History is the memory of things that have been said and done. —Carl Baker
The Goryeo Dynasty, founded on the Korean Peninsula, originally formed a "brotherly alliance" with Mongolia, but due to the Mongols' continuous demand for tribute to Goryeo, from 1231 onwards, a continuous war broke out between Mongolia and Goryeo, until 1259, when Goryeo, which was no longer able to fight, surrendered to Mongolia. In 1260, When King Gojong of Goryeo died of illness, Kublai Khan crowned Him as King of Goryeo and sent heavy troops to escort him back to the throne as Emperor Wonjong of Goryeo. Goryeo has since become a vassal of the Yuan Dynasty, but there are still strong anti-Yuan forces within it, and there are repeated upheavals. In order to stabilize the interior and to obtain the promise of the Yuan Dynasty not to destroy its country, from 1271 onwards, Goryeo Wonjong kept "proposing" to the Yuan Dynasty, asking Yuan Sezu to marry the princess to his son Wang Yu.
After several considerations, the Yuan Dynasty finally agreed to Emperor Yuanzong's request, and Yuan Shizu married his youngest daughter, Princess Qi, to Goryeo Shizi. Since then, all the kings of the Goryeo royal family have married princesses of the Yuan Dynasty as queens, and the Yuan Dynasty and Goryeo have become the kingdom of Weng's son-in-law, and the King of Goryeo is known as the "King of Goryeo on horseback", which can be regarded as joining the Royal Family of the Yuan Dynasty.
As a vassal state of the Yuan Dynasty, Goryeo had to fulfill its obligation to pay tribute, and among the many tributes, the Yuan Dynasty's favorite was the beauty.
After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, it began to institutionally require Goryeo to contribute women. The Yuan Dynasty initially demanded Goryeo tribute women, mainly to meet the needs of military marriage. Especially after the destruction of the Southern Song Dynasty and the acquisition of hundreds of thousands of Southern Song troops, it was imperative to appease the troops and give them preferential treatment in life. To be at ease, one must first settle down, marry a wife and have children. As a result, the Yuan Dynasty demanded that Goryeo contribute a large number of women.
For this purpose, Goryeo set up a special "marriage capital supervisor" to be responsible for paying tribute to the Yuan Dynasty. However, due to the refusal of the Goryeo people, most of the tributes paid to the Yuan Dynasty were low-status women such as "the only daughter of Lujing, the daughter of a rebel thief, and the daughter of a monk", while there were very few daughters of the royal family, the daughters of the gongqing, and the women of ordinary good families.
With the reduction of wars in the Southern Song Dynasty, the women paid by Goryeo were no longer rationed to the army, but to the princes and ministers and even the royal family as wives or maids, and many of the Goryeo tribute women became the wives and concubines of the Yuan Dynasty, and even some became the concubines of the emperor, and their families could also soar in Goryeo.
Because Goryeo women had a good personality, were docile and obedient, petite and cute, the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty loved to choose concubines from the Goryeo kingdom, especially the Yuanshun Emperor, who was fond of Goryeo women. Emperor Yuanshun went to Goryeo three times to search for beautiful women, and once brought back more beauties than the entire harem, even if he did not have the opportunity to spoil, he had to search desperately, so that the beauties of the Goryeo kingdom were about to disappear. The Goryeo monarch then hurriedly ordered that women aged 13-20 in the country should not marry, but should be selected by the Yuan Dynasty.
But to say that Goryeo women can become empresses of the Yuan Dynasty, it would not have been possible, because the Yuan Dynasty had an ancestral system, Kublai Khan forbade The use of Goryeo women as concubines, and the empress must come from the royal family of the Mongolian Hongjira, which began with Genghis Khan and no one can change. But the rules were always broken, and this ancestral system was broken during the time of Yuan Huizong, the last emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.
Emperor Huizong of Yuan was the grandson of Emperor Wuzong of Yuan, and his father was Emperor Yuanmingzong. When he was young, he was exiled to Goryeo and Then to Guangxi. It was not until Emperor Wenzong died of illness that he was freed from exile and became emperor. The early exile of Goryeo gave Hyejong a special affection for Goryeo. On the recommendation of the Goryeo eunuch Gory Yongpo, he made the Goryeo gong daughter Kishina an imperial concubine, and after Ki gave birth to a prince, he made Kishi the second empress.
The Yuan Dynasty fell. Twenty years after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the Goryeo Dynasty also came to an end, and the Lee Joseon Dynasty arose on the Korean Peninsula.