Background
Yang Lihua was born in 561. She was a daughter of Yang Jian (Emperor Wen) and Empress Dugu. She also has five brothers and four sisters.
楊麗華
Yang Lihua was born in 561. She was a daughter of Yang Jian (Emperor Wen) and Empress Dugu. She also has five brothers and four sisters.
In the fall of 573, Emperor Wu took Yang Lihua as the wife to Yuwen Yun, then his crown prince, and she thereafter carried the title of the crown princess. Emperor Wu died suddenly in 578 and Yuwen Yun ascended the throne as Emperor Xuan. Yang Lihua, his principal consort, was named Empress.
Emperor Xuan named five women as empresses, ranked in order of seniority, with his principal consort Yang Lihua the most senior empress. The next three in line were all from families that had little or no influence in Northern Zhou politics. However, although Yang Lihua was the senior empress, the emperor did not favor her. Indeed, he appears to have disliked her intensely.
Emperor Xuan announced his retirement in 579 in favor of his young son Yuwen Chan (Emperor Jing, r. 579-581), who was then about six; Emperor Xuan died the following year at the age of twenty-two. As his senior widow, Yang Lihua was named empress dowager. Her father, Yang Jian, was named regent and he controlled the young emperor, eventually deposing him to found the Sui dynasty. Yang Jian assumed the title of emperor and is known to history as Emperor Wen.
As emperor of the new Sui dynasty, Yang Jian changed his daughter’s title from Empress Dowager to Princess of Leping and granted her a large fiefdom. Since she was still very young - twenty years old - her mother urged her to remarry but she refused to do so. Yang Lihua died in Hexi in 609 while she was accompanying her younger brother Yang Guang (Emperor Yang, r. 605-617) on a tour of present-day Gansu Province. Her body was returned to the capital, Chang’an, where she was buried in Dingling alongside her husband, Emperor Xuan.
Yang Lihua was the wife of Yuwen Yun. She bore him a daughter - Yun Eying.