In my last article, on Empress Yixiu from Empresses in the Palace (The Legend of Zhen Huan), I suggested that the historical image of the “modest, wise wife” may have been a story that suited the emperor. So was the woman on whom that ideal was imposed simply a victim?
This time I look at Empress Fuca in the drama Story of Yanxi Palace, and at the real woman behind her: Empress Xiaoxianchun, the first empress of the Qianlong Emperor. When I began writing, I saw her as a pitiable woman bound by an ideal. But as I researched and thought it through, a very different figure emerged.
Conclusion: The Empress Who Played the Ideal to the End and Left Wearing the Mask
Let me start with the most important point.
- The model for Empress Fuca in the drama is Empress Xiaoxianchun of the Fuca clan, the Qianlong Emperor’s first empress.
- She played the “ideal empress” that was imposed on her, and she played it perfectly.
- And she left this world at 37, before that mask could slip.
- Because of this, the Qianlong Emperor longed for her for the rest of his life, and she is still remembered as the greatest empress of the Qing dynasty.
The ideal was imposed on her. But she did not end as its prisoner. She staked the pride of her great family on it, played it to the end, and carved her name into history as an empress no one could ever surpass.
The Historical Empress Xiaoxianchun: The “Perfect Empress” of the Records
First, the facts about the real woman. She is the empress whose death year, 1748, came up in my article on Chunyuan and Yixiu.
- Lifespan: 1712–1748 (the 13th year of Qianlong). She died at 37 by East Asian age reckoning.
- Family: The distinguished Fuca clan of the Manchu Bordered Yellow Banner. Her father was Lirongbao, a military commander of Chahar. She was the elder sister of Fuheng, who later became a Grand Secretary.
- Marriage: In 1727 (the 5th year of Yongzheng), she became the principal consort of Prince Hongli, the future Qianlong Emperor.
- Empress: After Qianlong took the throne, she was formally made empress in 1737.
- Children: A first daughter (died young), second son Yonglian, third daughter Princess Hejing, and seventh son Yongcong. Only Princess Hejing lived to adulthood.
Stories of the “Ideal Empress”
The historical records portray her as the ideal empress. She did not wear pearls or jade in her hair, but flowers made from tongcao, the pith of a plant. So that her husband would never forget the frugality of their Manchu ancestors, she made him a small pouch by hand from animal hair. Every year she led the empress’s sericulture ceremony, setting an example for the women of the inner palace.
Much of what we know about her comes from the words and poems of her husband, the Qianlong Emperor. After her death he wrote a long elegy, Shu Bei Fu (“A Rhapsody Expressing My Grief”), which was included in the official Draft History of Qing.
Hopes for a Legitimate Heir, and the Deaths of Two Sons
The Qianlong Emperor deeply wished for a son born of his principal wife to inherit the throne. No son of a Qing empress had ever become emperor before.
- Second son Yonglian was named by his grandfather, the Yongzheng Emperor, and carried great hopes. Qianlong secretly designated him crown prince, but he died of illness in 1738, at 9 by East Asian reckoning.
- Seventh son Yongcong was born when the empress was in her mid-thirties. Qianlong designated him heir as well, but he died of smallpox at the end of the 12th year of Qianlong (January 1748), at 2 by East Asian reckoning.
When Yongcong died, Qianlong wrote words to the effect of: “Was it my fault, to want something no ancestor had achieved, a legitimate son on the throne?” It was the emperor who placed those hopes, but it was the empress who carried them in her own body.
Death on the Road
Just two months after Yongcong’s death, in the second month of 1748, the empress set out with the emperor and the empress dowager on an eastern tour to Shandong. On the way she caught a cold that grew worse, and on the return journey in the third month she died aboard a boat moored at Dezhou in Shandong.
The official cause of death was illness. But because her death was so sudden, a popular rumor arose that she had thrown herself into the river. No reliable source supports this.
The Empress Who Asked for the Name “Xian”
Xian (賢) is a character for a person of both talent and virtue whose conduct is upright. Applied to an empress, it takes on a more specific meaning. In Chinese tradition, a “wise empress” or “wise wife” was a woman who:
- supports her husband on the right path, and can even admonish him
- is not jealous, and treats the other consorts of the inner palace fairly
- avoids luxury and values frugality
- never moves her husband to serve the interests of her own family
In other words, xian was the highest praise for a woman who conducted herself as an ideal empress. The stories of the tongcao flowers and the handmade pouch are exactly what xian meant.
According to the Qianlong Emperor, the empress once saw the character xian given to a consort who had died, and said she hoped to receive the same character after her own death. Qianlong granted her wish and gave her the posthumous name “Xiaoxian.”
She herself wished to be remembered as the ideal empress. She took the ideal imposed on her and made it her own wish. That, I believe, was this empress’s pride.
Empress Fuca in Story of Yanxi Palace: Drawn as a Woman to Pity
In Story of Yanxi Palace (2018), the empress is given the name “Fuca Rongyin.” The name is invented; the real empress’s personal name has not come down to us. She was played by Qin Lan.
In the drama she is kind, fair, and loved by everyone. She protects and guides the heroine, the maid Wei Yingluo, and serves as the conscience of the story. She behaves as an empress should, meets the emperor’s expectations, bears legitimate sons, and governs the inner palace. Behind that perfection, she is slowly worn down.
When she loses her two sons and is betrayed by a maid she trusted, perhaps she realizes that the day she can no longer remain the ideal empress is drawing near. In the end, she throws herself from a height in the Forbidden City. Her last words carry this meaning: from now on, I am no longer the empress, only Fuca Rongyin.
I think the drama portrayed her as a woman being released from the role of empress, so that viewers would feel sorry for her. But my reading is different. I will come to that in my view below.
The historical empress died of illness on a boat during her travels; her suicide in the palace is the drama’s invention.
By the way, Zhen Huan’s real model, Lady Niohuru, appears in Story of Yanxi Palace as the Qianlong Emperor’s mother, the empress dowager. It is the same Forbidden City as Empresses in the Palace, one generation later.
✦ Satoe’s View: Carving Her Name into History as the Ideal Empress
What follows is my own interpretation.
An Ideal Imposed
“Modest, frugal, supporting her husband, bearing a legitimate heir.” The ideal demanded of an empress is described in beautiful words. But inside, it was a demand: stay empress-like even when you want to cry, stay wise even when you want to resent, and accept that your worth depends on whether you can bear an heir. There is no doubt that this ideal was imposed on her.
The Pride of Playing It to the End
To be honest, at first I too saw her as a pitiable woman bound by a “convenient ideal wife.” But the pride of a woman born into a great family cannot have been a small thing. In Japan, too, it is said that samurai valued their name more than their life. And she was a woman crowned empress. She must have had, more than anyone, the pride of the first woman under heaven.
The Chinese speak of carving one’s name into “the green annals,” meaning history. Leaving a name in history has long been described as a man’s ambition. But women, surely, craved just as much to carve their names into history. The only path open to an empress was to be recorded as the ideal empress. When Empress Fuca asked for the character xian for her posthumous name, wasn’t she trying to carve her name into history along the only path she had?
And it was not only her own name she carried. For the honor of the Fuca clan, a great family of the Manchu Bordered Yellow Banner, the empress had to be perfect.
She was not simply bound. She took on the imposed ideal by her own will and played it perfectly. That is how I read her now.
Before the Mask Could Slip
Yet as long as she lived, that ideal was bound to crumble someday. Her looks would fade. As she grew older, she would no longer be able to bear children. For an empress whose worth lay in bearing a legitimate heir, that meant drifting away from the ideal.
I read Fuca Rongyin’s suicide in the drama this way: she feared the mask being torn away, and chose to end as an empress no one could surpass, having played the ideal perfectly to the very end. The pride of a great family is still pride in death. In her heart, I think, were these words: “Surpass me, if you can. I am an empress whose name will live in history.”
The historical empress is said to have died of illness. Even so, perhaps the rumor that she threw herself into the river arose because people sensed the same thing.
An Ideal Completed by Death: The Empress No One Could Follow
By leaving the stage as the ideal empress, she settled forever into the seat of “the ideal empress.” She would never grow old, never bore the emperor, never fail. For decades afterward, the Qianlong Emperor kept writing poems in her memory, and it is said he long preserved her residence, the Palace of Eternal Spring, together with her belongings. Even today, she is remembered as the greatest empress of the Qing. No one can surpass her anymore.
The honor of this empress, completed by death, reached all the way to her brother’s family through Qianlong’s longing for her. Her younger brother Fuheng was given command of the Jinchuan campaign in the very year she died. He rose to become chief Grand Councilor and Grand Secretary, and for more than twenty years he remained the Qianlong Emperor’s most trusted minister. After his death, he received the posthumous name “Wenzhong.” His son Fuk’anggan was even made a prince of the second rank, an exceptional honor for someone outside the imperial clan. Of course, Fuheng had real ability of his own. But at the entrance to his career stood the name his sister had protected to the end. The ideal she played became not hers alone, but the honor of the Fuca clan itself. In Story of Yanxi Palace, Fuheng is played by Xu Kai, and his enormous popularity may owe something to his sister’s lingering image.
To remain an empress no one could surpass is more than an honor. It means allowing no one to follow in her footsteps: not the women who became empress after her, nor the empresses of the generations to come. Deep in her heart, perhaps, was this thought: “Those who come after me will never surpass me. Look how hard I worked.”
No living person can ever defeat a dead ideal wife. The one who had to bear that weight was the next empress, Lady Ula-Nara, the model for Ruyi in the drama Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace. In time she broke with the Qianlong Emperor and, during a journey, cut her own hair. Afterward, the seals and patents that marked her as empress were taken from her. When she died, she received no empress’s funeral, and not even a posthumous name.
Why was she treated so harshly? This goes further into my own speculation, but I wonder whether the Qianlong Emperor always held the completed Empress Fuca in his heart. The step-empress entered the mold of the ideal empress and then rose up against it. For an empress to defy her husband was to break the very mold of xian. That is why, I think, Qianlong answered with expulsion from the mold: taking away her seals and denying her a posthumous name.
This is exactly the same structure as Chunyuan in Empresses in the Palace. Chunyuan too died young and became the emperor’s eternal ideal wife. Yixiu lived in her shadow, and even Zhen Huan was loved as Chunyuan’s substitute. The relationship between Chunyuan and Yixiu, invented by the drama, overlaps remarkably with the historical relationship between Empress Fuca and the step-empress. As long as men seek an ideal wife, the dead woman wins eternal honor, and the living women keep losing to that honor. An honor completed by death becomes, in itself, a high wall that no one who comes after can follow her over.
Yingluo, Who Stood Outside the Ideal
The drama’s heroine, Yingluo, on the other hand, is a consort, not an empress. She does not carry the xian demanded of an empress. When she talks back, it is taken not as rebellion but as wit and spirit.
I think the makers of Story of Yanxi Palace knew that no one could surpass Empress Fuca’s place. So they did not set the heroine up as a rival to the ideal empress. They placed her outside the mold. By portraying her as a woman who talks back, in other words a woman brimming with wit, they let the heroine shine without tarnishing Empress Fuca’s ideal. Talking back becomes either rebellion or wit depending on who does it. An empress is punished for it; a consort is loved for it.
| How she faced the ideal | Outcome | |
|---|---|---|
| Empress Fuca | Played the ideal to the end and left wearing the mask | Became the eternal ideal empress |
| Step-empress (Ula-Nara) | Rose up against the ideal | Stripped of her seals; no posthumous name |
| Yingluo (Lady Wei) | Showed her wit outside the ideal | Loved by the emperor; her son became emperor |
The irony is that the historical Lady Wei, too, received a posthumous name: Empress Xiaoyichun. She was never empress in her lifetime, but when her son, the future Jiaqing Emperor, was named crown prince, she was posthumously raised to empress. Her own character is yi (儀): dignified conduct that serves as a model for others. And her name begins with xiao, filial piety, and closes with chun, the character of her husband. Even the woman who lived outside the mold was, in the end, placed back inside it.
Summary
The historical Empress Xiaoxianchun played the ideal empress imposed on her to perfection, and left this world before the mask could slip. That is why the Qianlong Emperor longed for her all his life, and why she is still remembered as the greatest empress of the Qing.
At the end, the drama gave her the words “no longer the empress, only Fuca Rongyin.” But I feel her true voice lay elsewhere: “Surpass me, if you can.” It is the voice of an empress from a great family who had an ideal forced on her, turned it into her own pride, and never let go of it to the very end.
As long as history exists, she is the eternal victor.
◀ Companion articles: [Empresses in the Palace: Were Empress Yixiu and Chunyuan Real?] ｜ [The Real Zhen Huan: Empress Xiaoshengxian of the Niohuru Clan]