Empress Xiaojingcheng - As Empress Dowager For Eight Days

As Empress Dowager For Eight Days

When the Daoguang Emperor died in 1850, his successor the Xianfeng Emperor refused to grant Lady Borjigit the status of Empress Dowager, and instead conferred her the title of Imperial Noble Dowager Consort Kangci (康慈皇贵太妃). Both Lady Borjigit and her only surviving son, Yixin, were not content with the arrangement. According to both law and tradition Lady Borjigit had no right to claiming the position of Empress Dowager, so her appeals to the Xianfeng Emperor as his foster mother went unheeded. However Xianfeng did pay respect to her and treated her as if she was his birth mother.

In 1852, as the highest ranked consort of the late Daoguang Emperor, Lady Borjigit was in charge of selecting potential candidates to be the Xianfeng Emperor's concubines. Among those chosen by her were the future empress dowagers Ci'an and Cixi.

In August 1855 Lady Borjigit became seriously ill. Fearing that she had little time left, she conspired with her son Yixin to issue a false imperial edict in the Xianfeng Emperor's name, which granted her the title of Empress Dowager. Xianfeng was furious when he learned about it, but he did not rescind the edict because he wanted to save himself from public embarrassment. On August 13, 1855, Lady Borjigit became Empress Dowager and she died eight days later. Xianfeng appointed two princes, one of whom was Yixin, to manage the funeral arrangements, and announced that he would spend the mourning period in Yangxin Palace.

Two years later Lady Borjigit was interred in the Daoguang Emperor's mausoleum for concubines in the Western Qing Tombs. She was also granted the posthumous title of Empress Xiaojing (孝靜皇后). Unlike Daoguang's other empresses, she received an additional Chinese character - cheng (成) - in her posthumous title only later, when her son Yixin urged the Tongzhi Emperor to do so. She received domestic ancestral rites in the palace for the rest of the century.