Han Dynasty
汉朝皇后
twenty-one paintings
The Han lasted four hundred years and set the shape of everything that followed — the bureaucracy, the examinations, the idea that a dynasty holds power by the consent of heaven and can lose it. The word Chinese people use for themselves is still the name of this dynasty.
It is also where the politics of the harem were invented. The Han empress was not decoration. She controlled access to the emperor, she outlived him more often than not, and as dowager she chose his successor. Several of the women on this page ruled the empire outright. One of them, at the very beginning, invented the role.
Western Han
Founded by a village constable who beat an aristocrat to the throne, and very nearly ended eight years later when his widow took the state apart. The Western Han empresses came from the great clans — Lü, Dou, Wei, Huo, Wang — and the rise and fall of those families is the political history of the period. It closes with the Wang clan producing a nephew who decided he no longer needed the Han at all.
Eastern Han
Restored in 25 CE by a distant cousin of the old line, and destroyed a hundred and sixty years later by the same mechanism that made it: a child emperor, a young dowager, her brothers in command of the armies, and the eunuchs the emperor recruited to get free of them. Most of the Eastern Han emperors came to the throne as children. Every one of these women governed.
More
- The interruption Empress Wang of the Xin — Wang Zhengjun’s nephew took the throne in 9 CE and held it for fourteen years. His wife was the only empress his dynasty ever had.
- What came after The Three Kingdoms — Cao Jie’s husband was the last Han emperor; her brother took his throne.
- The whole collection All 205 empresses
Bring the Han era home
Canvas prints, scarves, puzzles and more — from $14.
Two full-color hardcovers — 217 empresses, 413 painted characters.
Questions? Write to xiangliart@gmail.com