The History of China - #65 - S&N 9: What's In A Name?

Episode Date: May 25, 2015

While the South of China self-destructs time and again, the North is undergoing its own revolutionary shift - not of dynastic head, but something even more fundamental: total social re-organization - from Asian Steppe Society, to one trying to out-play the Chinese at their own game by switching social structure, language, dress, and even taking the ancient Chinese capital as their own in the latter half of the 5th century.Time Period Covered: 465-499 CENotable figures:Tuoba Hong (Emperor Xianwen) r. 465-471, d. 476Grand/Empress/Dowager Feng (442-490)Yifu Hun (d. 466)Tuoba Hong (r. 471- 499)Crowned Prince Tuoba/Yuan Xun (483-496)Crowned Prince Tuoba/Yuan Ke (Emperor Xuanwu) r. 499-815Empress Feng Run (Empress You) d. 499 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 65, What's in a Name? We've been spending a fair amount of time recently in the south of China, exploring the implosion of the Liu Song dynasty, and then the self-immolation of southern Qi in the latter half of the 5th century. Last episode, we ended off with the general, Xiaoyan, usurping and supplanting the last Qi emperor with his own new Liang dynasty at the dawn of the 6th century. But before pressing forward, we're going to use this

episode to head back north to the Tuoba Wei dynasty, aka Northern Wei. We do this both to keep the south and the north on rough chronological parity, and also because while the South was collapsing and then collapsing again, Northern China was undergoing its own rapid and fundamental transformation, one just as revolutionary but significantly less violent than its southern counterpart. So let's get to it. When last we looked at Northern Wei, we had examined the vastly underrated rule of Emperor Wencheng, beginning in 452 and lasting until his death in 465, leaving the throne of Wei to his

son and heir, Prince Tuobahong, who would be enthroned as Emperor Xianwen, meaning the civil and wise. He would, at least to an extent, grow into that name, but at least at first, few in the imperial court sought to take heed of his wisdom. He was, after all, an 11-year-old. Instead, power would be invested in the officials surrounding the throne, as well as the late Wencheng's wife, Empress, well, now Empress Dowager, Feng. It's been a while since we've talked about Northern Wei and its curious imperial customs, so it's worth touching on once again to make sure we're all on the same page. But it's an important point to remember that though young Emperor Xianwen was Wencheng's eldest son, Empress Dowager Feng was definitely not his mother.

This was, of course, because Xianwen's birth mother, in accordance with the old Tuoba tradition, had committed suicide when her son had been named the imperial heir back in 456, just after the prince's second birthday. But initially, Empress Feng would have little say in the affairs of state. This is because command of Wei's government would initially fall into the hands of a court official by the name of Yifu Hun, a truly mysterious figure in the history of northern China, if ever there was one. We know virtually nothing about the man, though he was apparently an ethnically Xianbei tribesman.

His Xianbei personal name was recorded on a stone stele in Shanxi, but due to time and damage, unfortunately only one of those characters remains decipherable. So it's Bei something something. We don't know when he was born, have no description of him, physical or otherwise, and he's one of the only notable figures in this period not to

have received a biography in either the Book of Wei or the history of the northern dynasties, which in general took care to give sizable background to almost everyone of import, both virtuous and sinister. So Minister Yi Fu, the regent cloaked in shadows, managed to take hold of more or less total power in the Wei imperial court shortly after Xianwen was enthroned. And he wasted little time in shoring up his position against any competition, by having them all murdered, of course. Most notably in this string of political killings was the assassination of Bu Liuogu Li, or as we came to call him back in episode 61, Li the Bolgar, who had been Emperor Wancheng's

closest and most trusted advisor and his prime minister over the majority of his reign. The incident is described in volume 130 of the Zizhi Tongjian as, quote, Li the Bolgar, Prince of Pingyang, had traveled to Daijun Hot Spring to ease the symptoms of a disease. Once Emperor Wencheng had died, however, Yi Fuhun dispatched a messenger called Qiu Muling to inform Li and summon him back to Pingcheng.

Upon arriving at Daijun, Qiu Muling informed Li of the Emperor's death, but added, Yi Fuhun now has control of the heart of the Empire and the Imperial household. He has turned traitor against the Imperial clan and has killed all who have stood against him. Though all appears quiet for now, I strongly advise you not to return. To this, Li replied, Though you are right to caution me against Minister Ifu's wrongdoings,

I must return to Pingcheng at once for the Emperor's funeral. On his fastest horse, Li rode directly for Pingcheng, but having arrived, he saw that Minister Yi Fu had grown ever more reckless and violent. He had already killed multitudinous ministers, officials, marquises, and princes, and such brutalities had become common occurrence. Li sought to confront Yi Fu in a public house for his many crimes, but in so doing, Ifu attacked and killed him. End quote. Regent Ifu's reign of terror continued through 465 and into 466, when he tellingly promoted

himself to the Prince of Taiyuan. Given the stranglehold on the throne he already possessed, we might conjecture that he was angling at a potential usurpation of the underage Touba monarch. Indeed, it seems that the Empress Dowager Feng may have interpreted the maneuver in much the same way. And though Xianwen wasn't her son by birth, she'd be damned if she was going to sit around and do nothing while the Touba clan was ousted from power. Instead, she acted. In the spring of 466, having recruited several other high-ranking officials into her plan, she carried out a coup d'etat against Regent Yi Fu, and he was executed shortly thereafter.

Now that the Empress Dowager held Xianwen's regency herself, she was presented with a unique opportunity. As you may recall from our recent episodes in the south, 466 also saw the governor of Shu province defect to northern Wei to flee from Ming of Liu Song's wrath, and took his entire province with him. And when taken together with the near-simultaneous defections of Yan province and Runan prefecture, well, that would easily be the largest piece of territory added to northern Wei since the days of at least Tai Wu, and Empress Feng wasn't about to let such an opportunity slip away. She therefore dispatched the esteemed General Yu Cheyuan to accept their surrenders and welcome the turncoat governors with open arms into the fold. But General Yu Cheyuan didn't arrive on

the southern border alone. To the contrary, he rode at the head of a massive force and quickly moved them into defensive positions to stave off the impending Liu Song counterattack to retake their deserting territories. From their fortified positions, the northern Wei armies handily rebuffed the two concerted efforts by Liu Song to overwhelm them over the winter of 466-467, and by the following spring, Emperor Ming was forced to call off the campaign in failure. It would be 467 that Emperor Xianwen's concubine, Consort Li, bore the 13-year-old ruler his first son. Which is nice and all, but whatever her future plans might have been, pretty much time to wrap those up.

Indeed, when the toddler prince was two, he would be named Crown Prince, which meant, yep, curtains for Consort Li. In terms of imperial power, though, the Empress Dowager did something rather unusual for the person holding the reins of an underaged imperial regency. She voluntarily gave it up. In 467, Empress Dowager Feng terminated her own regency and declared that the emperor, having secured his own line of succession, was capable of ruling in his own right. Just let that sink in a moment. Feng held absolute power in her hands, and she voluntarily let it go.

That wouldn't even become a thing until the late 18th century in the Western world as a whole, and even to this day remains a rather sticky sticking point in large swaths of the world. Additionally, remember that she wasn't even ceding power to her own son, just the son of her late husband. In fact, to call it simply unusual would be a rather significant understatement. But so it was. Emperor Xianwen was now, at age 13, fully vested with his imperial authority,

and in spite of his age, he proved himself more than worthy of the trust placed in him. He is remembered, again as his regnal name suggests, the wise and civil, as being hardworking, benevolent, and just in his rule, though it would be rather brief in duration. Qianwen and Empress Dowager Feng remained close between 467 and 469, but in 470, a situation arose that would drive a permanent wedge between them, and ultimately result in murder. The Empress Dowager, having needs of her own, had taken the company of a man named Li Yi, an official of some note in the Imperial Court.

Xianwen had been made aware of the relationship, and though he hadn't yet taken action against it, disapproved of it greatly. Now before proceeding, I ought to say that things get a little bit murky here, but please stick with me because the payoff is worth untying the knot. So the boyfriend Li Yi's brother, Li Fu, was close friends with another court official, Li Xin. In 470, friend Li Xin was accused of corruption, and even though brother Li Fu tried to protect his friend by essentially burying the accusation, Emperor Xianwen was made aware of the situation and the dire consequences a conviction would bring to bear. And he got an idea. First and foremost, of course, would be for him to personally convict Li Xin on the charges and condemn him to death. But, Xianwen then sent him a private memo assuring Xin that all charges against him would be dropped and he'd be free to go. If, he agreed to testify against the two brothers Li and hang them out to dry instead.

So, either remain silent and be put to death, or have a close friend and his brother put to death in your stead. If not exactly philosophically accurate, it certainly is a literal instance of a prisoner's dilemma. After some initial hesitance, Li Xin agreed to the condition, leading to both Brother Li and Boyfriend Li being executed by imperial order for, you know, crimes and stuff. Needless to say, this little execution switcheroo did not go over so well with Empress Dowager Feng. After all, who wants their adolescent stepson deciding who you can and cannot date? She'd never forget this incident, and would quietly tuck it away in the back of her mind,

awaiting the chance at payback. But the following year, 471, would witness a very curious event in the imperial palace. Emperor Xianwen, at 14 years old, decided that he'd had enough of this whole absolute monarchy business. So he retired, in order to have more time to study his true interests outside the stodgy affairs of state. He initially floated the idea of passing the throne to his uncle, the prince of Jingzhao, but his officials strongly opposed such a move. Instead, they convinced him that the best course of action was for him to hand it off to his crowned prince, the four-year-old Tuoba Hong. And by best course of action, I of course mean best for the officials who'd be making all the baby emperor's decisions, not the realm or anything. Once the ceremony seating the throne to Crown

Prince Hong was completed, Qianwen took the title Tai Shi Huang Di, literally Overlord Emperor, but most often translated as Retired Emperor. Which isn't exactly accurate, since even retired, his officials still submitted all important documents and questions to him, and between 471 and 476, he reportedly spent even more time hearing legal cases than before, some retirement. But even this semi-retirement was not to last. The Empress Dowager, after all, had by this point had five years to plot and scheme against the boy who had unjustly executed her lover. Most of the historical texts, including the Zizhi Tongjian, agree that she probably slipped poison into Xianwen's food or drink and dispatched him that way.

But there is another version of the story that involves the Empress using her personal guards to take the retired Emperor by surprise and suffocate him. Regardless of the method, though, at age 21 or 22, Xianwen was dead, and the Empress Dowager—now Grand Empress Dowager—Feng resumed the regency over Northern Wei she'd given up nine years prior. While young Emperor Xiaowen played with his toys in the corner, this time Empress Feng was ready to run the whole show. And she was more than up to the task, being both highly literate and mathematically adept. These skills were somewhat off-put, though, by her penchant for promoting lovers far beyond

the stations they were actually capable of performing. For which she quickly grew to fear people would criticize her for. Wonder why that would be. Her solution to potentially being criticized for both the undue promotions and the numerous extramarital affairs, was to harshly punish anyone she perceived as mocking her or pointing out her indiscretions, up to and including death. Notably, one of her many victims in this period was Li Xin. Yes, the same Li Xin who had sold his two friends up the river to save his own skin. Now his dead friend's girlfriend was in

charge, and she certainly wasn't feeling particularly forgiving. His double betrayal had bought him between six and seven additional years, but one must wonder how many of those might have been wasted on regret. Regardless, he finally met his end at the Empress's order in 477. In spite of Empress Feng's harsh methods and long, vindictive memory, the reign of Emperor Xiaowan, at first nominal and then later in his own right, is not a period of Northern history remembered for its extreme brutality. Instead, it is mostly remembered as the period in which Northern Wei's aristocracy fully committed itself to a policy of rapid and near-total sinicization. Now this process had been ongoing since even

before Northern Wei had existed as a political entity. The Northern steppe people who had conquered, migrated, or been resettled into Chinese lands virtually all had taken in Chinese customs to one extent or another, often evidenced by the fact that as soon as they'd settled in they started having the same kinds of problems dealing with their step-brethren as the Chinese dynasty they'd just supplanted. Chinese religion had also often taken a leading role in the ongoing creeping sinicization of the Xianbei. You might remember back to Tai Wu's reign and the Taoist theocracy that was established following the emperor's extermination order against the foreign influence of Buddhism. But at the same time, they also maintained their separate ethnic languages, traditions,

dress, and cultural identities. This time, however, it was different. There would be no half-measures, nor half-barbarians. Under Emperor Xiaowen and Empress Dowager Feng, Northern Wei would chart a course for total Chineseness, For better, and for worse. One of the major shifts towards Chinese social structure was the implementation of the Jin Dynasty-esque class system. You remember that, right?

From top to bottom, it went royalty, officials, landed farmers, landless skilled workers, and finally, merchants. It was rigidly defined, and in the Chinese tradition, strictly enforced, meaning little to no inter-class marriages. As you might imagine, this was quite the change from the steppe people's traditional social strata. Sure, there had been like chieftains and all, but in societies with almost nothing, there was going to be a necessary and significant measure of forced egalitarianism and relative fluidity between the families of haves and have-nots.

But Wei would be having none of this uncivilized barbarian equality anymore. No, we're going to be civilized and make sure none of you lower people stand any chance of moving up in the world into our rarefied atmosphere. You are now locked into whatever class you currently fall. It's, after all, the civilized thing to do. Marriage lines also became, once again, an area of importance for the court of Pingcheng. Those Liaosong princes who had been defecting these past several years had brought with them marriageable sons and daughters, and critically, a disposition to keep their new overlords happy.

Among the flurry of intermarriages over the course of the 480s, Emperor Xiaowen's own daughters were of course reserved for the biggest names among the defectors. His princess Lanling would be married to a Liaosong prince, while another, Princess Huayang, was wed to a Sima descendant of old Eastern Jin. Heck, even the relatives of Liu Song's supplanter, Southern Qi, got in on the action once it started taking yet another turn for the worse in the south. Princess Nan Yang was married to a member of the Qi royal household. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter

of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution and regicide which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and

challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. When it comes to marrying into royalty, after all, it's best to hedge one's bets, especially when dynastic lifespans are so very brief in this day and age. A new criminal code was also drawn up, largely based on the Han Chinese laws. When completed, there was a total of 832 sections, with punishments ranging from non-lethal, in the case of 377 infractions, to death for 235 crimes, and all the way up to familial extermination for 16 heinous crimes against the state.

But of course, as time passed, Xiaowan was less and less sitting in his corner playing with his toys, and more and more becoming a co-ruler alongside the Grand Empress Dowager. And on the whole, there was almost zero friction between the two of them. Sure, there was that one little period when Empress Feng, concerned with the emperor actually beginning to, um, emperor, briefly considered having him deposed in favor of another child. But she was swiftly talked out of the idea, and we're past it. It's water under the bridge. Instead, state power just gradually flowed from Empress to Emperor, as he became more and more grown up and capable of handling the decisions presented.

By around 483, with Xiaowen now 12 or 13, he had assumed the majority of the throne's responsibilities for himself, though he maintained the Empress Dowager as his extremely close advisor and co-ruler. In fact, for the rest of her life, Grand Emperor Zhao Zifeng would never actually get around to formally ceding her regency back to Xiaowen, and nor did Xiaowen demand her do so. They seemed to have been pretty well in sync with one another. It would be that year, 483, that Xiaowen's consort Lin would bear him his first son, which would be named the Crown Prince Tuoba Xun, resulting in, yes, the forced suicide of Consort Lin,

apparently at the urgings of the Empress Dowager herself. Because sinicization campaign or no, some traditions are just worth keeping. But on and on the sinicization of Northern Wei's imperial household went. The next major step would come in 486 in the form of a color. Roman emperors were renowned for having worn the purple and restricted others from doing so, not to mention its crazy expensive production methods. Well, the color of Chinese imperial authority was yellow. And there's a whole complicated rationale behind this which I will now attempt to boil down to its bare bones. In Chinese astronomy, there are five colors, each associated with the five elements.

Wood, air, fire, water, earth, and metal. Yellow has been the imperial color since, well, forever. Remember the Yellow Emperor? And possibly before, but probably retroactively, the color itself came to represent the element of Earth, the central direction, a balance between yin and yang with a stabilizing energy, ripening harvests, and embodied as a yellow dragon. Obviously, the most auspicious of auspicious animals. Essentially, yellow represents the cosmic best of everything. And yes, I agree, the whole thing reeks of retconning,

but it's what we've got to work with, so we've no choice but to just go with it. Emperor Xiaowan officially adopted this most auspicious of Chinese colors as his own, and that of his office. And if that doesn't sound like such a big deal, you might think of it as somewhere near par to your country changing its flag design. The power-sharing arrangement between Feng and Xiaowen would last up until 490, with the Grand Empress Dowager's death at age 48 or 49. She was buried with great pomp and full honors, deserving one of her status, and Xiaowen himself observed a period of three years to mourn her loss,

in spite of the fact that such a lengthy period hadn't been observed since the reform of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty way back in the 2nd century BCE. But nevertheless, in spite of the tremendous power she wielded, no source I've yet been able to find has given any more detail than that. That she died, with no cause forthcoming. With the Grand Empress Dowager's death, so did Emperor Xiaowan emperor his era of personal rule. And with that, he began pulling out all the stops on that ongoing sinicization of Northern Wei. Laws and customs were upended to make way for Han-era Confucian traditions. He then went further, combing the lists of the various imperial princes that had cropped up over the lifespan of the Wei dynasty and then purging its roles. Anyone not demonstrably and directly related to the dynastic founder, Empress Daowu, unceremoniously found

themselves demoted from prince to duke, with only two exceptions, both of which were special, non-inheritable positions. But it was in 493 that the real fireworks started. No, not literally fireworks. Those won't be around for another 300 years at least. But poor metaphor aside, what I mean is that in 493, Northern Wei began a new round of military campaigns against the new Southern Qi dynasty.

Though curiously, not with any real territorial objective. Instead, the entire campaign was in fact little more than a smokescreen, one intended to keep Southern Qi off balance and prevent them from trying to take advantage of what was about to happen inside Northern Wei. Because the Tuoba family was due for a road trip. Yes, that's right, it's time to move the capital of Wei yet again. But this time, far from being a simple strategic move to take them further from the dangerous raids of the Ruron Kagane in the north and closer to its major population centers, Xiaowan's move in 493-494 was much more about optics than strategy. With Tuobao Wei doing its

level best to out-Chinese the Chinese, it seemed only natural that they occupy and declare the ancient Chinese capital city as their own new center of power. I mean, Luoyang. Granted, the vast majority of his own officials were adamantly against such a move. It was expensive. It was dangerous. It was far more vulnerable to the south. I mean, have you looked at the Three Kingdoms era, Your Majesty, and just how many times Luoyang was rendered a smoldering pile of ash? Ping City is a perfectly good capital. But the emperor would not be dissuaded. No, the symbolism was simply too potent to pass up, especially when you're trying to out-Chinese the Chinese. But Ping wouldn't be completely on the outs. It would remain a

prominent hub of commerce and imperial power, and indeed effectively functioned as Wei's secondary capital thereafter. Incidentally, the crowned prince Tuoba Xun rather strongly agreed with the anti-Loyang sentiment, particularly since Loyang was to the far south, at least by waystanders, and was far too hot for him to endure. By the fall of 496, with his father out of the capital, he and a group of like-minded officials had had enough and conspired to flee the new capital and make a break for the drier, cooler climes of Ping City. They brashly absconded with several palace horses, and even went so far as to kill an assistant who pleaded with them to stop such foolishness.

But before they could reach the city gates, news of their impending flight had reached the gate commander, who ordered the city sealed off, thereby preventing the reckless prince from leaving and taking the group into custody. Once Emperor Xiaowen returned to the capital and learned of the attempted escape, he took matters into his own hands.

Literally. He and his brother took turns caning the living heck out of poor Prince Xun, altogether more than a hundred times, and then threw him back into prison. A month and a half later, he was demoted to commoner status and put under strict house arrest with only the barest essentials of survival. The following summer, amid dubious reports of him continuing to conspire with his attendants, the emperor sent him a bottle of poison and ordered him to drink it. He was then given a commoner's burial on that same plot of land, and his mother posthumously demoted to commoner as well. In his stead, his slightly younger brother, Prince Ke, would be named the

new crowned prince. In the summer of 495, following the ineffective campaigns against Ming of Southern Qi's newly established reign that spring, Emperor Xiaowen rolled out his most sweeping set of societal changes yet. Traditional Xianbei clothing was now legally prohibited, as well as the Xianbei language, under penalty. In their stead, of course, the Han style of clothing and speech

was officially made the law of the land. But Xiaowen wasn't totally heartless to those who simply could not cope with such a dramatic shift. The law at least exempted citizens older than 30 from punishment, thereby allowing the 30 and 40-year-old geezers to speak their dying language to their heart's content. Xiaowu's reforms were aimed at the up-and-comers, intent on burning the Han way of life into their developing brains as the only way of life. At the same time, he further girded the Han-style social stratification that had been implemented by his stepmother, now honoring several particular Xianbei and Han families above all others,

and legally stipulating that ranks and promotions would be given on the basis of family rather than ability or competence, an act I'm sure you'll agree amounted to Northern Wei taking a rather enormous step backwards in terms of governance. 496, however, would see the final phase of the Tuoba Xianbei's sinicization, the abandonment of their very names. It's one thing to give up a style of dress, or a capital city, or even a language, but a name seems, at least to me, as something almost more special, a cultural touchstone of, in effect, this is where we came from. But apparently, I'm more sentimental than Emperor Xiaowen, because he was having none of that.

With the exception of four notable family names, specifically Tu Yuhun, Herou, Na, and Yu, all other Xianbei family names within Wei were forcibly substituted to a Han Chinese equivalent or semi-homonym. For instance, Dugu Hun simply became Du, He 毒, 合戟 became 換, 火魔塵 became 塵, 祈禮法 became 寶, and the like. And as for the imperial name itself, 土壤, that was no exception either. 土壤 would be erased from the official imperial records, and in its place the Han-style family name Yuan would be adopted. There of course would be pushbacks to such sweeping changes, and by the 530s several prominent generals of Wei would revert their names back to the traditional Xianbei styling. Nevertheless, in terms of history the Han-style surnames tended to stick, such as in the Book of Wei, if for no other reason than the shorter,

typically unicharacter surnames were far less cumbersome to write out. Ultimately, as with the religious war that had purged Buddhism in favor of Taoism in the 440s, the Xianbei name, dress, and custom would be largely supplanted by their Han Chinese counterparts, but never fully eradicated. They continued to lurk around the edges of the northern state and resurface once the initial fervor of change had died down. The back half of the 490s would prove problematic both for Emperor Xiaowu and for Northern Wei as a whole. The conflict with southern Qi escalated in 497 to a full-on offensive against the south that would see the capture of one city and nearby Xinyue, but otherwise dragged out into stalemate. And once Qi's emperor Ming died in 498, Xiaowen determined that it would be improper to continue attacking a state that was in mourning for its monarch, which may or may not have been a convenient

excuse to call off a campaign that demanded ever-mounting expenditures and was returning very little. Having concluded the armistice, Xiaowen returned to Luoyang, only to discover that his empress had been running around behind his back while he was off on campaign. It's worth pointing out that this empress, his second, was named Feng Ren, and was in fact the niece of the late Grand Empress Dowager Feng. Nevertheless, to avoid unnecessary confusion, we'll go ahead and call her by her formal name, Empress You, literally and tellingly translated as the Lonely Empress. Because Emperor Xiaowan often spent time on the front lines of his numerous wars, he was often not at the Imperial Palace. Empress You, therefore, carried on an affair with her attendant, with her eunuch servant doing his level best to keep it all under wraps.

But when the Empress tried to force Emperor Xiaowan's widowed sister, Princess Pengcheng, to marry her brother, Feng Su, Princess Pengcheng proved unwilling and so fled Luoyang entirely. Once out of the city, she proceeded directly to the war front and confronted her brother Xiaowan directly, revealing to him Empress You's affair. Emperor Xiaowan was initially unwilling to believe the accusation and kept it to himself. But when word of the princess's revelation reached Empress You, she became nervous and began hiring the servants of witches to curse Emperor Xiaowan, who was

already displaying signs of declining health. Her death hexes would prove fruitless, however, as evidenced by his return to Luoyang, very much alive, thank you, in 499. Once he'd returned, he conducted a personal inquest into this rumor of adultery, and interrogated both the canoodling attendant and the eunuch who had protected the pair, and both admitted to it. The empress was then summoned before Xiaowan, and he confronted her with a damning testimony in a private meeting. After he finished the interrogation,

he then summoned two of his brothers, the prince of Pengcheng and the prince of Beihai, and declared to them, quote, She used to be your sister-in-law, but now treat her as a passerby. You need not avoid her. End quote. This statement is important because

traditionally, Chinese brother and sister-in-laws were not permitted to sit together or even to speak to each other. By declaring that they may engage with her, he was effectively saying that he no longer considered her his wife. The emperor then further stated, this woman wanted to stick a knife in my ribs. Because she is a daughter of Empress Dowager Feng's clan, I cannot depose her, Once the two princes had departed, Emperor Xiaowen turned once again to the disgraced Empress Yeo, giving her a formal and final goodbye, thereby indicating that he would never deign to see her again.

She would retain her formal title, but the crown prince was also ordered to never see her again, and the emperor began sending court eunuchs to relay instructions to her, an insulting indicator of her lower standing. When the empress balked at being addressed as such by mere servants, she rebuked them and sent them away, refusing to follow the commands they issued. Incensed, Emperor Xiaowen then sent a cane to her mother, Lady Chang, and she was forced to cane the Empress herself as punishment. As his health continued to decline over the course of 499, he altered his will and inserted

a clause that demanded Empress You commit suicide once he himself had died. Xiaowan would ride off to one final campaign against southern Qi to stave off an attack on Wei's holdings, which he would accomplish, but with the exertion finally proving fatal to the 32-year-old. His soldiers withheld the news of the Emperor's death until his body could be transported back to Luoyang for burial, but once the news became public, the palace official Bai Zheng was dispatched to the empress's quarters to carry out his final will and administer her poison.

But Empress Feng refused to drink, stating, quote, "...my husband did not make such an order. It is the princess who wants to kill me." End quote. Bai had been prepared for this outcome, and then seized her, and forced poisonous peppers into her mouth. And she died. She was then buried with imperial honors alongside her husband. The throne would pass to Crown Prince Yuan Ke,

whose reign as Emperor Xuanwu will be the focus of next week's episode, along with the increasing trend of corruption and political infighting that had more and more began to rot the outwardly mighty Northern Wei Empire from within. And all the while, the new southern state of Liang will solidify its power under its own trued Emperor Wu, and seek to capitalize on any and every perceived weakness the North might reveal. All that and more, next time. Thank you for listening. Special shout-out this week to Jacob M., who has decided to support the history of China through Patreon. Thank you so very much, Jacob, for your generosity.

In his infinite wisdom, the Emperor has named you his minister in his court, and the governor of you province. And I, your humble narrator, look forward to hearing from you again soon. We have recently revamped our tiered reward structure for patrons of the podcast, and are now offering several more tangible rewards for those who wish to join the Imperial Court as well. Please check it out at patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina, or through our webpage, thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. But once again, to all of the History of China's patrons,

but especially this time to Minister Jacob of You, thank you very, very much. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over 10 generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.