Emperatriz Yan Ji (emperatriz Ansi)

She concealed an emperor’s death twice in one year to keep the rightful heir off the throne. She lost to nineteen eunuchs who swore an oath and took the palace at night — and the empire never recovered from what that victory made them.

Her Story

Her grandfather had been a promising official under Emperor Ming, and Emperor Ming stopped promoting him — not for any fault, but because two of the man’s sisters were imperial consorts and the emperor did not want to look like he was favouring in-laws. That was the court Empress Ma had built. Two generations later, his granddaughter would run the empire through her four brothers.

Yan Ji entered the palace in 114 CE, when Emperor An was twenty and still had no authority of his own — Deng Sui was still ruling. She was clever and beautiful and became his favourite immediately, and he made her empress on 1 June 115.

That same year, a consort named Li bore him a son, Liu Bao. Yan Ji poisoned her.

It is worth pausing on how ordinary the histories make this sound. Consort Li is given no first name, no family, and one sentence. She existed in the record because she gave birth and because of how she died.

In April 121 Deng Sui died and Emperor An finally took power at twenty-eight, and immediately handed it to the people who had been waiting with him — his wet nurse, his eunuchs, and his wife’s four brothers. The Deng family was stripped and forced into suicide within weeks. Yan Xian, the eldest Yan brother, became the most powerful man at court.

Yan Ji was childless, and Liu Bao — the son of the woman she had poisoned — was Emperor An’s only son and therefore crown prince. In 124 she brought false charges against him. He was nine years old. He was deposed and demoted to Prince of Jiyin.

In April 125 Emperor An died suddenly on a journey south to Wancheng. Yan Ji was travelling with him.

She did not announce it. For several days the imperial party moved back toward Luoyang with a living emperor in the carriage, while she and her brothers and the eunuchs Jiang Jing and Fan Feng decided what to do about the fact that the obvious heir was a boy whose mother she had murdered.

They did not announce the emperor’s death, but travelled on as if he lived, and took counsel among themselves as to who should succeed him.

On the death of Emperor An, April 125 CE — Zizhi Tongjian, ch. 50

They settled on a young cousin, the Marquess of Beixiang, chosen because he was small and controllable. He was made emperor. Then they turned on their own allies — Fan Feng was executed, the emperor’s wet nurse and step-uncle exiled with their families — and for a few months the Yan clan held everything.

The child emperor fell ill in the autumn and died before the year was out.

She did it again. The death was concealed a second time while messengers went out summoning the sons of imperial princes to the capital, so that any of them but Liu Bao might be found.

She had reckoned without the eunuchs. A palace attendant named Sun Cheng, who believed the deposed boy was the rightful emperor, gathered eighteen others. They swore an oath, attacked the palace at night, killed Jiang Jing, forced his surviving colleague to front the coup, brought Liu Bao out of confinement and proclaimed him emperor — Emperor Shun, aged ten.

The fighting went on for days between the eunuchs’ forces and the empress dowager’s. The Yan brothers lost. The clan was slaughtered. Yan Ji was shut in her own palace.

All nineteen eunuchs were made marquesses.

That is the sentence that matters. Empress Dou’s coup in 92 CE had made one eunuch a marquess; this one made nineteen at a stroke and put an emperor on the throne who owed them his life. From here the eunuch establishment is not an instrument of the palace but a faction with its own armies, fiefs and heirs, and the last sixty years of the Han are a war between it and everyone else.

Officials urged Emperor Shun to strip Yan Ji of her rank. She had poisoned his mother, deposed him, and twice tried to arrange that he never reach the throne. He thought about it and refused.

She died on 28 February 126, less than three months after the coup — of fear and grief, the histories say — and was buried beside Emperor An with the full honours of an empress dowager.

A note on the sources

Her biography was written by the victors of the coup that killed her family, and its adjectives should be treated accordingly. The dated events, however, are not in dispute — the poisoning of 115, the deposition of 124, the two concealed deaths of 125 — and they are damning enough without help.

• Fan Ye, Hou Hanshu (Book of the Later Han), ch. 5 and ch. 10 pt. 1 — 5th century CE
• Sima Guang, Zizhi Tongjian, ch. 50–51 — 1084
• Rafe de Crespigny, Fire Over Luoyang: A History of the Later Han Dynasty 23–220 AD — Brill, 2017

The Emperor

Emperor An of Han 汉安帝
Born Liu Hu 刘祜 · 94 – 125 CE · reigned 106 – 125 CE

Grandson of the Consort Song whom Empress Dou had framed for witchcraft in 82 CE, and son of the crown prince that case destroyed. He was chosen at twelve by Deng Sui precisely because he was not the obvious candidate, and she then governed in his name until he was twenty-eight.

When he finally took power in 121 he had no experience of it and no allies except the people who had shared his long wait — his wet nurse Wang Sheng, the eunuchs Jiang Jing and Li Run, and his wife’s brothers. He gave them the government and it was looted within four years. The Qiang wars in the west were still unresolved; corruption cases reached the highest offices.

He is also the emperor under whom Cai Lun, the eunuch who had interrogated his grandmother, was summoned to account and drank poison. He died at thirty-one on the road to Wancheng.

Connections

• The regent who made him emperor Empress Yin and Deng Sui — Deng Sui held power until 121, and Yan Ji’s brothers destroyed the Deng family within weeks of her death.
• The woman she poisonedConsort Li, mother of the deposed crown prince who became Emperor Shun. She has no portrait and almost no biography.
• Her successor Liang Na (Empress Shunlie) — empress to the boy Yan Ji had spent a decade trying to keep off the throne, and the next regent in the sequence.
• The precedent for the coup Empress Dou (Zhangde) — whose fall in 92 CE first showed an emperor that eunuchs could be used to break a consort clan.

About this Portrait

Artist	Xiang Li 李湘
Medium	Chinese watercolor on silk, hand-painted on hand-cut silk
Dimensions	approx. 36 × 72 inches (91 × 183 cm)
Painted	2014
Subject	Empress Yan Ji, consort of Emperor An
Collection	The Chinese Empresses Collection
Availability	Original held by the artist · Prints available