Predecessor Empress Dowager Cixi Role Consort Successor Dynasty abolished Parents Yehenara Guixiang | Father Yehenara Guixiang Cousins Tongzhi Emperor Name Empress Longyu Grandparents Yehenara Huizheng | |
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Regency 2 December 1908 – 12 February 1912
alongside Zaifeng, Prince Chun Tenure 26 February 1889 – 2 December 1908 House Yehenara (noble family; by birth)
House of Aisin Gioro (by marriage) Died February 12, 1912, Forbidden City, Beijing, China Spouse Guangxu Emperor (m. 1889–1908) Similar People Empress Dowager Cixi, Guangxu Emperor, Consort Zhen, Zaifeng - Prince Chun, Tongzhi Emperor | ||
Longyu Empress
Empress Xiaodingjing (28 January 1868 – 22 February 1913), better known as Empress Dowager Longyu, personal name Jingfen, was the Empress Consort of the Guangxu Emperor, the penultimate emperor of the Qing dynasty and imperial China. She is best remembered for signing the abdication documents in 1912 on behalf of Puyi, the Last Emperor.
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Life
Empress Xiaodingjing was the second daughter of Guixiang (桂祥; 1849–1913), a Manchu general of the Yehenara clan and younger brother of Empress Dowager Cixi, and his wife of Mongolian origin. She was born in 1868 during the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor. In 1889, Empress Dowager Cixi, who served as regent during the Guangxu Emperor's minority, decided that the emperor had to marry before he could formally take over the reins of power. She chose her niece, Guixiang's daughter, to be the Empress Consort of the Guangxu Emperor because she wanted to strengthen the influence of the Yehenara clan within the imperial family.
Empress Xiaodingjing married the Guangxu Emperor on 26 February 1889, and became his Empress directly after the wedding. The wedding ceremony of the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Xiaodingjing, an extremely extravagant and spectacular occasion, took place on 26 February 1889. However, prior to the wedding, on 16 January 1889, the Forbidden City caught fire, and the Gate of Supreme Harmony was burnt down. According to imperial traditions, the route of the Emperor's wedding procession had to pass through the Gate of Supreme Harmony, which was completely destroyed. As a result, many people believed that this incident was a bad omen.
Due to the fact that the reconstruction of the gate would be extremely time-consuming, and the wedding date of the Emperor could not be postponed once decided, Empress Dowager Cixi ordered a tent resembling the gate to be constructed. The artisans used paper and wood to build the tent, and after it was done, the tent had exactly the same height and the same width as the original gate, with ornamentation extremely similar to the original. As a result, even people who walked through the inner palace on a regular basis could not tell the difference between the original gate and the temporary tent at first.
However, after their marriage, the Empress was detested and ignored by the Guangxu Emperor, who favoured Consort Zhen of the Tatara clan. At first, Empress Dowager Cixi regarded Consort Zhen favourably, but, after finding out she had overspent her allowance, she demoted her. Cixi eventually grew more hostile to Consort Zhen, and sent her to the "cold palace", a place reserved for consorts who fell out of the emperor's favour.
As she firmly opposed the Guangxu Emperor's 1898 Hundred Days' Reform programme, Empress Dowager Cixi had the emperor placed under house arrest in the Summer Palace. The Empress would frequently spy on the Guangxu Emperor and report his every action to the Empress Dowager. In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the Empress fled with Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor to Xi'an when Beijing was occupied by the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Upon their return, Consort Zhen drowned in a well within the Forbidden City.
Both Yu Deling and Katherine Carl, who spent time in Empress Dowager Cixi's court following the Boxer Rebellion, recalled Empress Xiaodingjing to be a gracious and pleasant figure.
Both the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi died within one day of each other in 1908, after which Empress Xiaodingjing was promoted to the status of Empress Dowager, with the honorable title Longyu, meaning "Auspicious and Prosperous".
Immediately after the Guangxu Emperor's death, Empress Dowager Cixi appointed Puyi, a nephew of the Guangxu Emperor, as the new emperor before dying on the following day. As Empress Dowager Longyu did not have any children with the Guangxu Emperor, she adopted the infant Puyi as her child. Although Cixi had decreed before her death that the Qing imperial court would never again allow women to serve as regents, Longyu remained the leading figure in the Qing government and was consulted on all major decisions. However, because she was inexperienced in politics, in the first few years of Puyi's reign, the emperor's biological father, Zaifeng (Prince Chun), served as the regent for Puyi alongside the general Yuan Shikai.
On Yuan Shikai's advice in the fall of 1911, Empress Dowager Longyu agreed to sign an abdication on behalf of a five-year-old Puyi. She agreed only if the imperial family were allowed to keep its titles. Other agreements were these:
The Qing dynasty came to an end in 1912 and was replaced by the Republic of China. Within a few months after the fall of the Qing dynasty, on 22 February 1913, Empress Dowager Longyu died in Beijing after an illness. She was 45 years old, and was the only Chinese empress whose coffin was transported from the Forbidden City to her tomb by train. At her funeral, the Vice President of the Republic of China, Li Yuanhong, praised her for being "most excellent among women". She was buried in the Chongling tomb of the Western Qing tombs with the Guangxu Emperor.