Jin Dynasty
晋朝皇后
two capitals, two paintings, fifteen empresses
The Jin reunified China in 280 and lost the north within forty years. Its founding family, the Simas, had taken Cao Wei from the inside by exactly the method Wei had used on the Han — and having watched how easily it was done, they gave real armies to their own princes so that no outsider could repeat it. The princes used the armies on each other.
The War of the Eight Princes gutted the dynasty. In 311 a Xiongnu army sacked Luoyang and took the emperor prisoner; in 316 they took the second one. What remained of the court fled south of the Yangtze and ruled from Jiankang for another century as the Eastern Jin, while sixteen non-Chinese kingdoms fought over the north.
The empresses of the Eastern Jin are the reason that century holds together at all. Four of them governed as regents.
Western Jin 西晋
Fifty years, four emperors, and a collapse so total that the Chinese historical tradition treats it as the beginning of a dark age. One of these four empresses effectively ran the empire and is blamed by the standard history for starting the war that ended it.
Eastern Jin 东晋
The refugee court south of the river, propped up by the great émigré families and, repeatedly, by its dowagers. Chu Suanzi held the regency three separate times for three different emperors.
More
- Before The Three Kingdoms — the three states the Jin absorbed.
- After The Southern and Northern Dynasties — a hundred and seventy more years of division.
- The whole collection All 205 empresses
Bring the Jin 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