Cinco Dinastías y Diez Reinos

When the Tang finally fell in 907 the north went through five dynasties in fifty-three years — Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, Later Zhou — while the south broke into ten kingdoms that mostly left each other alone and got rich. It is the most fragmented period in Chinese history after the Three Kingdoms, and by some distance the least remembered.

The empresses here are consequently obscure, and several of them are more interesting than the emperors they married. One was a dancer. One held a besieged capital while her husband ran. And the last two — the Zhou sisters of Southern Tang — married the same man, a ruler who lost his kingdom and is now regarded as the finest lyric poet in the Chinese language.