Emperatriz Wang (Dezong)
Emperatriz Wang (Dezong): consulta esta página de Emperatrices chinas en Xiang Li Art. El contenido principal está en inglés; la traducción completa está pendiente.
王皇后 · 昭德皇后
“Three Days”
She was the mother of the heir for twenty-five years and had no title at all. When the doctors gave up, her husband made her empress in the room where she was dying, declared an amnesty across the empire, and she died three days later.
Her Story
She was the daughter of a minor official who had once run the archives, she became a consort of Li Kuo while he was Prince of Fengjie, and in 761 she bore his eldest son.
When he took the throne in 779 as Emperor Dezong, he did not make her empress. He did not make anyone empress. His father Daizong had never appointed one either, having lost both the women who mattered to him in ways that left nothing to bury, and by then the Tang had gone half a century without a living empress. The position had quietly become something emperors avoided.
She lived at court for seven more years as the mother of the heir, with no title of her own.
In 786 she became gravely ill, and it was clear she would not recover.
Dezong made her empress on the day the doctors gave up. The ceremony was held in the palace where she lay. She was formally invested, and the court came to offer congratulations, and there was a general amnesty declared across the empire in honour of the appointment.
She died three days later.
Her illness being grave, the Emperor established her as Empress. Three days later she died.
Jiu Tang Shu, ch. 52 — the entry for 786 CE
It is the shortest reign of any empress in this collection, and it was arranged entirely so that she would not die without the title — so that she could be buried as an empress, and her son could be the son of one.
That son became Emperor Shunzong in 805. He had suffered a stroke the year before and could neither speak nor move properly; he communicated by nodding from behind a curtain. He reigned for a hundred and eighty-six days, presided over a serious attempt at reform that his ministers ran in his name, and was pushed into abdication by the eunuchs when it threatened them. He died a few months later.
His wife was also called Wang, and she was made empress under almost the same circumstances — an emperor who could not govern, a title granted at the last possible moment.
A note on the sources
Her biography is about four hundred characters long and this page contains nearly all of it. That is not neglect on the historians’ part so much as a fact about the position itself in the late eighth century: between 724 and 805 the Tang had almost no living empresses, and the women who held the rank did so briefly, posthumously, or on their deathbeds.
- Liu Xu et al., Jiu Tang Shu (Old Book of Tang), ch. 52 — 945 CE
- Ouyang Xiu et al., Xin Tang Shu (New Book of Tang), ch. 77 — 1060
- Sima Guang, Zizhi Tongjian, ch. 232 — 1084
The Emperor
Emperor Dezong of Tang 唐德宗
Li Kuo 李适 · 742 – 805 · reigned 779 – 805
He came to the throne determined to break the hereditary military governors his father had been forced to tolerate, and within two years four of them had declared themselves kings and one had taken the capital. Dezong fled Chang’an twice in five years. In 783 he issued an edict of self-blame from exile that is one of the more remarkable documents of the period — an emperor publicly accepting that the rebellion was his fault.
After that he stopped trying. The second half of his reign is a long accommodation: the provinces left alone, the eunuchs given permanent command of the palace armies, and the treasury replenished by new taxes on tea and salt.
He spent twenty-six years looking for his mother, Consort Shen, who had vanished at Luoyang in 759, and he never found her. He also never appointed another empress after the three days in 786.
See also: Empress Ruizhen — his lost mother.
Connections
- Her mother-in-law Empress Ruizhen (Shen) — lost in the An Lushan rebellion, and the object of her husband’s lifelong search.
- Her daughter-in-law Empress Dowager Wang — married to her son Shunzong, and made empress under almost identical circumstances.
- Her grandson’s consort Empress Dowager Guo — who was never made empress at all, and outlived seven reigns.
- The precedent Empress Wang (Xuanzong) — deposed in 724, after which the position was left empty for a generation.
About this Portrait
| Artist | Xiang Li 李湘 |
| Medium | Chinese watercolor on silk, hand-painted on hand-cut silk |
| Orientation | Horizontal composition |
| Painted | 2016 |
| Subject | Empress Wang (Zhaode), consort of Emperor Dezong |
| Collection | The Chinese Empresses Collection |
| Availability | Original held by the artist · Prints available |
