Empress Yuan

Who is Empress Yuan?

Empress Yuan was an empress of the Chinese dynasty Northern Qi, known at times semi-formally as Empress Shuncheng. Her husband was Emperor Xiaozhao.

Her father Yuan Man was an official during the preceding Eastern Wei as a member of its imperial clan, and continued to serve in the Northern Qi government as a midlevel official. One of her uncles, Yuan Cha, was a regent of Northern Wei prior to its division into Eastern Wei and Western Wei. She married Gao Yan while or before he was the Prince of Changshan under the reign of his brother Emperor Wenxuan, the first emperor of Northern Qi, and she carried the title of Princess of Changshan. She bore him one son, Gao Bainian. In 559, when Emperor Wenxuan ordered a general execution of members of the Northern Wei imperial Yuan clan, Yuan Man and his household were one of the few households spared, on account of Gao Yan's intercession. Emperor Wenxuan granted Yuan Man's household a new surname, Buliugu, but Yuan Man and Empress Yuan appeared to abandon the name once Emperor Wenxuan died later in the year.

Emperor Wenxuan was succeeded by his son Emperor Wenxuan. In 560, the prime minister Yang Yin, suspicious of the authority that Gao Yan and his brother Gao Dan the Prince of Changguang wielded as the emperor's uncles, tried to strip them of power. Instead, Gao Yan and Gao Dan set an ambush for Yang and his associates, capturing and then executing them. Gao Yan took over control of the imperial government and, later in the year, his mother Grand Empress Dowager Lou Zhaojun issued an edit deposing Emperor Fei and making Gao Yan emperor.