The ming emperor married a wife, that is, the empress, generally a woman from an ordinary family, starting with Zhu Yuanzhang, and his wife Empress Ma was also a child of a family of ordinary people, but later adopted as a righteous daughter by the rebel leader Guo Zixing, and then married Zhu Yuanzhang. At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang was only a general under Guo Zixing, and his ability was suddenly valued by Guo Zixing and married this righteous daughter. After that, the relationship between the husband and wife was very deep, and Empress Ma also gave birth to several children for Zhu Yuanzhang, most of whom survived to adulthood and were crowned kings, stationed in important cities throughout Daming. Since then, Zhu Yuanzhang has set a rule, that is, the emperor's wife can only be selected from the women of the folk family, and cannot be the children of the emperor's relatives, the most important purpose is to prevent foreign relatives from interfering in politics, which will lead to the decline of the regime. Such situations in ancient history can be said to be everywhere, Zhu Yuanzhang naturally learned enough lessons from it, since then, the wives of emperors of Daming have basically been women born in ordinary families, and the final Ming generation has basically not seen the situation of empress family interference in politics, it can be said that this rule is very successful. I'll talk about a few things:
The case of Zhu Yuanzhang's wife Empress Ma
Empress Ma, the wife of Zhu Yuanzhang in the Ming Dynasty historical sources, was once a rich man in Suzhou, Guide Province, Anhui Province. However, after his father Ma Gong's family moved to Xinfengli, due to the turmoil of the times, the local disasters suffered many times, and he himself was willing to be charitable, so his family business became increasingly poor, and the original ancestral property was basically spent. Empress Ma's mother, Zheng Mi, died shortly after giving birth to Ma in 1332.
And this Ma Gong did not marry after that, so he had no son, and he has always been the only daughter of ma Shi as the pearl in the palm of his hand. This Ma clan has been intelligent and studious since childhood, kind to people, and can write poetry and draw, especially good at history books, but his personality is quite stubborn, which is different from his father.
Later, ma gong, the father of the Ma clan, fled to his hometown because of killing people to avoid revenge, and entrusted his beloved daughter to Guo Zixing, a rebel general who was at the age of life and death. Soon after receiving the news, Ma Gong was also dead, so this Guo Zixing became more and more pitiful to this woman, and since then she has adopted her as an adopted daughter.
After adopting her as an adopted daughter, Guo Zixing taught her culture, and his wife Zhang Shi taught her knitting and embroidery by hand. At this time, Ma Shi, who is more than ten years old, is even more clever and clever, as long as he is guided, he basically knows what to do immediately. It was not until he was nearly twenty years old that his righteous father Guo Zixing found him a good husband, that is, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. After marriage, the two had a very good relationship and had many children, so Zhu Yuanzhang had deep feelings for him, and after Empress Ma's death, he was devastated, which showed the feelings of the two.
The reason for choosing the children of the people to be emperors
From the beginning of Zhu Yuanzhang, he demanded that if his children wanted to marry a wife in the future, they must marry a woman from an innocent family. And established as the ancestral system, his later children even if they became emperors did not dare to violate this rule. Because in ancient times, filial piety ruled the world, filial piety was an extremely important etiquette system, even the emperor was no exception, so they could not violate the rules established by their ancestors, otherwise it was filial piety, this crime was very big, no one wanted to take it back, so most of the later emperors also abided by this rule.
Choosing an ordinary woman as an empress, there is also a more important advantage is that it is difficult for the wife's family to intervene in the government through the empress, because its original status is very low, her children were elected as empresses, and suddenly their status has been greatly improved, and the imperial court has provided certain treatment, it can be said that since then they have been out of the original situation of not having enough to eat, and since then the queen's mother's family has also lived a worry-free life, they have no ability and no energy to intervene in the affairs of the government. If you intervene, the consequences are very serious, so in most cases you are content with the status quo and live a good life.
To sum up, the reason why the emperor in the Ming Dynasty chose a woman who was not a relative of the emperor as his wife was mainly because of the ancestral system and the consideration of the actual situation, in order to rule stably, it was necessary to solve the problem of foreign relatives interfering in politics, and this method was a very clever method.