Was Ruyi a Real Person?
Short answer
Yes. Ruyi is based on a real woman: Lady Nara (1718–1766), the second empress of the Qianlong Emperor, known to history as the Step Empress (继皇后). Her real name was not Ruyi. In 1765 she cut her hair during the emperor’s southern tour, lost his favor, and died the next year — the only Qing empress never given a posthumous title. The same woman also appears as Consort Xian in Story of Yanxi Palace.
| Real name | Lady Nara (clan: Ula-Nara or Hoifa-Nara — disputed) |
| Lived | 1718 – 1766 |
| Position | Second empress of the Qianlong Emperor (empress from 1750) |
| Known as | The Step Empress (继皇后, “succeeding empress”) |
| In Ruyi | Ula-Nara Qingying → Ruyi (played by Zhou Xun) |
| In Yanxi Palace | Hoifa-Nara Shushen, Consort Xian (played by Charmaine Sheh) |
| Why famous | Cut her hair in 1765, fell from grace, denied a posthumous title |
If you have watched several Qing palace dramas in a row, her image tends to blur. In one hit series she is a scheming villain; in another she is a wronged, tragic heroine. These are the same real woman, wearing different costumes written by different screenwriters.
Below I separate the historical woman from the woman the dramas invented, and then, at the end, I add my own reading.
Three names, one woman
| Name you see | Where it comes from | How she is portrayed |
|---|---|---|
| Step Empress, Lady Nara | History | The only Qing empress with no posthumous title |
| Ruyi (Zhou Xun) | Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace (2018) | A tragic heroine destroyed by her husband’s changing heart |
| Consort Xian / Nara Shushen (Charmaine Sheh) | Story of Yanxi Palace (2018) | A kind woman who “turns dark” into a villain |
Because the name splits into three, we feel as if we are watching three different women.
Why is she called the “Step Empress”?
“Step Empress” is a translation of 继皇后 (ji huanghou), which simply means “the succeeding empress” — the empress who came after the first. It does not mean she was anyone’s stepmother. Historians use it because she has no posthumous title; every other Qing empress is known by one (her predecessor, for example, is Empress Xiaoxianchun). Without a title, she could only be called by her position in the sequence.
The history: who was the real Ruyi?
Even her surname is uncertain
The Draft History of Qing records her clan as Ula-Nara (Ulanara), but that work is known for errors, and genealogical records place her father’s family among the Nara of the Hoifa area — so many scholars now prefer Hoifa-Nara. Sources often write simply “Nara.” She came from the Bordered Blue Banner of the Manchu; her father was named Narbu.
The two dramas even split on this: Ruyi follows the Draft History (Ula-Nara), Yanxi Palace uses Hoifa-Nara. A woman whose very surname is disputed — that alone tells you how thoroughly her record was later thinned out.
She became empress — but not by her husband’s wish
She was born in 1718, seven years younger than the Qianlong Emperor. While he was still a prince, she entered his household as a secondary consort. After his accession she rose through the ranks — Consort Xian, then Noble Consort Xian.
Her turning point came in 1748, when Qianlong’s beloved first empress, Empress Xiaoxianchun of the Fuca clan, died. Lady Nara was raised to Imperial Noble Consort, and in 1750 she became empress.
Here is a detail the dramas soften: the records suggest this promotion was pushed largely by his mother, Empress Dowager Chongqing, rather than by the emperor himself. (In the drama, by contrast, Ruyi is his childhood sweetheart.) She was not a wife chosen from the heart — a quiet fault line laid at the very beginning.
Even so, the next fifteen years were not unhappy. On the southern tours, the ancestral rites in Shengjing, the autumn hunts at Mulan, Qianlong took her along. She bore him three children.
Did Ruyi have children? Yes — three
- Yongji, the twelfth son (1752–1776). Qianlong is said to have celebrated his birth with a poem. After his mother’s fall he was never granted any princely rank and died at twenty-four without a title. The rank of beile was given only after his death, by his half-brother the Jiaqing Emperor.
- The fifth princess (1753–1755) died in early childhood.
- Yongjing, the thirteenth son (1756–1757) died of illness at about two.
None of her children outlived the Qianlong era with any honor. Her bloodline effectively ended with them.
The hair-cutting incident (1765) — what actually happened
In 1765, while accompanying Qianlong on his fourth southern tour, the empress suddenly provoked his fury at Hangzhou. She was sent back to Beijing ahead of the procession, escorted under guard. No formal decree of deposition was ever issued — yet in practice she was stripped of the position of empress. Her seals of rank were taken away.
What we know for certain is that she cut her hair. Why she did it is not recorded.
Why was cutting her hair so serious? In Manchu custom, a woman cut her hair only in mourning — for the death of an emperor or empress dowager. Both were alive. Cutting her hair in front of them could be read as wishing them dead: the gravest possible insult. Qianlong later described her conduct as unreasonable, as if she had gone mad.
Why did she do it? Theories, none proven:
- A folk account: Qianlong wanted to take a southern woman as a consort; the empress objected and cut her hair in protest. This is the version Ruyi uses.
- A Korean account: a rumor recorded outside China involves accusations about stolen pearls and a rival consort. It appears in no official Qing history and is best treated as hearsay. The dramas’ “pearls” plots grow out of rumors of this kind.
- Modern readings: many scholars and viewers now see the act as deliberate defiance — a woman’s protest against imperial power.
How did Ruyi die? The empress history erased
Confined to a rear hall of her palace, the fallen empress died the following year, in the seventh lunar month of 1766.
- Her funeral was conducted at the rank of Imperial Noble Consort, not empress.
- She was not buried with Qianlong but placed as a secondary burial in the tomb of Imperial Noble Consort Chunhui.
- She was given no posthumous title — the only empress in the whole Qing dynasty denied one.
- Her portraits and records were largely removed. (A portrait in the Palace Museum is sometimes identified as her, but the identification is uncertain.)
Qianlong never crowned another empress. The woman who rose instead was Consort Ling (Lady Wei), raised to Imperial Noble Consort in 1765 — the real woman behind Wei Yingluo, the heroine of Yanxi Palace. That is why the two dramas cast these two women as rivals.
The fiction: the “Ruyi” and “Consort Xian” the dramas built
Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace — where the name is the theme
The drama is based on the novel by Liu Lianzi, who also wrote Empresses in the Palace (The Legend of Zhen Huan). The heroine first appears as Qingying (“green cherry blossom”). Early on, the Empress Dowager — Zhen Huan herself — gives her a new name, Ruyi, and she is in effect reborn.
On screen, the dowager traces 懿 (yi) to the Book of the Later Han: serene, beautiful virtue. 如 (ru) means “resembling, like.” Put together, Ruyi carries a chilling paradox, summed up in a gloss fans love to pass around:
“Resembling virtue — yet not virtue itself.”
To the very end she is only like the ideal wife; she never becomes his ideal. The name foretold her life. The drama also plays on the homophone 如意 (ruyi), “as one wishes” — she is not that lucky ruyi, and a single different character carries a lifetime of things that did not go as she wished.
Story of Yanxi Palace — the opposite face
The same historical woman appears here as Consort Xian, Hoifa-Nara Shushen, played by Charmaine Sheh. She begins gentle but “turns dark” in the second half, becoming the heroine’s antagonist. In Yanxi, her hair-cutting looks like a breakdown; in Ruyi, it is a calm, deliberate choice.
Ruyi: history vs. drama at a glance
| In the drama | In history |
|---|---|
| Childhood sweetheart of Qianlong | Promotion pushed by his mother; no evidence of a romance |
| Her aunt is the deposed empress of Empresses in the Palace | A device linking the two series, not a fact of her family tree |
| A rival frames her over stolen pearls | Only an outside rumor; not in official Qing records |
| Yongji is scolded and loses his work | Yongji lost rank after her fall; the scolding scenes are invented |
| Buried in a shabby coffin as a “lodger” | A real demotion: secondary burial beside Imperial Noble Consort Chunhui |
| Cuts her hair to end the marriage | She did cut her hair; her reason is unrecorded |
✦ Satoe’s Take: the same woman, both villain and saint
What stays with me most is that one real woman is drawn as a villain in one drama and a saint in another. Precisely because so little of her record survives — and because what did survive was deliberately thinned — later ages could dress her in whatever story they liked. This is, to me, a living illustration of the idea that history is made by the one who tells it.
I come from Matsumoto, and I lived years in Nagaoka — both places that were on the losing side of Japan’s Boshin War. “History is written by the victors” is not an abstraction to me; it is closer to a family memory. The story of the Step Empress looks like the same shape in miniature. And there is an irony in it: because Qianlong worked so hard to erase her, later ages paid her more attention, not less.
On the hair-cutting itself: she surely knew it was the gravest taboo in Manchu custom. If she cut her hair anyway, knowing exactly what it meant, then it was not an impulse but an act of resistance — the last of her dignity staked on a single gesture. I am drawn to that reading.
Perhaps she was, in her way, a woman with an almost modern sensibility. European missionaries moved through the court in those years, and it is not impossible that modern ways of thinking brushed against her. This is only my speculation — but seen that way, her wish to be loved as an equal begins to look ahead of its time.
A note on the name-play. Among Ruyi fans there is a reading that breaks 懿 into its parts and hears in it “a heart of one time” — so that Qianlong’s love is “the heart moved once in a lifetime,” while Ruyi’s love is “one heart held for a whole lifetime.” This is a fan interpretation, not the on-screen etymology. But it captures the mismatch in their two ideas of marriage so well that I have grown fond of it.
And this: before the renaming, Qianlong gives Qingying the melody “Over the Wall, on Horseback.” It looks like love at first sight — but its source, a poem by Bai Juyi, is a warning about a woman who elopes and is later abandoned. Disguised as a sweet gift, it quietly foretells Ruyi’s ending. Once you notice touches like that, you want to watch the whole thing again.
FAQ
Was Ruyi a real person? Yes. Ruyi is based on Lady Nara (1718–1766), the Qianlong Emperor’s second empress, known as the Step Empress. “Ruyi” itself is a name invented by the novel and drama.
Is Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace a true story? It is based on real people and real events — her rise, the hair-cutting in 1765, her fall and death in 1766 — but the romance, rivalries and most plot details are fiction.
Did Ruyi really cut her hair? Yes. In 1765, at Hangzhou during the southern tour, she cut her hair. Why she did it is not recorded.
Did Ruyi become empress? Yes. She became empress in 1750, two years after the death of Empress Xiaoxianchun.
What happened to Ruyi’s son Yongji? He was never given princely rank after his mother’s fall and died in 1776 at twenty-four. He was made a beile only after his death.
Is Ruyi the same person as Consort Xian in Story of Yanxi Palace? Yes. Ruyi (Zhou Xun) and Consort Xian / Nara Shushen (Charmaine Sheh) are both based on the same historical woman.
Who did Qianlong love the most? Most historians point to his first empress, Empress Xiaoxianchun (Lady Fuca), whom he mourned for the rest of his long life.
Related: [Empresses in the Palace character series] / [Story of Yanxi Palace: who was Wei Yingluo?] / [Qing dynasty table of contents]