Empress, meaning "the monarch's wife", is Qin Shi Huang after the unification of the six countries, created the imperial system, called himself "the first emperor", and established the emperor's wife named "empress" of the concubine system, and then to the Han Dynasty tends to be complete.
The reason why it is not called "emperor's wife" is because "wife" and "Qi" are homophonic, and in the era when the emperor was dominant, no one could sit on an equal footing with him, so there was also the word "queen".
In ancient dynasties,The emperor has "five powers in foreign affairs" and the queen has "five powers in internal affairs"., one outside the main and one inside the main, although the queen cannot sit on an equal footing with the emperor, she is also an existence "under one person", and her status is noble.
The "five powers" here are recorded in the "Yi Zhou Shu Five Rights":
One is said to be the land, and the land is the right of the people;The second is called things, and things are in power;The third is despised, and the power is despised by the power;Fourth, the punishment is always the right to be punished;Five is said to eat, and food is right.And "five" is a general term for the five financial rights, take the plum blossom logo, usedAssist the emperor in managing, supervising, and balancing the "five powers".
Therefore, from this point of view, the power of the empress is actually very large, in addition to "assisting" the emperor, there is also the meaning of "checks and balances".
From the perspective of etiquette, the empress and the emperor "went out of the same car and sat in the same seat", and accepted the congratulations of hundreds of officials on New Year's Day and birthday. The queen is in charge of the harem, and all the concubines, palace maids, female officials, etc., are theoretically subordinates of the queen.
When the queen is ordained, a solemn ceremony is required and the world is announced. After the death of the empress, she was "buried together" with the emperor (of course, in some dynasties, if the emperor died first, the empress would also be buried in the empress mausoleum next to the emperor).
All of this shows the extremely high status of the queen, but the queen is precisely "under one person", in fact, she is not on an equal footing with the emperor, and for various reasons in history, it is not uncommon to see the situation after the abolition, after all, at that time, the emperor was dominant!
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