Biography
Family Background and Early Years
Lady Sun's ancestral home was Zouping in Shandong. Her father Sun Zhong rose from being an Imperial University student to become registrar of Yongcheng County. Lady Sun was described from childhood as “fair-complexioned and intelligent” and noted for her beauty. The turning point in her life came through the recommendation of the wife of the Earl of Pengcheng, a fellow native. The countess was the mother of Empress Zhang, wife of the Ming Renzong Emperor, and, like Sun Zhong, was associated with Yongcheng. She frequently entered the palace and praised Lady Sun's virtue to Empress Zhang.
In 1410, the eighth year of the Yongle era, the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di was considering a marriage for his imperial grandson Zhu Zhanji. After Empress Zhang relayed the countess's recommendation, Zhu Di ordered Lady Sun, then only ten, to enter the palace and be raised by Crown Princess Zhang, later Empress Chengxiao.
However, when Zhu Zhanji formally married in 1417, the fifteenth year of Yongle, Lady Hu of Jining was ultimately chosen as his principal consort while Lady Sun was made only a concubine. According to the *Shengchao Tongshi Shiyi Ji*, the wife of the Earl of Pengcheng was quite dissatisfied and frequently complained to Empress Zhang, but the empress, regarded as virtuous, declined to pass judgment.
Period as Noble Consort
In 1424, the twenty-second year of Yongle, Lady Sun gave birth to Princess Changde. In 1425, the first year of Hongxi, Zhu Zhanji ascended the throne and Lady Sun was made Noble Consort.
In the fifth month of 1426, the first year of Xuande, the Xuande Emperor Zhu Zhanji cited Noble Consort Sun's “reverence and strict propriety, conduct in accordance with ritual, and utmost filial devotion in serving the empress dowager” when he proposed to the Ministry of Rites that she be granted a gold seal. Under early Ming palace regulations, an empress received a gold investiture tablet and gold seal, while noble consorts and ranks below her received an investiture tablet but no seal. The Xuande Emperor made a special exception for Lady Sun. After consulting Empress Dowager Zhang, he had a gold seal made for her. The practice of noble consorts possessing seals was said to begin with this case.
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1427, the second year of Xuande, Noble Consort Sun gave birth to the emperor's eldest son Zhu Qizhen; according to another account, she took a palace woman's son as her own. The Xuande Emperor was nearing thirty before obtaining an eldest son, and his favor toward Noble Consort Sun deepened further.
Becoming Empress and the Deposition Dispute
In 1428, the third year of Xuande, the Xuande Emperor summoned senior ministers including Zhang Fu, Jian Yi, Yang Rong, Xia Yuanji, and Yang Shiqi to discuss deposing Empress Hu on the grounds that she had no son. The emperor listed Empress Hu's faults. Yang Rong supported deposition, citing Emperor Renzong of Song's deposition of Empress Guo as precedent, while Yang Shiqi firmly opposed it, arguing that “a minister serves emperor and empress as a son serves father and mother” and that one should not lightly speak of deposing a mother.
Empress Hu herself submitted a memorial yielding her position and asking that the foundation of the state be settled promptly. Noble Consort Sun made a show of declining, saying, “When the empress recovers, she will certainly bear a prince. How could my son be placed ahead of the empress's son?” On the first day of the third month of 1428, Empress Hu was deposed and retired to Chang'an Palace under the title Master Jingci, while Lady Sun was invested as empress.
Empress Dowager Zhang pitied the deposed Empress Hu. At court banquets within the palace, she ordered Lady Hu to sit above Empress Sun, which displeased Empress Sun.
As Empress Dowager and the Tumu Crisis
On the third day of the first month of 1435, the tenth year of Xuande, the Xuande Emperor died. Empress Dowager Zhang installed Crown Prince Zhu Qizhen as emperor, the Yingzong Emperor. She herself became Grand Empress Dowager, while Empress Sun became Empress Dowager.
In 1449, the fourteenth year of Zhengtong, the Oirats launched a major invasion. The Yingzong Emperor personally led an expedition but suffered a catastrophic defeat at Tumu Fort. The source states that five hundred thousand elite troops were lost and that the emperor was captured, an event known as the Tumu Crisis. News of the disaster threw the capital into panic. Empress Dowager Sun and Empress Qian immediately gathered valuables as ransom and sent them to the Oirats, but the Oirats did not release the emperor after receiving them.
On the eighteenth day of the eighth month, Empress Dowager Sun ordered Zhu Qiyu, Prince of Cheng, to act as regent. She promoted Yu Qian to Minister of War and entrusted him with preparing the defense against the enemy. Early in the ninth month, court officials asked the empress dowager to allow the Prince of Cheng to become emperor to stabilize public confidence, and she approved the proposal. After repeatedly declining, the prince ascended the throne as the Jingtai Emperor, while Empress Dowager Sun was honored as Empress Dowager Shangsheng.
While the Yingzong Emperor remained captive north of the steppe frontier, Empress Dowager Sun repeatedly sent him winter clothing. After he returned to the Ming realm and was confined in the Southern Palace by the Jingtai Emperor, she visited him there on multiple occasions.
The Duomen Coup and Later Years
In the first month of 1457, the eighth year of Jingtai, the Jingtai Emperor became seriously ill and the imperial succession entered a crisis. Generals including Shi Heng and Xu Youzhen secretly planned the Duomen Coup to restore the Yingzong Emperor. They first reported their plan privately to Empress Dowager Sun and obtained her approval. On the twelfth day of the first month, the Yingzong Emperor was restored and the Jingtai Emperor was reduced to Prince of Cheng. The restored emperor granted Empress Dowager Sun the honorific title “Empress Dowager Shenglie Cishou.”
On the fourth day of the ninth month of 1462, the sixth year of Tianshun, Empress Dowager Sun died at the age of sixty-two. She was granted the full posthumous title Empress Xiaogong Yixian Ciren Zhuanglie Qitian Peisheng Zhang, jointly buried with the Xuande Emperor at Jingling, and enshrined in the Imperial Ancestral Temple.
Lady Sun was a native of Zouping in Shandong, born in 1401, her father Sun Zhong a registrary clerk of Yongcheng. Beautiful from girlhood, she was taken into the palace at about ten by order of Emperor Chengzu and raised by the Empress Chengxiao, Lady Zhang. In 1410 Chengzu held that the imperial grandson by descent was grown and should be matched, and the Countess of Pengcheng, mother of Empress Zhang and a native of Yongcheng, who often came to the palace, praised the girl's virtue; through Empress Zhang it reached Chengzu, and Lady Sun was brought into the palace at ten to be raised by the empress.
At the imperial wedding an edict called for the choosing of consorts, but because of what the astrologers reported the Lady Hu of Jining was made princess consort and Lady Sun only a concubine. When Renzong came to the throne and she was given her rank, he granted her the dress of a princess consort as a special favor. On Xuanzong's accession she was made a noble consort. By the old rule an empress received gold tablets and a gold seal while noble consorts and below had tablets but no seal; Xuanzong made an exception for Lady Sun, asking the empress dowager Zhang in the fifth month of 1426 for leave to have a gold seal made for her, the first noble consort to have one. Empress Hu bore only a daughter, and in the eleventh month of 1427 word went about the palace that the noble consort had borne the emperor's eldest son, which raised her in his favor. In the third month of the following year he proposed to depose the empress for childlessness, first summoning Zhang Fu, Jian Yi, Yang Rong, Xia Yuanji and Yang Shiqi; some were silent, some said she could be deposed, and Yang Shiqi argued that a subject stands to his emperor and empress as a son to his parents and cited the Song precedent of Renzong's deposition of Empress Guo as a warning. In the end Empress Hu offered to yield, was given the title of the Daoist nun of serene compassion and retired to the Chang'an Palace. On the first day of the third month Lady Sun was made empress. The empress dowager Zhang pitied the deposed empress, often had her to live nearby and ordered her to take precedence over the new empress, which Lady Sun resented.
On the birth of Yingzong the *History of Ming* has a striking entry: that Lady Sun herself being childless, she secretly took the son of a palace woman as her own, that son being the future Yingzong — a story current in the Ming but hard to verify, and historians have differed over it. Xuanzong died on the third day of the first month of 1435 and Yingzong took the throne in the second month, the empress dowager Zhang being honored as grand empress dowager and Lady Sun as empress dowager. In 1449, when Yingzong went in person against the Oirats, she ordered the Prince of Cheng, Zhu Qiyu, to act as regent, and after the emperor's capture at Tumu she at once gathered treasures as ransom and agreed to the Prince of Cheng's accession with Yu Qian in charge of the defense; on the fourth day of the twelfth month the new emperor added to her the honorific "Supreme Sage Empress Dowager."
When Yingzong was restored in 1457 she took part in the affair, and in 1458 received the honorific "Sagely and Glorious Compassionate and Long-Lived Empress Dowager." She died on the fourth day of the ninth month of 1462 and was buried with Xuanzong at Jingling, receiving the posthumous title Xiaogong Yixian Ciren Zhuanglie Qitian Peisheng Zhang Huanghou with her tablet placed in the ancestral temple. From concubine to noble consort to empress, from empress dowager to grand empress dowager, she passed through six reigns from Yongle to Tianshun, one of the women who spanned several reigns in the palace politics of the early Ming.
The fate of the deposed Empress Hu and the later restoration of her title form another thread of this palace history. After her deposition she retired to the Chang'an Palace with the title of the Daoist nun of serene compassion and died in 1443, first buried with concubine rites at Jinshan before her imperial rank was restored. The *History of Ming* records that the empress dowager Zhang often had her lodged in the Qingning Palace and gave her precedence over the empress Sun at feasts, to the latter's lasting resentment — evidence that the order of precedence between the deposed and the new empress was still contested after Xuanzong's death.
The Tumu disaster and Yingzong's restoration are the two occasions on which Empress Dowager Sun figures most prominently in politics. In 1449, when Yingzong went on campaign, she ordered the Prince of Cheng to act as regent and agreed to his accession, keeping the central government intact in a national crisis, and was given the honorific "Supreme Sage Empress Dowager." When Yingzong was restored in 1457, the authors of the coup, Shi Heng and Xu Youzhen, first reported to her, and afterward the emperor added the honorific "Sagely and Glorious Compassionate and Long-Lived Empress Dowager." She died in 1462 and was buried with Xuanzong at Jingling with the posthumous title Xiaogong Yixian Ciren Zhuanglie Qitian Peisheng Zhang Huanghou. Her honorifics and posthumous names accumulated during her lifetime, and the complete record, with exact dates, is preserved in the veritable records and in the *Yanshan Hall Miscellany*, making her a full case in the study of Ming empress titulature.
That Lady Sun received a gold seal as a noble consort marks a change in Ming palace practice. Previously only empresses had seals, noble consorts receiving tablets only; Xuanzong made an exception and had a seal made for her, and once the precedent was set the gradations among palace ranks loosened somewhat, a point clearly recorded in the *History of Ming* and noted in Ming memoirs.
The coup of 1457 is said to have proceeded after Shi Heng, Xu Youzhen and Cao Jixiang reported to Empress Dowager Sun. With Emperor Jing gravely ill and his son dead young, the succession hung unsettled and the conspirators restored Yingzong. Her part in it has been judged variously, but the honorific "Sagely and Glorious Compassionate and Long-Lived Empress Dowager" conferred by the restored emperor shows where she stood. As for the *History of Ming*'s statement that she secretly took a palace woman's son as her own, that son being Yingzong, the Ming sources differ, some holding that Yingzong was in fact born to a palace woman and raised by her, others treating her as his mother, and matters within the palace are hard to establish. After her death in 1462 she was buried with Xuanzong at Jingling, her tablet placed in the ancestral temple, and her posthumous name settled after repeated discussion as Xiaogong Yixian Ciren Zhuanglie Qitian Peisheng Zhang Huanghou.