Empress Dowager Cixi
Cixi controlled China for forty-seven years, from behind a screen and then from the throne. Born in 1835 into a Manchu family of the Bordered Blue Banner, she entered the Xianfeng Emperor's harem at sixteen as a low-ranking concubine and rose by producing his only surviving son in 1856. The emperor died in 1861 during the Anglo-French occupation of Beijing, leaving the throne to her five-year-old boy under eight regents. Within months she had allied with the senior consort Ci'an and with the late emperor's brother Prince Gong, arrested the regents, and taken the regency herself — ruling from behind a yellow silk screen, since a woman could not be seen to govern. Her son died at nineteen, and she installed her three-year-old nephew instead, in violation of the succession rules, which kept her regent for another generation. She supported the Self-Strengthening Movement — arsenals, shipyards, telegraphs, a translation bureau — while blocking anything that touched the examination system or the bureaucracy. In 1898 the Guangxu Emperor launched the Hundred Days' Reform. She ended it with a coup, executed six reformers and confined him to an island palace for the rest of his life. She then backed the Boxers in 1900 and declared war on eight foreign powers at once, which produced the occupation of Beijing and an indemnity that took decades to pay. She fled in a cart dressed as a peasant. She died in 1908, a day after the emperor, who was poisoned. The dynasty fell three years later. Historians have argued since over how much of the collapse was hers and how much was already beyond any ruler's reach.
- Lived: 1835 CE – 1908 CE
- Nationality: Chinese
- Roles: ruler, regent
