The Chinese sovereign was the ruler of a particular monarchical regime in the historical periods of ancient China and imperial China. Sovereigns ruling the same regime, and descended from the same paternal line, constituted a dynasty. Several titles and naming schemes have been used throughout Chinese history.
Throughout Chinese history, "Emperor" was the superlative title held by the monarchs who ruled various imperial dynasties or Chinese empires. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the "Son of Heaven", an autocrat with the divine mandate right to rule all under Heaven. Emperors were worshiped posthumously under an imperial cult. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty, and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The emperor of China was an absolute monarch.
Wu Zetian, personal name Wu Zhao, was Empress of China from 660 to 705, ruling first through others and later in her own right. She ruled as empress consort through her husband Emperor Gaozong and later as empress dowager through her sons Emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong, from 660 to 690. She subsequently founded and ruled as empress regent of the Wu Zhou dynasty of China from 690 to 705. She was the only female sovereign in the history of China widely regarded as legitimate. Under her 45-year reign, China grew larger, becoming one of the great powers of the world, its culture and economy were revitalized, and corruption in the court was reduced. She was eventually removed from power during a coup and died a few months later.
The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history corresponding roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou, characterized by the gradual erosion of royal power as local lords nominally subject to the Zhou exercised increasing political autonomy. The period's name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 and 481 BCE, which tradition associates with Confucius.
The Mandate of Heaven is a Chinese political ideology that was used in Ancient China and Imperial China to legitimize the rule of the king or emperor of China. According to this doctrine, Heaven bestows its mandate on a virtuous ruler. This ruler, the Son of Heaven, was the supreme universal monarch, who ruled Tianxia. If a ruler was overthrown, this was interpreted as an indication that the ruler was unworthy and had lost the mandate. It was also a common belief that natural disasters such as famine and flood were divine retributions bearing signs of Heaven's displeasure with the ruler, so there would often be revolts following major disasters as the people saw these calamities as signs that the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn.
The consort kin or outer kins were the kin or a group of people related to an empress dowager or a consort of a monarch or a warlord in the Sinosphere. The leading figure of the clan was either a sibling, cousin, or parent of the empress dowager or consort.
Bumbutai, of the Khorchin Mongol Borjigit clan, was the consort of Hong Taiji. She was 21 years his junior. She was honoured as Empress Dowager Zhaosheng during the reign of her son, Fulin, the Shunzhi Emperor, and as Grand Empress Dowager Zhaosheng during the reign of her grandson, Xuanye, the Kangxi Emperor.
![<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gong (title)</span> [公] the highest title of Chinese nobles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Cihu_President_Chiang_Mausoleum_entrance.JPG/320px-Cihu_President_Chiang_Mausoleum_entrance.JPG)
Gong was a title of ancient and imperial Chinese nobility roughly equivalent to and usually translated as duke. It was also historically used within Chinese fiefs as a respectful term of address to any living liege and is still used in modern Chinese as a respectful term of address for any man of high status, particularly for the honored deceased as with formal reference to Chiang Kai-shek as Jiǎng Gōng on Taiwan.
A queen regnant is a female monarch, equivalent in rank, title and position to a king. She reigns suo jure over a realm known as a kingdom; as opposed to a queen consort, who is married to a reigning king; or a queen regent, who is the guardian of a child monarch and rules pro tempore in the child's stead or instead of her husband who is absent from the realm, be it de jure in sharing power or de facto in ruling alone. A queen regnant is sometimes called a woman king. A princess, duchess, or grand duchess regnant is a female monarch who reigns suo jure over a principality or (grand) duchy; an empress regnant is a female monarch who reigns suo jure over an empire.
Imperial Noble Consort Keshun, of the Manchu Bordered Red Banner Tatara clan, was a consort of the Guangxu Emperor. She was five years his junior. She was known to foreigners as the Pearl Consort. Legend has it that she was drowned in a well on the orders of Empress Dowager Cixi.
Empress Xiaoshengxian, of the Manchu Bordered Yellow Banner Niohuru clan, was a posthumous name bestowed to the consort of Yinzhen, the Yongzheng Emperor and mother of Hongli, the Qianlong Emperor. She was honoured as Empress Dowager Chongqing during the reign of her son and posthumously honoured as empress, although she never held the rank of empress consort during her lifetime.
Imperial Noble Consort Zhuangjing, of the Manchu Plain Red Banner Tatara clan, was a consort of the Xianfeng Emperor. She was six years his junior.
King Wen of Zhou was the posthumous title given to Ji Chang, the patriarch of the Zhou state during the final years of Shang dynasty in ancient China. Ji Chang himself died before the end of the Zhou-Shang War, and his second son Ji Fa completed the conquest of Shang following the Battle of Muye, and posthumously honored him as the founder of the Zhou dynasty. Many of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history.
Consort Donggo, of the Manchu Plain White Banner Donggo clan, was a consort of the Shunzhi Emperor. She was one year his junior.
The Empress of the Nara clan of the Manchu Bordered Blue Banner Ula-Nara Clan, was the second wife of the Qianlong Emperor. She was the empress consort of the Qing dynasty from 1750 until her death in 1766. Informally known as the Step—Empress, she is one of the most controversial female figures in Chinese history.
Fēngjiàn was a governance system and political thought in Ancient China and Imperial China, whose social structure formed a decentralized system of confederation-like government. The ruling class consisted of the Son of Heaven and aristocracy, and the lower class consisted of commoners categorized into four occupations. Elite bonds through affinal relations and submission to the overlordship of the king date back to the Shang dynasty, but it was the Western Zhou dynasty when the Zhou kings enfeoffed their clan relatives and fellow warriors as vassals. Through the fengjian system, the king would allocate an area of land to a noble, establishing him as the ruler of that region and allowing his title and fief to be legitimately inherited by his descendants. This created large numbers of local autonomous dynastic domains.
The Qing dynasty (1644–1912) of China developed a complicated peerage system for royal and noble ranks.
The ranks of imperial consorts have varied over the course of Chinese history but remained important throughout owing to its prominence in the management of the inner court and in imperial succession, which ranked heirs according to the prominence of their mothers in addition to their birth order. Regardless of the age, however, it is common in English translation to simplify this hierarchy into the three ranks of empress, consorts, and concubines. It is also common to use the term "harem", an Arabic loan word used in recent times to refer to imperial women's forbidden quarters in many countries. In later Chinese dynasties, these quarters were known as the inner palace or the rear palace. In Chinese, the system is called the "rear palace system".
Ancient Chinese states were dynastic polities of China within and without the Zhou cultural sphere prior to Qin's wars of unification. They ranged in size from large estates, to city-states to much vaster territories with multiple population centers. Many of these submitted to royal authority, but many did not—even those that shared the same culture and ancestral temple surname as the ruling house. Prior to the Zhou conquest of Shang, the first of these ancient states were already extant as units of the preceding Shang dynasty, Predynastic Zhou, or polities of other cultural groups. Once the Zhou had established themselves, they made grants of land and relative local autonomy to kinfolk in return for military support and tributes, under a system known as fengjian.
The nobility of the Zhou dynasty refers to the power dynamics of the aristocracy in Zhou dynasty China. The nobility interacted with the royal apparatus of state across multiple dimensions of relationship, and in ways that changed over time. This has been subject to considerable misunderstanding due to a philosophical attempt to project backwards in time upon the Western Zhou dynasty a systematization of noble titles where none existed. In translation, these misunderstandings have been compounded by an enduring false equivalence between titles of Zhou nobles and those of European feudal peers, as well as inattention to context in certain use cases. Chinese bronze inscriptions and other archaeologically excavated texts have helped clarify the historical situation.
