The Twisted Tale Of China’s Last Consort

Emperor Puyi married two women on the same day: his Empress, Wanrong, and his consort, Wenxiu. But on the wedding night, he took one look at his brides and fled. Many thought the teen was simply inexperienced, but modern historians suggest a more scandalous reason for his disgust.

When Wenxiu was born in 1909, it didn’t look like she would become the next Imperial Consort of China. Although she was part of a fairly respectable Mongolian clan, her family lived in genteel poverty, and Wenxiu often helped them make an income by selling goods. But then everything changed. When she was just 11 years old, the current emperor of China, Puyi, began looking for a bride, and Wenxiu was about to meet her fate. Thanks to her family connections, Wenxiu was on a long list of suitable candidates to marry Puyi. This, however, was an extremely undignified process. The dowagers of Puyi’s court controlled the search, showing him photographs of women he had never met and heavily advising on his choices. As it happened, Puyi’s eye landed right on Wenxiu’s photo, even in a sea of other photographs. With the Emperor of China making Wenxiu his first choice, it should have been smooth sailing for her to get to the throne. But some of the dowagers disapproved of Puyi’s choice, arguing that Wenxiu wasn’t from a rich enough family. Instead, they wanted him to pick a girl from a better family. Her name was Wanrong. One of the dowagers didn’t hold back and also claimed Wenxiu was basically too ugly to become the Empress of China. To add insult to injury, Wenxiu’s rival, Wanrong, was classically beautiful. Eventually, Puyi caved and chose Wanrong as his future Empress, but obviously, Wenxiu’s story doesn’t end there. Puyi’s new plan was to marry Wenxiu after Wanrong, making her his secondary consort. It was the beginning of a destructive, horrific love triangle.

When Wenxiu heard the news that she was to be an Imperial Consort of China, her life changed fast. Her once poor family now had loads of money, and Puyi even gave them a mansion as a thanks for their daughter. Consort or not, Wenxiu was entering an imperial marriage, and that meant a gauntlet of etiquette training. For weeks before the wedding, she learned how to act around Puyi and his court, as well as how to carry herself like the wife of an emperor. Disturbingly, this involved a lot of learning how to kowtow in front of the ruler to show her submission. This would all be an omen of the nightmare to come. When she finally arrived at Puyi’s palace in the Forbidden City in Beijing, it got very real, very fast. Etiquette now controlled every part of Wenxiu’s life, which had turned into a heady mixture of luxury and humiliation in equal parts. Still, at least Wenxiu had now met her future husband up close. Yet, if she knew the full depths of his depravity, she might have run the other way. Puyi, as it happened, was a complete and infamous headcase. He’d been the Emperor of China since he was a toddler and was surrounded by people rushing to fulfill his every whim. It was a recipe for a spoiled sociopath.

In 1922, at the age of 12, Wenxiu married Puyi in a ceremony that was the opposite of romantic. For one, she was barely old enough to understand what romance was, but for another, Puyi had only just come from his marriage ceremony to Wanrong. Yep, he married two women on the same day. How’s that for efficiency? Wenxiu might have been second-rate in the eyes of Imperial etiquette, but Puyi still preferred her to his official Empress. When Wenxiu met the new Empress Wanrong, she was supposed to kowtow to her as she did Puyi. However, in a show of favoritism, the emperor signaled that Wenxiu didn’t have to kneel for the Empress, and by doing so, started a lifelong rivalry. Wanrong probably knew the rumors that Wenxiu had been first choice as Empress, and this one moment confirmed all her worst fears. In truth, both of these women were playing a losing game; they just didn’t know it yet.

Soon, Wenxiu settled into the enormous and cavernous Forbidden City, but in these deluxe surroundings, she endured brutal treatment. Her apartments were remote and isolated, fitting her status as a meager consort. The emperor made an effort to see her, and Wenxiu came out of her shell little by little. A soft, shy girl, she liked Chinese operas, listening to records, and singing. In particular, she liked to read, and so did the emperor. The two of them would read together, and Puyi even let Wenxiu’s birthday become an official palace celebration, which wasn’t the done thing for a consort. But not all her time with the emperor was good. In addition to being a full-blown sadist, Puyi also had a childlike view of the world, and not in a good way. He was constantly playing stupid, cruel pranks on everyone from his servants to his wives. Each hour that Wenxiu spent with the emperor made Wanrong that much more envious and angry. In particular, she hated when Puyi elevated Wenxiu’s status by doing things like celebrating her birthday. After all, she was Empress.

Soon, the Empress’s deep jealousy over Puyi’s favoritism hit breaking point. Eventually, Wenxiu and Wanrong began arguing openly, staging loud, spiteful fights for everyone in court to see. The emperor, faced with arbitrating between his wives, chose the path of least resistance and fell back on tradition. Wanrong was his Empress, so she must be right. The consequences were devastating for Wenxiu. Puyi began to pull back from their close relationship, and she became even more lonely than before. Once Wenxiu fell out of the emperor’s favor, the rest of her life fell apart too. She no longer had his protection, and so the whole palace turned against her. Her own servants would now bully her, taking the hint from their ruler that Wenxiu was weak and vulnerable. However, the worst torment didn’t come from them or Puyi; it came from Wanrong.

One day, Wenxiu was sitting in her lonely chambers when a letter arrived at the door. It was from Wanrong. In the message, the Empress of China wrote sarcastically and sneeringly, “I haven’t seen you for days. Are you still feeling sorry for yourself?” Wanrong was obviously a sore winner, but she wasn’t finished. The Empress now began writing poetry that mocked Wenxiu, sending them over for the consort to read and weep. In these, Wanrong would specifically make fun of Wenxiu’s loneliness. Wenxiu responded by helping to fix Wanrong’s typos. People were so childish back then; you wouldn’t see that kind of pettiness these days. Anyway, don’t forget Wenxiu was still incredibly young at the time, and her existence on the margins of royal life slowly started to break her down. Soon, the utter loneliness of her palace life was nearly unbearable. She went on to call the Forbidden City a macabre grave and admitted, “The nights were so long and so horrible. The loneliness in my heart was hard to be rid of.” Only, she wasn’t the only one.

No matter who Puyi was putting his attention on, neither of his wives could come out on top. After all, he would later describe them as furniture or tools. Wanrong, despite her victory over Wenxiu, soon realized this, and Wenxiu watched as she went right into a total breakdown. Wanrong always had something of a fragile mind, and life as Puyi’s Empress wasn’t quite the comfort she was hoping for. After months of enduring his sole affections, Wanrong began smoking opium to help with the stresses of being Empress, which then developed into a full-blown dependency. Not that Wenxiu was doing much better. While Wanrong’s despair led her into dark fantasy worlds, Wenxiu’s coping mechanisms were far more brutal. By now deeply depressed, she sometimes drank herself into oblivion, but that was on a good day. In Wenxiu’s writing from this time, there are several mentions of her thinking about harming herself.

In 1924, just two years into Wenxiu’s marriage to Puyi, her entire life was turned around. That year, there was a coup in Beijing called the Beijing Coup. Suddenly, Puyi was no longer Emperor, meaning Wenxiu was no longer a consort either. More than that, the new government wanted Puyi and his wives to get the heck out of the Forbidden City like now. In what was surely already a horrific, stressful time in Wenxiu’s life, they gave her, her husband, and Wanrong just three hours to vacate. Yet, while Puyi and Wanrong began frantically packing up their entire lives, Wenxiu had a completely different idea—a very dark one. Wenxiu had been living with despair for a long time, and this new turn of events threw her right off the deep end. With life as she knew it over, Wenxiu put a shocking plan into motion. She went to the main palace, bowed in front of the altar with a pair of scissors in her hand, and very nearly sacrificed herself right where she stood. A servant entered the room and managed to stop her just in time. When Puyi heard about what Wenxiu had done, he took it as a sign that she was so loyal to his crumbling empire she’d almost die for it. Suddenly, though briefly, she was back in his favor.

When the throuple left the Forbidden City and settled in a courtier’s mansion, Wenxiu might have had some hope for her new life without royal titles, but this was no glorious rebirth. For a little while, Puyi, Wanrong, and Wenxiu operated as a semi-functional unit, with Puyi now spending time with both women and relying on them for advice. Puyi was too proud to take his exile lying down, and he soon linked up with the Japanese to get his power back. Wenxiu had a bad feeling about this. She believed that the Japanese were just going to use and discard Puyi and brought up her concerns in public to her husband. His response was fair and even-handed. Not really. Puyi was incensed that Wenxiu would question his supreme wisdom, and in public no less. In a fury, he took a feather duster and beat her right then and there. Wenxiu was horrified and humiliated. For all that he’d been a terrible spouse, Puyi had never laid a hand on her before. Her rival Wanrong, meanwhile, was beside herself with glee. It was the beginning of another extremely dark period for Wenxiu, one that would push her to her endgame.

Soon after Puyi’s explosive episode, he threw all caution to the wind and moved Wenxiu, Wanrong, and himself to the Japanese-controlled city of Tianjin. It was a declaration that whether Wenxiu liked it or not, their fates lay with the Japanese. Puyi made sure every aspect of Wenxiu’s life was filled with denigration. While he and Wanrong lived on the second floor of the house together, Wenxiu lived alone on the first floor. You might think she’d be used to this by now, but she was about to hit breaking point. One day, Wenxiu was minding her own business in the house’s garden when suddenly she made a fatal mistake. She happened to spit on the ground just as Wanrong was passing by—an accidental act of supreme rudeness according to Imperial etiquette. Puyi not only refused to believe Wenxiu when she told him it was an accident, but he was also furious at her for lying. For days, he locked her up in a room as punishment until she finally confessed under duress. After that, he still kept her locked up. It was the final straw.

Driven nearly to madness, Wenxiu made another attempt on her life with a pair of scissors, and once more a servant stopped her from completing the act. But the similarities to the first incident end there. Instead of eliciting admiration from Puyi, the ex-emperor was even more angry, thinking it was a trick to gain his sympathy. Wenxiu did eventually manage to stab herself with a pair of scissors, but her wound was superficial. Puyi, now alarmed that she hadn’t just been playing a game, sent for her sister Wenshan to talk to her and get the situation under control. Wenxiu’s sister was aghast at the way she was living and immediately urged her to leave Puyi by any means necessary. As Wenshan put it, Wenxiu could either choose divorce or she could choose death. From that point on, she began plotting.

Instead of showing Wenxiu any scrap of empathy, Puyi only excluded her further. He would often take Wanrong out on the town and leave Wenxiu home alone to stew in her own sadness. It got so rough, Wenxiu started getting help from someone unexpected. Wanrong tried to calm things down by suggesting that they all eat dinner together, but Puyi sneered, “You mustn’t. If you call her here, I won’t eat.” Wenxiu had no gas left in her tank, and one day, after enduring yet more bullying from a servant, she scolded the man. This moment set off a chain reaction. Puyi overheard and took it as a personal slight. In retaliation, he put out an edict for Wenxiu to die. There was really only one thing Wenxiu could do, and she finally did it. Feigning an outing with her sister, she escaped from the house and drove right to a hotel where a score of lawyers were waiting. Soon after, she officially filed for divorce from the former Emperor of China. Puyi and Wanrong referred to Wenxiu’s escape and divorce as treason, and they treated her with absolute scorn throughout the legal proceedings. Puyi, furious at the shame Wenxiu was bringing him, also refused all her demands for the split, but even he couldn’t stop it. The divorce went through, and Wenxiu was free.

As the cherry on top, Wenxiu was about to realize just how big a bullet she had dodged. Wanrong and Puyi began to fall apart almost immediately after Wenxiu left. After all, they didn’t have their convenient scapegoat around anymore. Puyi, who was never able to take responsibility for anything, blamed Wanrong for driving Wenxiu away and now became cold and distant to his Empress. Soon after Wenxiu’s exit, Puyi fulfilled his alliance with the Japanese and became a puppet ruler in the Japanese-held state of Manchukuo. Just like Wenxiu predicted, it was a disaster. Puyi’s power collapsed within years, forcing him to flee in 1945 and obviously leaving Wanrong behind for the wolves. Wenxiu’s old rival perished in prison just a year later, hopelessly addicted to opium.

Wenxiu’s escape from her gilded cage led her into a much different life, though it was also a familiar one from her childhood. Now simply a civilian, she worked as a school teacher and married a military man just two years after Puyi’s fall from power in Manchukuo. Sadly, the end of Wenxiu’s life was one of quiet pain. Eventually, she and her husband fell into poverty, and at the end of her life, they slept in a house together that was only 10 square meters. She died on September 17th, 1953, when she was just 43. Throughout all of it, she did have her loving husband by her side, the kind of simple comfort that Puyi could never have given her.

Wenxiu’s supposed fairy tale life as an Imperial Consort was a sham, and it all started on her wedding night. Reportedly, Puyi led both Wenxiu and Wanrong to his inner chambers that evening, only to take one look at them on the bed and run from the room. To this day, historians can’t be sure what exactly drove Puyi to flee, though many point to his immaturity. However, there might have been a more scandalous reason for his disgust. Many people closest to Puyi believed that he was actually gay. As one of his servants said in a veiled reference, “Puyi preferred the landway to the waterway.” Probably a good place to end it. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like and subscribe for more videos.