The beauty of Nanyang he admitted wanting as a poor young man, who refused the empresshood because her rival had the elder son, and whose son became the next emperor. Her own record is the Book of the Later Han's memoir of the empresses.
She refused the empresshood because her rival had the elder son; the emperor deposed Empress Guo to be the queen dowager of Zhongshan and made her empress in the spring of 41 CE.The historian's clause, not a quotation — Hou Han shu, juan 10 upper, Annals of the Empresses; juan 1 lower
Appears in
Relations
- Emperor Guangwu husband — He admitted wanting her as a poor young man in Nanyang; she was made empress in the same spring as his return to the village, the repair of the garden and the old house, and the shrine for four generations of the Chongling line. Her son was the next emperor.
Myth vs record
He got the empire for the girl he had wanted when he was nobody, and the empresshood was the romantic settlement of it.
The wanting is in the record; the empresshood is a piece of succession politics handled in public. She refused it because her rival had the elder son, and she was only made empress in the spring of 41 CE, in the same season as the deposition of Empress Guo to be queen dowager of Zhongshan. The historian notices that this, too, was done so that later ages could see no gap between the thick and the thin of his treatment — which is a comment on the arithmetic of the favour, not on the love story.