Imperial Succession in an Imaginary China

[steepholm]

So, last night's dream raised a waking question that I hope someone here can answer.

In my dream, I was working in the Chinese imperial court, helping to look after the Emperor's two children. They were two boys, still quite young (about 3 and 6), devoted to each other and really very sweet. Strangely, though, the younger rather than the elder was the heir to the throne of China.

This is how it came about. I'm not sure if real-life Chinese Emperors could be married to more than one woman at once, but my dream-Emperor was. He preferred his second wife (mother of the younger child), but because the elder child was the son of his first wife he could not at first make him his heir. His solution was to divorce his first wife, and then remarry her, bumping her and her son down the pecking order so that she was now wife No. 2. According to Chinese law, this also made her son into son No. 2.

In my dream, I spoke to the demoted wife, who seemed quite philosophical about it - she was still married to the Emperor, after all - but I was worried that the boys' relationship would be soured in future years when they learned the whole story.

I suppose my question is, has anything like this ever happened outside my head, either in China or elsewhere? It seems like a good set-up for a multigenerational blockbuster novel, of the kind that I would want neither to write nor read, but that would rake in the cash.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I have to say that my entire knowledge on the topic is based upon cdramas but given cdramas are really, really into palace intrigue, there is plenty of material.

So far as I am aware, the Emperor was only allowed one empress but he could have numerous consorts of lesser degree. In Nirvana in Fire these are ranked as Nobel Consort, Consort and Concubine in descending order of status.

In principle the eldest son of the Empress should be the Crown Prince (there is a very long academic discussion in the Story of Minglan which is set in the Song dynasty about whether a more talented son of a concubine should take priority over a less talented son of the Empress and the conclusion is no, deciding on matters of talent is highly subjective but age and legitimacy are objective facts so it's better practice for everyone to follow the rules and for the talented less legitimate heir to devote himself to supporting his brother.)

However, if the Empress has no son or if he's otherwise ruled out (rebellion, illness) then it comes down to the offspring of the various Consorts, Noble Consorts and Concubines and the stage is set for that perennial family favourite, court intrigue for fun and profit.

Demoting an Empress for anything other than fomenting a rebellion or assassination of someone who actually mattered viz the Emperor or his favourite concubine would be a terrible idea (because she's usually been brought in because her family command a lot of support within the Court) but if we postulate a dead or childless Empress you could certainly demote a consort and promote another consort (and hence her child) above her; this does in fact happen in NiF where at the opening of the story: 12 years earlier Crown Prince I was executed for treason and his mother, Consort Chen, hanged herself and the Emperor now has eight other sons, each by different mothers, none of whom are the Empress's (she adopted the son of another concubine who died when the boy was an infant) so that the current Crown Prince (Crown Prince II) is the son of a Noble Consort and not of the Empress, and the Empress's adopted son really, really wants to be Crown Prince.

[steepholm]

Thank you for that information!

[legionseagle]

I also apologise for the curse of auto-carrot, which seems to imply that several of the senior consorts had been honoured by the Swedish Academy, which of course they had not (although given the nature of palace intrigue, a lot of inhabitants of the Inner Palace do turn into pretty effective practical chemists, albeit in fairly specialist areas.)

[cmcmck]

Chinese emperors certainly had multiple wives and it led to succession issues as the offspring butchered their way through their siblings to the top job!

[steepholm]

Sounds a rather dysfunctional system - but that's monarchy, I suppose!

[larryhammer]

Adding to the above:

The Empress Consort was the principal wife, and in theory the oldest son of the first Empress Consort had priority on becoming the Crown Prince, even if lower-status wives had sons who were older, but in practice this hinged on how good the Empress Consort and her birth-family played the game of palace politics. (Whether the Crown Prince actually succeeded his father was a whole other kettle of wax.)

There were multiple ranks of consorts and wives and concubines, resulting in a large harem quarter, but in practice the lowest levels of concubines never even saw the Emperor but were attached to his household in order to give them access to the harem as higher-level servants to the other consorts and higher-level concubines.

So, if your older son was from a secondary consort and the younger from the Empress, then yes, that's an entirely plausible scenario, without bothering with the convoluted (and deeply politics-filled) divorce scenario. The divorce and remarry thing couldn't/wouldn't happen, actually.

[steepholm]

Thank you - that's very helpful!

[calimac]

This has interesting resonances to the situation described in Act 1 of Shakespeare's King John.

[steepholm]

Indeed.