June 2026

## Prologue — A 25-Year-Old at Chengde In the summer of 1861, the Xianfeng Emperor died at the imperial Mountain Resort at Chengde — the hunting retreat beyond the Great Wall, then called Rehe (Jehol), where the court had fled. He was thirty. He left behind a five-year-old heir and a single Noble Consort, twenty-five years old: the woman remembered as Cixi. Within a few months she had helped engineer a palace coup, swept aside the regents her dying husband…

Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part II *From the Flower of Tianjin to the Deposed Empress of Manchukuo — The Cage Called “Empress”* by Satoe | 還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) — Late Qing Dynasty Series *This article is a continuation of “Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part I: From the Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan to the Forbidden City.”* I. Wandering — From the Royal Mansion to the German Legation, and On to Japan After Leaving the…