A woman of Nan commandery chosen into the palaces, given to the chanyu as a consort when the northern war was over. The era name was changed the same spring to mark the gift as finished.
A daughter of good family from the palaces, given to the chanyu and styled Queen Who Sets the Barbarians at Peace; when he died she asked to go home, was told to follow barbarian custom, and remarried his successor.The historians' record of her; neither Han history gives her words of her own; Hanshu, juan 94 lower and the annals juan 9, with the request to return and the remarriage in Hou Han shu, juan 89, Biography of the Southern Xiongnu
Appears in
Relations
- Huhanye Chanyu husband — The chanyu to whom the court gave her when the northern war was over, and whose death brought her a second husband by his own levirate custom.
Myth vs record
Wang Zhaojun was sent out because she would not bribe the painter Mao Yanshou, who drew her portrait ugly in revenge; the emperor fell in love with her only at the farewell and could not recall his gift, and she drowned herself in a river rather than marry the new chanyu.
The portrait bureau and Mao Yanshou enter with a much later anecdote collection, the Miscellany of the Western Capital, and the drowning later still; the qin and the sorrow shown in song belong to that same literary tradition, not to the histories. What the official record gives is thin: selected into the palaces, handed to the chanyu in 33 BCE, styled Queen Who Sets the Barbarians at Peace, and the Book of the Later Han has her ask to go and the emperor see her only at the farewell. And the suicide is the exact reverse of the record's sequel: when Huhanye died she wrote asking to come home, was told to follow barbarian custom, remarried his successor, and bore daughters by him (Hanshu, juan 94 lower and juan 9; Hou Han shu, juan 89).