Tres Reinos
Es también la época más idealizada de la historia china, y la ficción ha distorsionado seriamente el relato histórico. El Romance de los Tres Reinos es una
三国皇后
three states, three courts, six paintings
When the last Han emperor abdicated in 220 CE the empire did not pass to a successor — it broke into three. Cao Wei held the north and the old capital. Shu Han held the mountains of Sichuan and claimed to be the Han continued. Eastern Wu held the Yangtze and the sea.
Each ran a full imperial court with its own empresses, which is why this period has three sets of women where every other has one. They are kept apart here deliberately: an empress of Wu and an empress of Shu were not colleagues, they were enemy heads of household in a sixty-year war.
It is also the most romanticised era in Chinese history, and the romance has done real damage to the record. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a fourteenth-century novel, not a source, and several of the women below are better known through it than through anything they actually did.
Cao Wei 曹魏
The state that took the throne, founded by Cao Cao’s son on the abdication of the last Han emperor — whose empress, Cao Jie, was his own sister and refused for a year to hand over the seal. Wei lasted forty-six years before its own regents did to it exactly what it had done to the Han.
Shu Han 蜀汉
Liu Bei claimed descent from the Han imperial house and ran his state as the legitimate continuation of it. It was the smallest of the three, the poorest, and the first to fall — in 263, to a Wei invasion its last emperor surrendered to without a serious fight.
Eastern Wu 东吴
The longest-lived of the three and the last to fall, in 280. Its court was also the most lethal to the women in it: of the empresses on this painting, one was strangled in her sleep by her own attendants while still empress, and one was killed by her nephew-in-law after he had already made her dowager.
More
- Before The empresses of the Han — the dynasty all three states were built out of.
- After The Jin — the family that took Wei from the inside, then took the other two.
- The whole collection All 205 empresses
Play · a new empress every day
Could you tell the Three Kingdoms empresses apart?
Empress Unveiled shows one of Xiang Li’s portraits very close and steps back with every guess — a new empress every day. Or find out which empress you are.
Also: daily Chinese history trivia · which Chinese empress are you?
Bring the Three Kingdoms 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