Royals › Empress / Consort
Ci An
Empress of the Xianfeng emperor who, as the Eastern Empress Dowager, shared the curtain regency with Cixi from the 1861 coup until her sudden death
In a spring palace garden, a pavilion with round windows stands over a pond of goldfish; a peony-painted round fan, a zither and a lacquer box of pearl hairpins lie in the foreground, and one small figure in a long-sleeved gown stands at the far end of a covered walkway.
Also known as Niu Hulu · Dongtai Hou
- Roles
- Empress / Consort
Ci'an, of the Niohuru clan, was born in 1837, a daughter of Muyangga, a circuit intendant in Guangxi. She entered the palace in 1852 as Consort Zhen, was raised to noble consort the same year and soon made empress. When the Xianfeng emperor died at Rehe in 1861 she became empress dowager with the honorific Ci'an, and with Cixi and Prince Gong she carried out the Xinyou coup that removed Sushun and the other regents, beginning the joint curtain regency; living in the Zhongcui Palace, she was known as the Eastern Empress Dowager. In 1869, when Cixi's favourite eunuch An Dehai left the capital without permission, the Shandong governor Ding Baozhen arrested and executed him, a step usually thought to have had Ci'an's backing. She died suddenly in the third month of 1881 at forty-five by Chinese reckoning, received the posthumous title Empress Xiaozhenxian, and was buried at the Ding Eastern Tomb.
Life and times
Dates 1837 CE–1881 CE