Reflections | Age is just a number? How an imperial Chinese emperor fell for his carer, who was 17 years his senior
Despite the significant age gap, Emperor Chenghua’s favourite consort was his former nanny, Wan Zhen’er
We recently heard that the husband of one of my mother’s sisters died a few years ago in the United States. (My mother’s family isn’t close.) He was almost 30 years older than my aunt. While it is not that unusual for the male partner to be considerably older, it is less common the other way around.
One of the most touching love stories among Chinese royals was between Zhu Jianshen, the ninth emperor of the Ming dynasty, and Wan Zhen’er, his carer turned consort who was 17 years his senior. A daughter of a low-ranking county functionary, Wan was conscripted into the palace after her father was exiled for a misdemeanour. She worked in the household of Empress Sun as a palace maid and soon rose up the ranks to become Sun’s personal attendant.
A constitutional crisis occurred in 1449 when Sun’s son, Emperor Zhengtong, was captured in battle by the Oirat Mongols. To prevent a power vacuum, Sun and senior government officials threw their support behind Zhengtong’s younger brother, who became Emperor Jingtai. Zhengtong’s two-year-old son Zhu Jianshen was made heir apparent.
Aware that her grandson might be at risk, given his precarious position as the son of a former emperor and the designated successor of the current one, who had sons of his own, Sun appointed her trusted attendant Wan as Zhu’s nanny and protector.
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Sun’s misgivings were proved correct the following year, when Zhengtong was released and returned to China by his captors. Instead of yielding the throne to his older brother, Jingtai placed him under house arrest and, in 1452, named his own son as heir and banished his nephew. During this period of hardship and deprivation Zhu and Wan grew very close.
