The main way for the Qing Emperor to marry concubines was to choose a talent, and the range of show girls was mainly within the Eight Banners of Manchuria and Mongolia, so sometimes there would be a situation where women from the same family participated in the draft together, such as the Jin Concubine and Zhen Concubine sisters in the Guangxu Harem, which were selected together. Today I want to talk about the two aunts and nephews who participated in the draft together during the Tongzhi period, what I did not expect was that the aunt was named a concubine, but the niece became an empress, and the two aunts and nephews were Gongsu Emperor Guifei and Empress Xiaozheyi, respectively.
First, let's look at the origins of the two aunts and nephews.
Emperor Gongsu and Empress Xiaozheyi came from the Arut clan of the Mongolian Zhenglan Banner, and the father of Emperor Gongsu's concubine was the famous minister Sai Shang'a of the Six Dynasties of the Late Qing Dynasty, who served as the chief military minister after Xianfeng succeeded to the throne, and was subsequently appointed as the minister of Chincha to pacify the Taiping Army.
It is said that among the three sons of Sai Shang'a who was implicated, one of them was named Chongqi, who returned home and studied hard behind closed doors, and even became the first and only banner person in the founding of the Qing Dynasty in the early years of Tongzhi, breaking the precedent of "flag not pointing out the yuan", and this Chongqi was the brother of the noble concubine of the Gongsu Emperor, that is, the father of Empress Xiaozheyi.
It can be seen that from the perspective of family lineage, Emperor Gongsu and Empress Xiaozheyi can also be regarded as high-level bureaucratic families, and their families are also related to the royal family. Empress Xiaozheyi's birth mother was the daughter of Prince Zheng Duanhua Fu jin Niu Hulu, who was the maternal aunt of Empress Dowager Ci'an, that is to say, Empress Xiaozheyi's birth mother was a cousin of Empress Dowager Ci'an, and Empress Xiaozheyi was the cousin of Empress Dowager Ci'an.
It can be seen from this that this Arut clan is by no means an ordinary family, if not, the pair of aunts and nephews cannot be selected at the same time, it is worth mentioning that since Emperor Gongsu is the younger daughter of Sai Shang Ashu, her age is even three years younger than that of her niece Empress Xiaozheyi.
At the beginning of the eleventh year of Tongzhi (1872), the aunt and nephew of the Arut clan participated in the Eight Flags Draft as the Mongolian Zhenglan Banner Woman, and the two nephews were selected at the same time without accident. Moreover, in the battle for the throne, Empress Xiaozheyi defeated the Fucha clan of the Yellow Banner Magnate, later Hui Concubine, thus for the first time in the Qing Palace, the daughter of the Duke of Yuan entered the palace as the queen.
However, there was one person who was not satisfied with Empress Xiaozheyi's entry into the middle palace, and this person was Empress Dowager Cixi, why? Because Empress Xiaozheyi's maternal grandfather Duanhua the Prince of Zheng was one of the eight ministers of Xianfeng Guming and was a political enemy of Cixi, although Duanhua was given death after the coup d'état of Xin You, the two families still had a vendetta. However, considering the relationship between Empress Dowager Ci'an, Cixi did not behave too well.
However, according to some wild history records, the relationship between Empress Dowager Cixi and her daughter-in-law, Empress Xiaozheyi, has always been not very good, and Cixi has humiliated Empress Xiaozheyi in every way, and even interfered with her and Tongzhi's conjugal life. It is said that once when Emperor Tongzhi fell ill, Empress Xiaozheyi came to take care of him, but cixi scolded her as a fox spirit, and also grabbed Empress Xiaozheyi's hair and abused her, which aggravated Emperor Tongzhi's illness. As a result, only two years later, the young Tongzhi passed away.
After Tongzhi's death, Cixi put zai xiang, the son of yizhen the prince born to his sister, to the throne, for the Guangxu Emperor, Empress Xiaozheyi was named Empress Jiashun and became the imperial concubine of the Qing Emperor, which made her very embarrassed, and under the love of life, Empress Xiaozheyi chose to commit suicide, as for the way of death, there are many theories, such as swallowing gold and dying, swallowing opium to commit suicide, hunger strike and so on.
As for Empress Xiaozheyi's aunt, Emperor Gongshun, after Tongzhi entered the palace in the eleventh year, she was given the title of Concubine Xun, and she and the other two concubines of Tongzhi (Yu Concubine and Concubine Yao) were always outside the main contradiction between Empress Xiaozheyi (supported by Ci'an) and Huifei (supported by Cixi) and did not receive much attention.
However, it was this state that enabled Gongshun to settle down in the harem, and Gongshun lived through the four dynasties of Xianfeng, Tongzhi, Guangxu and Xuantong, and lived until 1921, when Puyi gave him the title of Gongshun Emperor's Noble Concubine.
References: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Qing Shilu, Four Genealogies of the Qing Imperial Family