As Empress, Empress Dowager, and Then Grand Empress Dowager
Empress Wang would have a role in Crown Prince Shi's eventual choice of a wife. In the middle of the 50s BC, Consort Sima, the favorite consort of Prince Shi died from an illness. Prince Shi was grief-stricken and became ill and depressed himself. Emperor Xuan was concerned, so he had Empress Wang select the most beautiful of the young ladies in waiting and had them sent to Prince Shi. Wang Zhengjun was one of the ladies in waiting chosen. She, as the mother of his first-born son Liu Ao (later Emperor Cheng), would eventually become his wife and empress.
Empress Wang was not known to have had significant political influence as an empress. After her husband Emperor Xuan died in 49 BC and her stepson Prince Shi took the throne as Emperor Yuan, she carried the title of empress dowager. She would outlive him as well, and after he died in 33 BC and his son Crown Prince Ao took the throne as Emperor Cheng, she carried the title of grand empress dowager, and she became also semi-formally known as Empress Dowager Qiongcheng (based on her father's title) to be distinguished with her daughter-in-law. She did not appear to have much political influence during the reigns of either Emperor Yuan or Cheng, even though they appeared to genuinely love and respect her as a mother/grandmother. She died in 16 BC and was buried with her husband Emperor Xuan.
Read more about this topic: Empress Wang (Xuan)
Famous quotes containing the words empress and/or grand:
“The Empress is Legitimist, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte III (1808–1873)
“The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)