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A Game of Thrones in China: The Case of Cixi, Empress Dowager of the Qing Dynasty (1835–1908)

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Queenship and the Women of Westeros

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Abstract

Women who have served as regents or dowagers, counselling young boy rulers, predate the existence of written history. In 1478 BCE, Hatshepsut ruled for 20 years as regent to the boy pharaoh Thutmose III. Other examples from antiquity, during the height of the Roman Empire, include the reign of Cornelia Africana, mother of the Gracchi. Eleanor of Aquitaine and Margaret of Anjou wielded considerable influence at court in premodern Europe. Catherine the Great ruled over one of the most prosperous and dynamic periods in the history of Imperial Russia. Throughout history, women who ruled by direct means or as regents frequently challenged conventional gender norms of the day. Whether they know it or not, fans of the popular series Game of Thrones have been given a very realistic portrayal of this kind of gendered power in the character of Cersei Lannister. For fans and scholars alike, it is instructive to weigh her character against the legacy of one of the most well-known female regents in world history, China’s empress dowager Cixi. She was one of the last women in world history to rule as a dowager and is almost synonymous with the term. Cixi ruled China as a regent during the later years of the Qing dynasty (1861–1908).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On the subject of Hatshepsut (and other female pharaohs), see Aidan Norrie’s recent overview wherein he advises us to consult Kara Cooney, The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt (New York: Crown Publishers, 2014); Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt: From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006); idem, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (London: Penguin, 1996); Catharine H. Roehrig, (ed.), Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005). Aidan Norrie, “Female Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt,” in Elena Woodacre, Lucinda Dean, Chris Jones, Russell Martin, and Zita Rohr (eds),The Routledge History of Monarchy: New Perspectives on Rulers and Rulership (Abingdon , UK: Routledge, 2019), 501–517, 514.

  2. 2.

    In this chapter, the usage of the terms “dowager,” and “regent,” refer to designations applicable to both Cixi during the Qing dynasty, and Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Both were dowagers because they were widowed and both were regents because they advised young emperors or kings. In Mandarin, Cixi’s name is the pinyin Romanization of the two-character compound “慈禧,” which can be pronounced “Tse—Shee.”

  3. 3.

    George R.R. Martin, interviewed by Mikal Gilmore, “George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview: the novelist goes deep on the future of his books and the TV series they begat,” Rolling Stone/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/, April 23, 2014. For an excellent account and analysis of the Wars of the Roses consult Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 2012.

  4. 4.

    Kavita Mudan Finn, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism ,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister,” in Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds), Queenship and the Women of Westeros : Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 29–52.

  5. 5.

    Thomas R. Martin (ed.), “A Woman in Power: Empress Lu,” in Herodotus and Sima Qian, The First Great Historians of Greece and China: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010), Chapter 10, “A Woman in Power: Empress Lu,” 105–114, 106–107; and, William H. Nienhauser Jnr (ed.), The Grand Scribe’s Records Volume IX: The Memoirs of Han China Part II by Ssu-ma-Ch’ien (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 269.

  6. 6.

    Mark Edward Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 38. See also Denis Twitchett, “Kao-tsung (reign 649–83) and the Empress Wu: The Inheritor and the Usurper,” in Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3, Sui and T’ang China, Part I, Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

  7. 7.

    Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire, 38.

  8. 8.

    Keith McMahon, “Women Rulers in Imperial China,” Nan Nu 15-2 (2013), 179–218, 201–202.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Game of Thrones, Season 1, Episode 7, “You Win or You Die,” Directed by Daniel Minahan/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired May 29, 2011, on HBO.

  11. 11.

    Cf. Sue Fawn Chung, “The Much Maligned Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi,”Modern Asian Studies, 13:2 (1979), 177–196.

  12. 12.

    John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006), 62.

  13. 13.

    Ryan Mitchell, “Is China’s ‘Machiavelli’ Now Its Most Important Political Philosopher?” The Diplomat, January 16, 2015. https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopher

  14. 14.

    A term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers (d. 1969), the Axial or Axis Age represents a “pivotal age” characterized the period of ancient history from about the eighth to the third century BCE. According to Jaspers’s concept, new ways of thinking appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world in religion and philosophy in a striking parallel development, without any obvious direct cultural contact between all of the participating Eurasian cultures. See Karl Jaspers, Origin and Goal of History (Abingdon, UK: Routledge Revivals, [1949], 2010), 2–3, 8–21.

  15. 15.

    Han Feizi, Chapter 7, “Legalists and Militarists,” in William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom et al. (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed. Vol. I: From Earliest Times to 1600 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 190.

  16. 16.

    Zhao Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 186.

  17. 17.

    Han Feizi, “Legalists and Militarists,” 201.

  18. 18.

    On the subject of Machiavelli, Game of Thrones, and A Song of Ice and Fire see Marcus Schulzke, “Playing the Game of Thrones: Some Lessons from Machiavelli,” 33–48; and David Hahn, “The Death of Lord Stark: The Perils of Idealism,” 75–86, both in Henry Jacoby (ed.), Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper Than Swords (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2012); Jacopo della Quercia, “A Machiavellian Discourse on Game of Thrones,” in Brian A. Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 33–46; and Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros ,” in Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (eds), Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements (New York-London-Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2016), 193–218.

  19. 19.

    Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 86–87. See also Edward Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1995).

  20. 20.

    Huang Zongxi, “Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince,” compiled by William Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano (eds), Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol II, 2nd ed., From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 6.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 10.

  22. 22.

    Quercia, “A Machiavellian Discourse,” 38.

  23. 23.

    Han Feizi, ‘The Guanzi’ “Legalists and Militarists,” 197. And, for Cersei’s warning to Littlefinger: Game of Thrones, Season 2, Episode 1, “The North Remembers,” Directed by Alan Taylor/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired April 1, 2012 on HBO.

  24. 24.

    Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds), “Introduction,” in Queenship, and the Women of Westeros .

  25. 25.

    Scholars, such as Kenneth Pomeranz, have stressed that China lacked the necessary coal reserves that fuelled England’s industrial revolution. Others, such as Philip Huang, have argued that China’s inability to industrialize was just as much attributable to the involuted nature of its agriculture. See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). For Huang’s rebuttal of this book, see Philip C.C. Huang, “Development or Involution in Eighteenth Century Britain and China? A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz’s, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy,” The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 61, No. 2 (May 2002), 501–538.

  26. 26.

    Benjamin Breen, “Why Game of Thrones Isn’t Medieval—And Why That Matters,” June 12, 2014, Pacific Standard (accessed January 26, 2019 at https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288). Also cited in Mat Hardy, “The Eastern Question,” in Brian A. Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 108.

  27. 27.

    Evelyn Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 133.

  28. 28.

    Keith McMahon, “Women Rulers in Imperial China,” Nan Nu 15-2 (2013), 179–218, 212.

  29. 29.

    Stephen R. Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 216–217.

  30. 30.

    Luke S.K. Kwong, “Imperial Authority in Crisis: An Interpretation of the Coup D’état of 1861,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1983), 222–223.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 223.

  32. 32.

    Orville Schell and John Delury, “Western Methods, Chinese Core: Empress Dowager Cixi,” in Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century (New York: Random House, 2013), 67.

  33. 33.

    Game of Thrones, Episode 7, “You Win or You Die,” Directed by Daniel Minahan/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired May 29, 2011 on HBO.

  34. 34.

    Game of Thrones, Episode 9, “Baelor,” Directed by Alan Taylor/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired June 12, 2011 on HBO.

  35. 35.

    Cersei, however, stopped short of calling for Ned’s execution. She and Sansa both plead for mercy on his behalf, which Joffrey, the teenaged political novice, ignored.

  36. 36.

    Li Yuhuang and Harriet T. Zurndorfer, “Rethinking Empress Dowager Cixi through the Production of Art,” in Nan Nu 14 (2012), 3. See also, Liu Kwang-Ching, “The Ch’ing Restoration,” in John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10: The Late Ch’ing, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 409–490.

  37. 37.

    See Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros ,” 171–192, esp. the section, “The Court Machiavellian” (Cersei), 199–204. See also reactions to the political career of Catherine de’ Medici, R. J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici (Abingdon, UK: Routlege, 2014), 164, 177; and, for a discussion and analysis of Machiavelli and his theoretical concept of political virtú see Martyn de Bruyn, “Machiavelli and the Politics of Virtù,” unpublished doctoral thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette IN, USA, 2003.

  38. 38.

    Querica, “A Machiavellian Discourse,” 38–41.

  39. 39.

    Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013), 221.

  40. 40.

    Luke S.K. Kwong, “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (July 2000), 670.

  41. 41.

    Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 289.

  42. 42.

    Pamela Crossley, “In the Hornet’s Nest,” review of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang, The London Review of Books, April 9, 2014. Crossley’s review contains a brief and informative scholarly treatment of Cixi.

  43. 43.

    William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 47–50.

  44. 44.

    Louisa Lim, “Who Murdered China’s Emperor a 100 years ago,” NPR, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96993694. November 14, 2008. Orville Schell and John Delury seem to dismiss the theory that she was behind the poisoning . See Orville Schell and John Delury, “Western Methods, Chinese Core: Empress Dowager Cixi,” in Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century (New York: Random House, 2013), 87. Astonishingly high levels of arsenic and other toxins have been found in exhumed remains once tested by modern technologies (such as the famous case of Agnès Sorel (d. 1450), official favourite of Charles VII of France). See Philippe Charlier, “Qui a tué la Dame de la Beauté? Étude scientifique des restes d’Agnès Sorel (1422–1450),”

    Histoire des Sciences Médicales,Tome XL, N°3 (2006), 255–263. Charlier’s telling phrase of the inconclusiveness of such investigations: “Ainsi l’empoisonnement d’Agnès a été confirmé […] mais nul ne peut dire si celui-ci est volontaire [surdose de mercure] ou non [meurtre par poison]” (Thus the poisoning of Agnès Sorel has been confirmed … but no one can say if it was unintentional [an overdose of prescribed mercury] or deliberate [murder by poisoning ]), 262. http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/hsm/HSMx2006x040x003/HSMx2006x040x003x0255.pdf accessed February 10, 2019. Arsenic, lead, and mercury were used routinely in complexion refining and whitening cosmetics as well as in medical therapies such as for the treatment of intestinal parasites like the painful and debilitating condition suffered by Agnès Sorel whose doses of mercury were increased over a number of years to dangerous levels due to acquired immunity and the extreme pain she suffered. She also used dangerous compounds containing arsenic, lead, and mercury to whiten her complexion.

  45. 45.

    Game of Thrones, Season 4, Episode 8, “The Mountain and the Viper,” Directed by Alex Graves/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired June 1, 2014 on HBO.

  46. 46.

    Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 3, “The Queen’s Justice,” Directed by Mark Mylod/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired July 30, 2017 on HBO.

  47. 47.

    Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 254. For revisionist accounts of Cixi’s life and reign, see also Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), and Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (New York: Vintage Books, 1993).

  48. 48.

    Evelyn Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 128–129, 132.

  49. 49.

    Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 50.

  50. 50.

    Edward J.M. Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 68.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 71.

  52. 52.

    See Valerie Estelle Frankel , Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity, Resistance (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2014).

  53. 53.

    Kavita Mudan Finn, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism ,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister,” in Rohr and Benz (eds.) Queenship and the Women of Westeros , 29–52.

  54. 54.

    Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 5, “The Bells,” Directed by Miguel Sapochnik/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired May 12, 2019 on HBO. On Daenerys’ “heel turn,” see Randall Colburn, “So did Game of Thrones earn that turn or not?,” May 13, 2019, AV Club (accessed May 27, 2019 at https://news.avclub.com/so-did-game-of-thrones-earn-that-or-not-1834723024).

  55. 55.

    See Hugh Trevor Roper, The Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmond Backhouse (London: Elan Books, 2011).

  56. 56.

    Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, Decadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, ed. Derek Sandhaus (Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2011).

  57. 57.

    Susan L. Mann, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 169.

  58. 58.

    Kavita Mudan Finn, “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros ,” in Brian A. Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 28.

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  1. Department of History, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC, USA

    James J. Hudson

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  1. James J. Hudson
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  1. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Zita Eva Rohr

  2. Salem, MA, USA

    Lisa Benz

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Hudson, J.J. (2020). A Game of Thrones in China: The Case of Cixi, Empress Dowager of the Qing Dynasty (1835–1908). In: Rohr, Z., Benz, L. (eds) Queenship and the Women of Westeros. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-25040-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-25041-6

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