In The Consorts Research

As a social group, the family that have marriage ties with emperors’family in Southern Dynasty is not more particularly prominent than those of other feudal dynasties in China’s long long history; it can be ignored easily under a mask of those illustrious families in Western and Eastern Han Dynasties. And it is still not so outstanding enough even if compared with those families of the Western and Eastern Jin Dynasties that have much less political influence than those in Western and Eastern Han Dynasties.Generally there are more researches on those families in Western and Eastern Han Dynasties, while less about other dynasties, particularly Southern Dynasty. Due to the special history background of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, there is a special and unprecedented character for the families in Southern Dynasty:the social and political status of those families had not been impacted by the change of imperial power. They could maintain their high social and political status in new dynasty, still as families that have marriage ties with emperors’family. So for illustrating this special feature, we made some analysis from different points, such us:the components of the families, the reasons that why or what made the families could make intermarriage with emperors’family, the relationship between the families and the social, political and cultural lives in Southern Dynasty.The emperors and their relatives birthed from the families who had not so high status. E.g.:bachelor family of second-class or the common persons. But no doubt, they were immigrants. While the families that have marriage ties with emperors’family, have higher parentage than emperors and their relatives, both bachelor family of immigrants and the family of aborigines in southern area included. In the three dynasties of Song, Qi and Liang, the families that have marriage ties with emperors’family came from both the powerful immigrant family developed from the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and the bachelor family of second-class that have same family status, but not the family of aborigines in southern area. In this period, the intermarriage only occurred in the internal families of immigrants. Till Chen Dynasty, it started to have intermarriage with the family of aborigines in southern area.The reason is that when choosing their mates, the emperors and their relatives were impacted by many factors, mainly by family status and class and personal quality. Besides, there were some influences from the differences of social status between the family of immigrants and the family of aborigines in southern area caused by different origins.The families that have marriage ties with emperors’family could change their political position in time when the imperial power was transferred or changed. It is meaningful for the steady and consolidation of regime in new dynasty. While in the common social life, the influences from the families were less than those of old dynasty. And their social and political status promoted or dropped for the marriage relations.For the families had high cultural quality, the members of emperors’family enhanced their cultural level when had communicated with the high family in the climate and culture of first class for a long period. The whole cultural quality of emperor’s family had been promoted greatly. Although these two parties had cultural crashes for cultural differences in long history, they influenced each other deeply.