A Study On The Queen Family Of Song Dynasty

The queen family in the Song Dynasty is a special family bearing a lineal consanguinity relationship with the queen and the empress dowager, and bearing marital relationship with the supreme power of the feudal society. They resemble the policy and motivation of the ruling circles of the Song Dynasty to deal with the relationship with the relatives without consanguinity, officers owning military power, and the balance of the benefit and power with these relatives. They also represent some features of that epoch of Song Dynasty as a significant turning point in the ancient chinese society.The queen family of the Northern Song and Sourthern Song Dynasties bears the following traits: the queen coming from military family accouts for the overwhelming proportion of the whole queen family; they are all of humble origin; they do not come from the same clan and so on. These traits bear direct relationship with the social background when WuDai is on the wane and Song Dynasty comes into exsitence. Due to the special social distinction of the queen family, as to the relationship with the emperial power, the relatives of the queen family can have the privilige of being high-ranking official and proper reward at due time. On the contrary, they have to live with restriction and reluctance in many aspects such as they can not act as the substantive officials in the ruling circle; most of them hold the post of insignificant military officials, or hold granted post by the emperor; they are restricted in the association with the queen and the other officials and so on. Under the restriction of the emperial ruling doctrine and the scholar-bureaucrat class, the queen family and the queen present a loose relationship with each other. There even appears a tendency that the queen family and the queen constraint and warn each other. Under such social circumstance, most people of the queen family are identified with the values of the ruling circle and accept their social role, trying to be distant from the political centre and bahaving politically compliant.The status of the queen family of the Northern Song and Sourthern Song Dynasties represent the overlap and the combination of the policy dealing with the military officials and relatives without consanguinity relationship. The relatives of the queen are not the major power that the emperor depending upon. In stead, they are the focus to be precautious and suppressed. The policy of laying up the queen family is one of the origin of the redundency of the officials in the Song Dynasty.