Distracting Emperors from their Duties: the Golden Era of the Chinese Harem

A History of Mankind (266)

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The Eastern Han dynasty had been founded by Liu Xiu, the brother of a man – Liu Yan – who was murdered because he was seen too capable to hold imperial power, thus risking the rise of another activist emperor, another Wang Mang whose experiments would upend the empire.

It’s not all that surprising that this state of affairs evolved into a state dominated by disputes involving regents, generals, eunuchs and dowager queens seeking to avoid the rule of strongmen, while hoping to find the least bright and weakest boy of the right imperial blood — so that he would become the nominal head of state while the most powerful faction actually ran things¹.

This development was made possible in China, and not in Rome’s imperial monarchy and the multiple Hellenistic dynasties that had preceded it, because of the ancient custom that men who could afford it should certainly have a harem with multiple women. Despite Confucian criticisms, no dynastic founder in Chinese history, all the way to the foundation of the first Chinese Republic in the 20^th century, refused to have a harem². And even if the concubines had various ranks, and only one could serve as first wife or empress at a time, all the sons of concubines could legally be appointed as heirs – of either a very wealthy or powerful man, or an emperor.