In 1889, gongs, drums, and firecrackers rang out in the Forbidden City, and hundreds of civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty gathered together.
During the day, it is lively and lively, and at night it is said that the Spring Festival is worth a thousand gold, not to mention the wedding night.
That night, the Empress Dowager Cixi arranged for four royal ladies to eavesdrop on the conversation between Guangxu and Longyu, but she didn't expect to hear Guangxu crying loudly, why is this?
Several emperors in the early and middle Qing Dynasty, from Huang Taiji to Yongzheng Qianlong, basically each had more than a dozen children, but at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it was particularly strange, and several emperors were infertile.
For the emperor in his later years, choosing his own heirs to inherit the throne was the most important, and such a dilemma was tantamount to stepping towards the decline of the dynasty.
Those princes who finally came to this world either died young, or they were waste materials.
This situation lasted for a while, until there was no way, and the court had to choose a child in the clan to succeed, and this child was the later Emperor Guangxu.
The reality is often cruel, Emperor Guangxu, as the successor child of the Empress Dowager Cixi, and the relationship between Cixi and Cixi is not as thick as the blood of the biological mother and son, but more like a game of exchange of interests.
After all, on the big stage of the imperial court, the role of every character is not simple, and every move is related to his future and destiny.
Cixi, who has been in power for many years, has reached the point of obsession with power, and even when Guangxu becomes an adult, he is unwilling to hand over the power of the country to the king of a country, but chooses to listen to the government and use Guangxu as a puppet to control the government and the opposition.
Cixi tried her best to retain the power in her hands, which also made the relationship between Cixi and Guangxu more and more strained. What's more, except for Wu Zetian, there has been no second person who can do it for more than a thousand years.
Coupled with the pressure of public opinion from the court, Cixi finally had to make concessions and decided to give Guangxu the queen. And this is also the most important step for Cixi to manipulate Guangxu.
Yehenara · Jingfen, who later became Empress Longyu. has a mediocre appearance and no extraordinary, but it is precisely because of these characteristics that she can become a queen.
The Empress Dowager Cixi's calculations are very fine, how could she arrange a person who can compete with her to be the queen?
Longyu is not smart, and it is the bloodline of the Yehenara family, on the one hand, Cixi wants the Yehenara clan to occupy a high position forever, and on the other hand, Longyu is an easy to control pawn.
In fact, from the moment Cixi placed Longyu by Guangxu's side, Longyu's life had been arranged.
Emperor Guangxu was not a fool, how could he not understand Cixi's purpose?
Longyu's road to the queen can be described as a chess game arranged by the Empress Dowager Cixi herself. After becoming the empress, Longyu was not because of her personal excellence, but because of Cixi's careful arrangement.
Cixi's desire for control of power was well known, and how could she possibly allow someone who might rival her to enter the center of imperial power?
Longyu's choice was very much in line with Cixi's needs: she was not smart and would not pose a threat to Cixi; She came from the Yehnara family, which made it easier for Cixi to use her to strengthen her own power.
Such a choice makes Longyu's road to the queen seem destined to be a tragedy.
In the final analysis, Longyu became the empress because Cixi needed to install someone by Guangxu's side that she could control.
In this way, Cixi could keep an eye on Guangxu at all times and ensure that her power was not threatened.
And Longyu has become a pawn in the power struggle between Cixi and Guangxu.
Such an arrangement led to the existence of the relationship between Guangxu and Longyu husband and wife.
From the day of their wedding, there was no real sense of husband and wife affection.
Emperor Guangxu must have understood in his heart that Longyu was just a watchman arranged by the Empress Dowager Cixi by his side. So when the candle night was spent in the cave room, Guangxu understood that all this was fake, and he and Longyu were both pawns of Cixi in order to take power, and they were just acting on the spot.
Guangxu cried to Longyu: "Sister, I respect you, but we can't have the truth of husband and wife........"
In such a nominal husband and wife relationship, Guangxu and Longyu's lives are like being in a cage in a deep palace.
There is no love, no respect, only endless loneliness and helplessness.
The story of the Wuxu Reform and Guangxu's imprisonment of Longyu is closely related to the magnificent history of the late Qing Dynasty.
As a magnificent reform in Chinese history, the Wuxu Reform originally carried the hopes of Emperor Guangxu and many people with lofty ideals, but under the strong opposition of conservatives, it suffered a complete failure.
This failure not only shattered Emperor Guangxu's dream of reform, but also pushed him to a tragic fate.
Empress Dowager Cixi's tough suppression of the law change made Emperor Guangxu's ambitions come to naught.
For Longyu, her fate has changed dramatically.
As the queen, her existence is almost marginalized in this volatile situation, her life is even more lonely, and the emotional connection between the husband and wife is more and more alienated in the process.
Longyu's short career as the empress dowager and the fall of the Qing Dynasty Longyu became the empress dowager shortly after the death of Emperor Guangxu and the death of the Empress Dowager Cixi.
However, the Great Qing Qi was exhausted, and the name no longer meant anything to her.
In 1912, although the Empress Dowager Longyu read out the abdication edict of the Qing Dynasty, she could not resist the torrent of history and could only watch the end of an era.
Looking back on Longyu's life, it can be said that he has embarked on a tragic trajectory from the moment he entered the palace.
During her days in the deep palace, she experienced the transformation of her identity from the queen to the queen mother, but whether as the queen or the queen mother, she never gained true happiness and respect.
Guangxu's neglect and dissatisfaction with her, Cixi's disgust and use of her, made her feel lonely and helpless in the deep palace.
Coupled with the anxiety about the fate of the country, Longyu's mood became more and more depressed, and finally she died of depression in the deep palace in 1913 under such tremendous mental pressure, ending her bleak life journey.
Her death symbolizes the complete end of an era and a microcosm of the fate of all women in that turbulent era.
The story of Longyu makes people sigh at the cruelty of history and the sadness of individual fate.