As Princely and Imperial Consort
The future Empress Wang became a consort, but not wife, to Li Kuo while he was the Prince of Fengjie under his great-grandfather Emperor Xuanzong or grandfather Emperor Suzong. She gave birth to his oldest son, Li Song in 761 and thereafter was particularly favored. After Li Kuo became emperor in 779 (as Emperor Dezong), she was created Shufei (淑妃), the second highest rank for imperial consorts under empress. He awarded her father Wang Yu posthumous honors while making her brother Wang Guo a prefectural military advisor. He also gave some 20 of her family members official positions. When he was briefly forced to flee the capital Chang'an in 783 during the midst of a mutiny at Chang'an by soldiers from Jingyuan Circuit (涇原, headquartered in modern Pingliang, Gansu), she might have carried the imperial seal with her for him as they fled to Fengtian (奉天, in modern Xianyang, Shaanxi).
Read more about this topic: Empress Wang (Dezong)
Famous quotes containing the words princely and/or imperial:
“A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.