Yuwen Zhao

Background

There is no information about the date and the place of her birth. However, Zhao Yuwen was the daughter of the Prince of Zhao and also had three brothers.

Career

Princess Qianjin married Taspar Qaghan in 579. This marriage was arranged by Northern Zhou emperor who had exchanged her for the return of the enemy, the Northern Qi prince, who was then seeking refuge with the Eastern Turks. Shortly after journeying from Chang’an to the Eastern Turk court (near present-day Qaraqorum, Mongolia), she learned that her father, three brothers, and two uncles had been executed in Chang’an by the Sui dynasty, which supplanted Northern Zhou in 581.

Taspar Qaghan died in 581 from illness and Princess Qianjin became a wife of Ishbara Qaghan. As wife to the Eastern Turk Qaghan, Princess Qianjin had a certain degree of military influence and tried to turn him against the Sui - a strategy she continued to pursue from 581 to 583 with her husband. In 584, however, due to the weakened position of the Eastern Turks, she negotiated a peace treaty with Sui by which Sui adopted her under the new identity of Princess Dayi and the Sui dynasty replaced the Northern Zhou in her marriage alliance with the Eastern Turks.

After Ishbara Qaghan died, Princess Dayi married his son (her stepson), Dulan Qaghan, in 587, all the time secretly nursing a hatred for the Sui imperial house that had wiped out her dynasty and her family. Two years later, when the Sui emperor sent her a room panel belonging to the imperial family of the short-lived Chen dynasty that the Sui had just crushed, Princess Qianjin wrote on it a poem lamenting its collapse and comparing it to her own fate as a princess of the defunct Northern Zhou dynasty.

The Sui emperor was much displeased when he heard about the poem, and when rumors surfaced that Princess Qianjin had assisted a Sui turncoat and plotted with the Western Turks against the Sui, he bribed her husband’s cousin to have her killed. In 593, Princess Qianjin died by the hand of her husband, Dulan Qaghan, as a condition of peace and another marriage with a Sui princess.

Connections

Princess Qianjin was married three times. Her first husband was Taspar Qaghan. After his death, Princess Qianjin married his nephew - Ishbara Qaghan. Later she became a wife of Ishbara Qaghan's son - Dulan Qaghan. It is said that she had no children.

Father:

Prince of Zhao

late-husband:

Taspar Qaghan

Taspar Qaghan was the third son of Bumin Qaghan and Wei Changle, and the fourth khagan of the Turkic Khaganate (572–581).

late-husband:

Ishbara Qaghan

Ishbara Qaghan was the first son of Issik Qaghan, grandson of Bumin Qaghan, and the sixth khagan of the Turkic Khaganate (581–587).

husband:

Dulan Qaghan

Dulan Qaghan was the son of Ishbara Qaghan and the seventh qaghan of the Turkic Khaganate.

References

• Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E. - 618 C.E This new volume of the "Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women" spans more than 2,000 years from antiquity to the early seventh century. It recovers the stories of more than 200 women, nearly all of them unknown in the West.
  1998
• Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall: Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millenia This fascinating book tells the story of the centuries-long confrontation along the Great Wall of China.
  1989