The title Grand Empress Dowager (also Grand Dowager Empress or Grand Empress Mother) (Chinese: 太皇太后; pinyin: tài huáng tài hòu; Japanese: たいこうたいごう) was given to the grandmother, or a woman from the same generation as the grandmother, of the Chinese, Korean and Japanese dynastic rulers. Some grand empress dowagers held regency within the beginning years of reign of an underage emperor. Some of the most prominent empress dowagers extended long periods of regency, to beyond after the ruler was mature enough to govern alone. This was seen as a source of political turmoil, according to the traditional views of Chinese historians.
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or empress:
“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“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)