Ranks Of Imperial Consorts In China
The ranks of imperial consorts have varied over the course of Chinese history but remained important throughout owing to its importance in management of the inner court and in imperial succession, which ranked heirs according to the prominence of their mothers in addition to their strict birth order. Regardless of the age, however, it is common in English translation to simplify these hierarchy into the three ranks of Empress, consorts, and concubines.
Read more about Ranks Of Imperial Consorts In China: Early History, Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty, Jin Dynasty (265–420), Southern Qi, Chen Dynasty, Northern Wei, Northern Qi, Northern Zhou, Sui, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words ranks, imperial and/or china:
“A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctively upon awaking and in one second reads in them the point of the earth that he occupies, the time past until his arousal; but their ranks can be mingled or broken.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“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.
“The roof of England fell
Great Paris tolled her bell
And China staunched her milk and wept for bread”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)