Beautiful women who brought down China's empires
Well, they didn't really. In Chinese mythology, the "Four Beauties" were beautiful women who were said to have brought about the downfall of empires, but it was mostly wishful thinking dreamed up by people in the early 19th century. That said, these women were important figures at the Chinese imperial courts, because beauty could be a means to gain power over men or to be creative in dance and poetry. Below, I have highlighted the two that appeal to me the most.
倾城倾国
Of course, to start with, there are more than four candidates and, supposedly, they all represent different forms of beauty, meaning beauty is not just about looks. The traditional four who get written about the most are: Xi Shi 西施 (who died circa 473 BCE), whose beauty made fish forget to swim and they sank to the bottom; Wang Zhaojun 王昭君 (died 15 BCE), whose beauty and lute-playing caused birds to forget how to fly; Diao Chan 貂蟬 (died AD 280), whose beauty eclipsed the moon and who has inspired many modern variants (although Diao Chan is a fictional character); and Yang Guifei (aka Yang Yuhuan) 楊玉環 (died AD 756 in the Tang era), whose beauty put flowers to shame - and she was a concubine who really enjoyed a drink! All had important roles in the imperial palaces of different empires, real or imagined.
But there are others who actually may have brought down empires. For example, the earliest two: Daji 妲己 (after 1046 BCE) who is remembered not at all fondly as a malevolent fox spirit, and Bao Si 褒姒 (died 771 BCE), a concubine whose appeal was that she was coldly indifferent to everything. Then there are the courtesans and dancers like Zhao Feiyan 趙飛燕 (died 1 BCE), who became an empress and whose story resembles a Shakespearean tragedy, and Lüzhu 绿珠 (died AD 300), who composed music and refused to be bought. All of these women died by suicide, by the way. Other notable women include Han Dynasty figures like Consort Yu (aka Yu Miaoyi) 虞姬 (died 202 BCE) and whose story appears in the film Farewell, My Concubine, the poet Zhuo Wenjun 卓文君 (died 121 BCE), and Ban Jieyu (Consort Ban) 班婕妤 (died around 2 BCE).
Whatever their characters and effect on historical events, and no matter how much their stories were embellished by later writers, or whether there should be a canonical four at all, the best stories, in my opinion, belong to Wang Zhaojun and Daji.
For Wang Zhaojun, it's when she is a young woman and the Emperor is choosing a new wife. He looks at portraits of all the possible women, but Wang Zhaojun’s portrait is either never shown to him, or someone arranges for her portrait to show her as ugly. In some versions, this is because Wang refused to bribe the official painter. Anyway, she gets overlooked and is sent to marry the ruler of the Xiongnu people of the northern plains. She may have volunteered for this. Eventually, the emperor discovers his mistake and the painter is executed. Like Diao Chan she has been the subject of many poems, songs, operas and TV series because of her sacrifice and her admirable character, which brought peace between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu.
Daji, on the other hand, is a complete nightmare, a concubine who is really a fox spirit, who kills and impersonates the real Daji. She is considered a beautiful femme fatale who enjoyed torture and executions and eating human flesh and she was responsible for the fall of the Shang dynasty and the rise of the Zhou dynasty. These stories mostly appear in the 16th century Chinese novel Fengshen Yanyi by Xu Zhonglin. Some say Daji also created foot binding to hide her fox feet but, this was 3000 years ago, so who knows? Fox spirits were (are?) shapeshifters with nine tails and they can take the form of beautiful women or men. There is a vast literature on the subject, including the famous Naruto manga, video games, films and TV programs.
