Grand Empress Dowager Shangguan

Grand Empress Dowager Shangguan (上官太皇太后) (personal name unknown) (89 BC(?) – 37 BC), also known as Empress Shangguan (上官皇后), Empress Xiaozhao (孝昭皇后) and Empress Dowager Shangguan (上官太后), was an Empress, Empress Dowager and Grand Empress Dowager during Han Dynasty and wife to Emperor Zhao. Her father was Shangguan An (上官安), the son of Shangguan Jie (上官桀). Her mother was the daughter of Huo Guang. She was a key figure in a number of political incidents during the middle Han Dynasty, and she spent her entire adult life as a Grand Empress Dowager and a widow without family. Both sides of her family were wiped out in two separate mass executions as punishment accessories of the people who dared usurp the throne. She remains the youngest person in history to assume the both titles of Empress Dowager and Grand Empress Dowager.

Read more about Grand Empress Dowager Shangguan:  Background and Marriage To Emperor Zhao, As Empress, As Empress Dowager (The Brief Reign of Prince He of Changyi), As Grand Empress Dowager, Titles From Birth To Death, Family, Ancestry

Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or empress:

    We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch.... I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)

    We never really are the adults we pretend to be. We wear the mask and perhaps the clothes and posture of grown-ups, but inside our skin we are never as wise or as sure or as strong as we want to convince ourselves and others we are. We may fool all the rest of the people all of the time, but we never fool our parents. They can see behind the mask of adulthood. To her mommy and daddy, the empress never has on any clothes—and knows it.
    Frank Pittman (20th century)