The long rest of life

In 466 AD, Emperor Ming of Song, Liu Yu, and his nephew, Liu Zixun, who proclaimed himself emperor in Xunyang, co-existed. Civil war engulfed nearly all of Liu Song, escalating into a conflict with the Northern Wei. Born into a family of mid-level bureaucrats in the Southern Dynasties, Wang Zhong'er was forced into this conflict, her family shattered. Two years later, at the age of thirty, she was abducted and made a common maid at Pingcheng Palace. However, her fate was fortuitously linked to the "son is noble, mother dies" system, unexpectedly embroiling her in the power struggle. As a palace maid and then a nun, she became a key figure in the nurturing of two generations of emperors, spending a remarkable fifty-six years at the Northern Wei court.
Professor Luo Xin uses epitaphs and other historical materials to tell the story of Wang Zhonger's long and eventful life, and looks at the era in which she lived through her eyes, restoring the emperor, concubines, relatives, court officials, eunuchs and palace maids to concrete people, and seeing their joy, suspicion, arrogance and despair when facing power... As Wang Zhonger's life story unfolds, there is also the nearly eighty years of Northern Wei history from Emperor Xianwen, Emperor Xiaowen to Emperor Xuanwu and Emperor Xiaoming, and of course many people who were swept away by the stormy waves of the times.
We pay attention to ordinary people in distant times because they are part of real history. Without them, history would be incomplete and untrue.

2022-07-01

北京日报出版社

Ideal Country

328

9787547743126