man. Love had to be generalized; it could not be too narrow and specific.

A fourth core principle was that polygamy could only survive if it observed order, hierarchy, and distribution of effort. Each dynasty had its own set of titles and ranks for the imperial wives, with the fewest women occupying the higher ranks and the most women occupying the lower. Hierarchy was determined at specific moments in time, such as when a new wife entered the imperial family and was assigned a specific rank. There were regular promotions and demotions. There were assignments of roles and jobs. There was order in the way the man divided himself between the women, that is, which women he spent time with sexually. Roles, duties, and distribution of time had to be continuously monitored and negotiated. In managing these affairs, the emperor could not do without the assistance of his empress and an inner palace of administrative assistants, including eunuchs and palace women.

Textual Examples of Polygamy as Institution

The notion of institution tends to imply rules and procedures that are written down and formally accepted. Most of the examples I cite can be found in such form, but I will also force the notion of institution to include guidelines that are not necessarily part of written tradition but are implicitly understood, such as taking wives from conquered enemies. The main principles of polygamy as institution can be found in early texts such as the Zhou dynasty (1020–221 BCE) Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan), the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) Mao Commentary (Maogong zhuan) to the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), the Book of Rites (Liji), the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli), and each of the dynastic histories from the Han to the Qing, especially the chapters on empresses and consorts. These sources define what we can call proper polygamy. The primary orthodox reason for the emperor to take concubines was to bear as many sons as possible in order to guarantee a successor.

How many sons were enough? The institution does not clearly answer this question, but history tells us that the more sons the better. Having more sons in turn best occurs by having more concubines. As advisors told Ming Emperor Xianzong (r. 1564–87) when he was spending too much time with only one woman, the ancient wisdom was: “Having sons depends on there being many mothers” (zi chu duo mu 子出多母; Zhang Tingyu 1974, 176.4685). The advisors wanted him to see more women than the one he had been spending too much time with, who in this case happened to be his childhood nursemaid.

How was order established among the many wives? It mainly took the form of ranking. The Han dynasty Rites of Zhou refers to emperors of a mythical past who had a total of 121 wives. First there was the empress, after which there were the three “ladies” (furen 夫人), then the nine “lady guests” (jiupin 九嬪), the twenty-seven “hereditary ladies” (shifu 世婦), and finally the eighty-one “lady visitors” (nüyu 女御). A few of these titles were used in later times, though dynastic houses tended to generate their own systems of ranking and terminology. If a ruler did not follow the strict system of ranking, he was subject to criticism, as in the case of Sun Quan (182–252) of the kingdom of Wu. He was a brilliant and heroic man, said an ancient historian, but he “did not distinguish between main wife and concubines.” The chaos in the women's apartments of Wu “made of them a historical laughingstock” (Chen 1982, 50.1203).

How did the emperor select his wives? There were regular procedures for drafting women into the palace, which in the Ming and Qing took the form of sending eunuchs into the realm and selecting a large number of women, from whom progressively smaller numbers were chosen until the final stages, which included examination of bodies, looks, and aptitudes. An account of the recruitment of a Ming empress reports that thousands were recruited, of whom palace women narrowed the number to fifty, whom they got to know personally and all of whom became consorts. A consort of a deceased former emperor then tested the final fifty in subjects such as writing, arithmetic, poetry, and drawing, and ended up with three for Emperor Xizong (r. 1620–27) to choose from (Ji 1996, 2a–3b; Soulliere Reference Soulliere1987, 275–78). As such the process of the selection of wives was designed to guarantee him the highest-quality women.

Emperors were also pressured to select wives from important political allies. Marriage with an empress was a political arrangement that in some cases hardly involved sex, if at all. As compiled by Hans Bielenstein, striking statistics from the Wu and five other southern dynasties show that, during those 360 years, emperors had altogether nine sons by their empresses, but 247 by their concubines. Only four emperors were born of empresses, while twenty-one were born of concubines. Even considering the greater number of concubines than empresses, the difference in number of sons is striking. The implication is that in those times emperors tended mainly to have sex with their concubines (Bielenstein Reference Bielenstein1997, 36–37).

As for the rule that a concubine was strictly lower than a wife, one of its earliest enunciations came from the oath taken among feudal lords in 651 BCE, which included the famous statement “do not take a concubine as a wife” (wu yi qie wei qi 毋以妾為妻). The Mao Commentary (second century BCE) elaborates upon this notion when it says that the poem “Little Star” (Xiaoxing 小星) of the Classic of Poetry illustrates how the concubine internalizes the fact that she belongs to a lower order than the main wife. She can never expect to enjoy the same privileges as the main wife, who can come and go at a leisurely pace. Concubines, on the other hand, must come and go hastily, in a “shrinking” way, and can never stay the whole night with the master (Chunqiu Guliang zhuan zhushu 1999, 125; Mao shi zhengyi 1999, 94).

As to the principle that women must not be jealous, early reflections on this can be found in the Mao Commentary's comment on the first poem in the Classic of Poetry: “‘Guanju’ is an expression of queenly virtue,” which is all about “the queen gladly finding chaste women to mate with the Lord.” Of the poem “Drooping Boughs” (Jiumu 樛木), the Mao Commentary says that the queen is not jealous because she knows how “to create harmony among the concubines” (he xie zhongqie 和諧眾妾). The poem “Locusts' Wings” (Zhongsi 螽斯) refers to the fact that the queen's lack of jealousy leads to a “multitude of sons and grandsons” (zisun zhongduo 子孫眾多; Mao shi zhengyi 1999, 4, 21, 41, 43). The words “zhongsi” still decorate the gateway to the section of the Qing palace in Beijing in which the imperial concubines lived (see figure 1). In other words, the jealousy-free main wife fosters and nurtures the concubines, introduces them to the husband, and stems jealousy not only in herself but in the concubines. Similar messages can be found throughout dynastic history. In the History of the Later Han, Empress Ma, the wife of Emperor Ming (r. 28–75), “often worried that the emperor failed to seek offspring from a wide enough range of women and therefore recommended and presented women from among the ones in her company” (Fan 1995, 10a.409).

Figure 1.

“Gate of plentiful offspring,” quarters of imperial concubines, Forbidden City, Beijing (photo by author).

Parallel to women not being jealous is the notion that the ruler should not become “infatuated” and “deluded” (huo 惑) because of his fascination with a woman. He must favor women equally, never let his affections ruin his good judgment, and never let any single woman monopolize his feelings. Han Emperor Shun's (r. 125–44) Empress Liang Na (116–50) once told him: “To have plentiful offspring, as the poem ‘Locusts’ Wings' says, is the source of good fortune. I pray that Your Majesty be mindful of letting the rain fall evenly everywhere and be observant of order and sequence among the bevy of palace ladies, so that I your humble servant may avoid the fate of being slandered by others” (Fan 1995, 10b.438–40). Besides citing the Mao Commentary's interpretation of the poem in the Classic of Poetry, the empress also cited the Book of Changes. The words “among the bevy of palace ladies” are a translation of guanyu 貫魚, “a string of fish tied together at their heads,” which symbolized the notion of palace women receiving equal favor, as if strung on the same string (Zhouyi zhengyi 1999, 110). In short, the success of polygamy relied on the ability of the man and his wives to avoid the forces of lust and jealousy, which threatened the collective whole of polygamous harmony.

Justifying and Maintaining Polygamy

First, who gets to be a polygamist, how does he deserve to do so, and how does he maintain his status? These questions indicate that a significant line has to be crossed, and it is a line that relatively few men get to cross. If we ask the institution this question, it answers that all emperors and emperor-like men get to be polygamists. Wealth and power are their main methods; and they do not doubt that they deserve multiple women. They are the exceptions to the average of monogamy and non-marriage that most men experienced. Polygamy defines a pyramid-like structure, with a minority of polygamists at the top and all other men and women surrounding him below. That singular position must be justified and defended, both by the institutional elaborations listed above and actual behavior and appearances.

Becoming and remaining a polygamist involves the question of what use people made of polygamy. In other words, how did they use it to further their goals? What distance did they maintain between the position of benevolent ruler who had multiple wives because that was what a ruler was supposed to do, on the one hand, and the opportunity to have sex with as many women as often as he wanted, on the other? The story of Wang Mang (45 BCE–23 CE), the Han dynasty usurper, is an example of using the institution of polygamy to illustrate one's virtue. Prior to his usurpation, he gave the appearance of opposing polygamy. Since previous Han rulers had overindulged their wives and the wives' families, Wang Mang at first announced that he “had only one consort and no other.” He did this by way of enhancing his image as a virtuous man. As it turned out, he had in fact fathered children by women other than his wife, but he called them “attendants” (shizhe 侍者), not concubines (Ban 1962, 99.4054, 4166, 4168–69). After he became emperor, his wife and sons all died, which left him with the need to produce new heirs. One of his advisors told him that he should take a new empress and 120 concubines. To do so was to follow the venerable model of the ancient Yellow Emperor and accorded with the Rites of Zhou, which referred to the ideal number of wives and consorts for a king as 121 (Sun 1987, 552). Wang Mang followed the advice and took an empress and precisely 120 wives. He is a prime example of the man who becomes a polygamist because being an emperor says he must do so. As an advisor even told him: “The Yellow Emperor was able to achieve immortality by having 120 wives.”

It was common for emperors to embellish their image as polygamists. They knew that others were watching, especially their officials and the imperial wives, mothers, and grandmothers. In another example of self-embellishment, in 273 Jin Emperor Wu launched an empire-wide selection of women for his harem. Since women entering the palace tended never to see their families again, families were known to react to such searches by hurriedly marrying off their daughters to avoid selection. To stem this tendency, the emperor prohibited marriage throughout the empire while the recruitment took place, then followed with two exemplary acts of polygamous propriety. First, he proclaimed that he would never enthrone a concubine as empress and, second, that he would submit all choices to his empress, who reportedly weeded out the exceptionally beautiful ones (Fang 1974, 3.63, 31.952–53). Like Wang Mang, Emperor Wu engineered an image of himself that corrected the transgressions of past rulers by pointedly adhering to models of proper polygamy. Although he was depriving people of their daughters, he ensured that it did not look as though he was indulging his personal fancy.

Yet another remarkable aspect of Emperor Wu was the number of women in his harem, reportedly ten thousand. That was unusually high, though there had already been thousands during the Han; the high number was in part because he acquired the harem of a defeated ruler. A famous story illustrated the emperor's frustration about deciding which women he would sleep with:

In contrast to men who indulged in orgiastic profligacy, Emperor Wu was a case of relatively harmless extravagance. He cultivated an image of benign gentility, obscuring what appeared as outrageous lust. Sex with his ten thousand consorts was a leisure activity; he let his goats choose his partners for him—though how much of the story is farcical exaggeration is impossible to tell. Nevertheless, the motif of having his wife or goats choose the women conforms with the notion of polygamy as institution that constrains the emperor from the outside, monitoring him lest he be misled by lustful fancy and holding him to the principle of polygamous neutrality.

Building a harem through recruitment was standard throughout Chinese history, as just noted. It was an institutionalized process by which the emperor was presented with preselected women of rigorously high quality. Many emperors, however, jumped the line and chose women by means other than regular recruitment or monitored selection. They fancied palace maids regardless of the expectation that they choose from the officially designated consorts. To be sure, even maids were subject to a process of selection, so that a similar kind of filtering occurred with them as with the consorts. Having sex with a maid was a minor case of transgression that sometimes resulted in the woman's promotion to consort, especially if she bore a son who became heir apparent and/or she became a favorite. More irregular types of liaisons included taking the consort of one's father, one's son, or other men. Taking one's father's consort was especially heinous, even if the father was dead. Since ancient times such cases were referred to as “incest” (zheng 蒸). Such an emperor was acting as if he were above the law. Historians liked to think that he would lose his mandate to rule and wrote their histories to reflect such a moral causality.

Polygamous Transgressions: Favoritism

The second field of discussion for polygamy as actual practice has to do with transgressive behavior, of which there were two main categories: favoritism with one woman and orgiastic indulgence with many. Historians used common vocabulary to describe favoritism, such as chong 寵, to favor indulgently or dote upon, or huo 惑, to be deluded or bewitched by someone. Emperors and heirs apparent were persistently reminded of the dangers of favoritism. Vivid examples filled the history books. The last ruler of the Chen dynasty, Chen Shubao (553–604), had a favorite named Zhang Lihua. In describing a woman like her, biographers noted her beauty and talent, but especially her abuse of beauty and talent to mislead the ruler. She had an aura that verged on the supernatural. When made up and seen from afar, it was said, she looked like “an immortal floating in the air.” She had splendid poise and fine features. “Just a look or a glance brimmed with radiance that shone all around.” She liked to present the emperor with palace women, so that everyone in the harem vied in singing her praises. Since Chen was “lax in attending to court duties,” Zhang involved herself in state politics. He would even “sit her on his lap as they worked out government matters.” In the end, Chen lost the dynasty to the Sui, whose attack sent him running to the women's quarters where he hid in a well with Zhang and another favorite (Li Yanshou 1975, 12.347–48). Another last emperor was Gao Wei (557–77) of the Northern Qi, who delayed an important battle so that he could summon his favorite consort to watch it with him. The delay caused the siege to fail, soon after which he and his favorite were captured and his dynasty ended (Li Yanshou 1974, 14.525–26). The most famous example of favoritism leading to catastrophe was the affair between Tang Emperor Xuanzong (685–762) and Honored Consort Yang (719–56), who was originally the wife of one of his sons. Their affair lasted many years until a rebellion occurred which, it was said, could have been prevented had the emperor not been so preoccupied. After Xuanzong fled the capital, his soldiers demanded that Yang be executed. The emperor never recovered and abdicated to his son, under whom the dynasty restored peace.

Favoritism incapacitated a ruler and, even if the result was not as disastrous as the above examples, led him astray from not only his duties as ruler but also his role as polygamist. Two emperors in a row at the beginning of the Qing were unable to recover from the deaths of consorts, though in each case royal succession still worked smoothly. Hong Taiji's (1592–1643) grief at the death of Hailanzhu (1609–41) and her son alarmed his family and officials. He no longer participated in military life as before and was supposedly unrelieved even after a great victory over the Ming, dying in 1643 at age fifty-two (Shenyang gugong bowuyuan 1987, 70–80; Wang 1993, 185–96; Zhang Ertian, n.d., 1.43a, 44a). The next ruler, Fulin (1638–61), the Shunzhi emperor, was born of Bumbutai (1613–88), Hailanzhu's younger sister, two days after the death of Hailanzhu's son. In what looked like an attempt to raise Consort Dong'e to empress, the emperor tried to depose his current empress, but both his mother and Dong'e stopped him. At Dong'e's death he gave her a sumptuous funeral, even ordering eunuchs and maids to accompany her in the grave. Deeply depressed, he died of smallpox a few months later (Hummel Reference Hummel1943–44, 255–59; Wang 1993, 218–37; Zhao 1976, 214.8904).

The notion that emperors could get away with favoritism without catastrophic consequences would have appealed to a Ming emperor such as Zhu Houzhao (1491–1521), commonly known as Wuzong. One of his favorites provoked disapproval among court officials. In 1516 he favored Lady Ma, who was not only married but also pregnant at the time. Her brother, a top military official, was likewise a favorite. In protest, court officials cited centuries of historical examples, blaming him for not only taking an unchaste woman but also indulging in the dangerous combination of “female favorites on the inside and male favorites on the outside” (nürong waichong 女戎外寵). They used ancient terms like “flood of disaster” (huoshui 禍水) and “kingdom toppler” (youwu 尤物), both typically applied to female favorites who brought about dynastic catastrophe (Mao 1996, 4.10a–11b; Xia 1962, 46.1729–30; Zhang Tingyu 1974, 307.7888). Both Zhu Houzhao and a later Ming emperor who had a favorite acted with relative impunity (Shenzong, 1563–1620). As with the two Qing emperors, the dynasty was stable enough at the time not to be affected by such negligence, though the Ming did not have long to last.

Polygamous Transgression: Profligacy

The point that the above stories illustrate is that favoring a single woman in effect turns the emperor into a monogamist within his larger polygamy. He has violated a pact, which is that he must be loyal to the entire group of women. He is supposed to be a polygamist for life; even being a polygamist involves lifelong loyalty. The other of the two types of polygamous transgression is at the opposite pole of favoritism, that of indiscriminate sex, which is commonly taken as the obvious choice of the polygamous ruler. With a few exceptions, sexual profligacy mainly occurred in short-lived dynasties and, considering the length of Chinese dynastic history, was relatively rare. The accounts of such affairs are difficult to evaluate because histories tend to suppress obscene detail in order to preserve the dignity of the imperial regime, not to mention the genre of dynastic history. Unofficial chronicles and fiction, on the other hand, wrote lavishly of profligacy and may have contributed to the notion that emperors were particularly prone to excess. If the sources can be believed, then the worst cases occurred in the Liu Song dynasty (420–79), the Sui (581–618), the Min (909–45) and Nan Han (Southern Han, 917–71) states of the period of the Ten Kingdoms (907–79), the Jurchen Jin (1115–1234), and the Ming (1368–1644), with isolated examples in other dynasties.

Indiscriminate sex, sometimes including group or public nudity, is the key defining feature of these accounts. Liu Ziye (449–66) of the Liu Song dynasty ruled for only two years. At the end of his reign he summoned the aunt of a deceased uncle and ordered his attendants to force themselves on her in front of him. When she refused, he executed her sons and had her whipped. His end came one day after he ordered palace women to take off their clothes and chase each other around. When one of them refused, he had her beheaded. Not long after, a group of attendants assassinated him, after which he was posthumously deposed (Shen Yue 1974, 7.146–48, 72.1858). Centuries later, Liu Chang (942–80) of the Nan Han had a “slave from Persia” with whom he “cavorted lasciviously in the Rear Palace.” A seventeenth-century source expanded upon that description, perhaps without real basis, saying that he recruited young hooligans, matched them with palace maids, and “had everyone strip naked and join in pairs.” The Persian consort was carried around so that “she could enjoy herself watching them.” Liu Chang lost his kingdom to the Song in 971 (Ouyang 1974, 65.817; Wu [1669] 1983, 61.879). The two most famous profligate rulers in Chinese history were Yang Guang of the Sui, also known as Yangdi, the “Profligate Emperor,” and Hailing of the Jurchen Jin. Yang Guang's profligacy began when he “committed incest” with two of his just-deceased father's consorts (Li Yanshou 1974, 14.534). He was infamous for the luxury of his harem, which inspired writers of fiction in the Song and Ming who invented a palace called the Labyrinth (Milou 迷樓), not found in the dynasty histories. There he supposedly dallied for days on end with the three thousand virgins drafted into his harem. Emperor Hailing liked to have sex with others in attendance, at times ordering music to be played; he summoned other men's wives to have sex with them. “Sometimes he had consorts sit in attendance while he took whomever he wanted as everyone else watched.” His end came in 1161 as he was about to invade the Song, when he was assassinated by his own generals (Li Youtang 1980, 27.473–74; Tuotuo 1975, 63.1514).

Ming emperors were notorious for indiscriminate excess. Zhu Houzhao (Wuzong), who never had children, liked to kidnap other men's wives. It was said that he liked handsome young eunuchs and had a military retainer who “slept and arose with the emperor” (Shen Defu 1980, 1.820 [buyi]; Zhang Tingyu 1974, 307.7886, 7890–91). One account wrote, “At night whenever he saw a rich person's house, he would gallop up to it and steal its women” (Xia 1962, 47.1753, 1776). Descriptions of sexual details are absent in Wuzong's case, even in fictional accounts, but in general historians were less reserved than usual in recording his profligacy because they so disapproved of him. Another case was Zhu Houcong (1507–66), known as Emperor Shizong, who failed to beget children in the first ten years of his reign and sought experts for sexual advice. He finally had his first son in 1533 and two more within six months. The aphrodisiacs he took contained lead and arsenic, however, which caused excitation and sexual arousal, but also long-term damage to his health. As with rulers in earlier dynasties, especially the Tang, he experienced sudden fits of rage and madness, plus stomach and skin disorders. One of his Daoist advisors recommended intercourse with virgins after their first menstruation, which, according to ancient wisdom, allowed a man to absorb their vital essence and attain immortality. The emperor recruited hundreds of girls between the ages of eight and fourteen. It was said that in his later years he would take any woman or girl in the palace in whom he felt the slightest interest, to the point that records were not evenly kept and some consorts never received titles (Shen Defu 1980, 3.77–78, 1.803–4 [buyi]; Xia 1962, 62.2438). His successor, Zhu Zaihou (1537–72), known as Muzong, reportedly also took aphrodisiacs, which once gave him a case of priapism, “to the point that he could not preside at court” (Shen Defu 1980, 21.547). News of his sexual indulgence appeared soon after he assumed the throne. At first he tolerated remonstrating officials, but by the second year he had one of them severely punished. Officials continued to voice their concerns, culminating in a memorial two months before his death exhorting him “to refrain from indulging in pleasures night and day and from pursuing desires without end” (Xia 1962, 64.2502, 65.2553).

By way of counter-example, let us briefly consider a ruler who appears to have kept a level head, Xuan Ye (1654–1722), commonly known as the Kangxi emperor. He was a prolific polygamist who had fifty-six children of thirty consorts and at least twenty-four more consorts who did not have children. As far as we can tell, he escaped ugly conflicts between them. Unlike his father and grandfather, he never became attached to any one woman, transferring himself between a few greater and lesser favorites, who changed over time from his first sex as a boy of about twelve to the end of his life at sixty-eight. The most prominent woman in his life was his grandmother, Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang (Bumbutai), who cared for him during childhood after his mother died and helped free him from contending regents by age fifteen. Genealogical records are the main sources for gauging how he conducted himself sexually. Two Manchu women had the most children of all, six each, and slightly overlapped in time. Between 1667 and 1681, he had six children with one (Rongfei) and, between 1678 and 1688, six more with the other (Defei), the mother of his successor. An idea of his sexual activity—and a model for the hypothetical good polygamist—emerges from the birth records. Between 1667 and 1690, he had at least one child per year, except in 1676 and 1684 when he had none. In eight of those years he had two or more children, in 1674 and 1685 four each, and in 1683 five, continuing to have children until he was fifty-six. Besides the two wives with six children, five more had three children each, the rest one or two (Tang [1923] 1967, 10b–16b).

Women's Cooperation and Conflict

The third main field that organizes the discussion of polygamy in practice has to do with women's cooperation and conflict, including their support and subversion of the polygamous marriage. Wives vied with each other in jealous rivalry. They also formed alliances, while some withdrew as much as possible from involvement in the sexual politics of the palace. One of the earliest and most famous stories was that of Liu Bang's (247–195 BCE) wife, Empress Lü (d. 180 BCE), who plotted against Liu's favorite concubine, Lady Qi (d. 194 BCE), and her son Ruyi, whom Liu Bang wanted to designate as crown prince in place of Empress Lü's son. As the story has it, the empress had Lady Qi tortured and left to die in a privy (Sima 1989, 9.397). Wu Zetian (625–705), the empress of Tang Emperor Gaozong (628–83), and Empress Li (d. 1200), the wife of Song Emperor Guangzong (1147–1200), committed similar acts of atrocity. Wu Zetian had two rivals imprisoned, tortured, and throne into wine vats. In Empress Li's case, one day the emperor became captivated by the hands of the palace woman serving him his wash water. A few days later, the empress sent him a container of food that he opened to find the woman's severed hands (Tuotuo 1985, 243.8654). Both Gaozong and Guangzong became ill and left state matters to their empresses. Histories report that Zhao Feiyan (ca. 32–1 BCE) of Han Emperor Cheng (51–7 BCE) and Honored Consort Wan (1430–87) of Ming Emperor Zhu Jianshen (Xianzong) forced pregnant consorts to abort their fetuses or had babies killed after birth. Other methods of assault throughout history included the casting of evil spells and poisoning.

As with profligate emperors, the official histories are often spare in detail about the jealous wife, using the mere word “jealous” or “viciously jealous,” then adding that she prevented the emperor from visiting his other consorts, struck terror in them, or plotted against them. Women generally attacked other women, but it is safe to assume that emperors who abused or slighted their wives and consorts must have incurred their hatred, such as Gao Yang (529–59), the first emperor of the Northern Qi, who during his reign became mentally unbalanced, committed acts of atrocity, and beat and whipped his consorts, even killing some of them (Li Yanshou 1974, 14.521). An Eastern Jin ruler was murdered by a concubine he had insulted (Fang 1974, 9.242).Footnote ² A famous case occurred in the reign of the Ming emperor Shizong, the one who took aphrodisiacs and recruited virgins. In 1543 a group of palace women tried to strangle him. He was saved just in time. Their hatred may have had to do with the aphrodisiacs he took, which affected his temper. As some sources said, the emperor was extremely “irascible” (bian 卞) with his palace women, making them fear and hate him (He 1991, 30.27ab; Mao 1996, 5.8ab; Shen Defu 1980, 18.469–71).

At the opposite pole were women noted for outstanding virtue. Even though most sources were written by men, who tended to idealize such women, there is no reason to completely doubt them. Chen Shubao's empress was Shen Wuhua, described as intelligent, well-educated, and virtuous. Although Chen favored Consort Zhang, the empress reacted with a complete lack of resentment, it was said, preferring a simple life of reading, Buddhist scriptures in particular. During the dynasty's last moments, while the emperor and his two favorites hid in a well, Empress Shen and the young heir apparent waited respectfully for the Sui representatives to arrive. Shen became a Buddhist nun and lived into the Tang dynasty (Li Yanshou 1975, 12.347–48).

Shen was an example of the virtuous last empress, of whom there were many in Chinese history, some of whom sacrificed themselves in the dynasty's last moments, such as Wang Mang's daughter (d. 23) at the end of the Former Han, who threw herself into the fire of the burning palace, or widowed Empress Zhang (d. 1644), wife of Ming Emperor Xizong, who hung herself. There was also the good first empress, symbolic of a new dynasty starting off well. The first emperor of the Song, Zhao Kuangyin (927–76), had a succession of three main wives, all of whom the official histories describe in glowing terms (Tuotuo 1985, 242.8607–8). The wife of the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–98), was Empress Ma (1332–82), who was widely praised for her frugality, self-sacrifice, and lack of jealousy. At times she managed to control the emperor's notoriously bad temper and influence an occasional decision, but she was mainly a helper, not an advisor. She was noted for the humbleness of her attire, “coarse silk that had been through many washings. Even when her clothes were worn out, she could not stand to replace them with new ones” (Zhang Tingyu 1974, 113.3505–7). The words for much-laundered clothing (huanzhuo zhi yi 浣濯之衣) are the same used to describe the similarly frugal mother of the first emperor of the Jin (third century), likewise regarded as an exemplar of imperial womanhood (Fang 1974, 31.950).

If creating harmony among wives was a key element of queenly virtue, it was far from being simple and transparent. Women maneuvered themselves and others. They pleased the emperor, consolidated their own position, and won praise from other wives. Initiating the choice of a concubine ensured control of the choice. In a classic gesture of wifely sharing, the highly ranked Lady Ban presented Han Emperor Cheng with one of her servants, whom he raised to the same high rank. Unfortunately, the emperor became involved with Zhao Feiyan and her sister, who slandered both the empress and Lady Ban. Another famous case likewise backfired. Tang Emperor Gaozong preferred a certain consort who, because she had a son, aroused the jealousy of his wife, Empress Wang (d. ca. 655). In an attempt to divert the emperor's attention from the consort, the empress recommended that he take one of his deceased father's concubines, Wu Zetian. But in Zhao-Feiyan fashion, Wu took advantage of the situation to slander both the empress and the consort and, as told above, had them tortured to death (Liu 1975, 51.2170; Ouyang and Song 1975, 76.3473–75). Harmony was possible, however, especially when wives had joint interests, as in the case of Song Empress Wu (d. 1197) and Consort Liu Wanrong (d. 1187). Reflecting the high culture of Gaozong's (1107–87) court, the empress was well-educated, a good calligrapher, and a connoisseur and collector of art, and she was noted for her lack of jealousy. Consort Liu, likewise a connoisseur, trained young palace women in artistic and scholarly skills for the sake of entertaining the imperial couple. In return for the gift of two highly trained girls, the empress had Liu richly rewarded (Lee Reference Lee2010, 131–35, 264 n.36; Tuotuo 1985, 243.8647–49; Zhou 1984, 7.116).

If an emperor transgressed, wives sometimes withdrew in order to avoid the turmoil and in some cases were perceived as occupying a moral high ground for doing so, as in the case of Chen Shubao's Empress Shen. At times imperial women successfully remonstrated with an emperor. Lady Ban famously rejected Emperor Cheng's request to ride with him in a carriage, asserting that only notorious rulers rode together with a woman. After she was slandered by Zhao Feiyan, she moved out of the consorts' quarters to live separately in the empress dowager's palace. Sometimes, however, a woman's remonstrance ended disastrously, though she still might be extolled. The Qianlong (1711–99) emperor's second empress, Lady Ula Nara (b. 1720s, d. 1766), reportedly criticized Qianlong's interest in a certain consort. When he reacted furiously, she protested by shaving her head and becoming a nun (Zhao 1976, 214.8918; Wang 1993, 261–69; Qinggong yiwen [1915] 1981, 1.42). Other women were ordered to commit suicide, “died suddenly,” or “died of worry,” ominous ways historians had of referring to the deaths of fallen palace women.

Considerations of space limit discussion of an additional factor related to the competition between wives, namely, competition between sons. One of polygamy's greatest potential blessings was the production of sons, in some cases as many as thirty to over forty. But polygamy also suffered when sons competed in vicious power struggles or when large numbers of offspring in later generations—up to tens of thousands—created heavy financial burdens. Finally, even though polygamy was supposed to guarantee the production of sons, sometimes it produced none. An emperor might die leaving only very young sons, or he might fail to name a successor. Three types of people typically filled the gap: officials, empresses or dowagers and the male members of their families, and eunuchs. Sometimes such people deliberately chose a young successor, whose growth to eligibility would take many years and thus guarantee lengthy tenures for the stand-ins. Some young emperors managed to prevail against them, such as Qing Emperor Kangxi, whose grandmother helped remove the regents and then stood out of the way. In contrast, Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) kept power in her own hands until she died, overwhelming two successive young emperors, her son and her nephew.