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The biography of the first empress of the Sui dynasty (581-618) contains an unprecedented statement: "The emperor and empress were a companionate couple who swore that they would have children by no other woman." As it turned out, however, the emperor impregnated one of his concubines, after which the empress had her killed. The infuriated ruler, Yang Jian (541-604), fled the palace on horseback and rode many miles until reached by pursuing attendants, when he heaved a deep sigh and said, "Here I am an emperor, yet I cannot do as I please" (Li Yanshou 1974, 14:532-33). The oath they made to have children by the empress alone was unprecedented because virtually all Chinese emperors were not only expected but pressured to have children by multiple wives. That the empress murdered the rival consort was a serious transgression, though not unusual in the history of Chinese imperial polygamy. That the emperor should complain in such a way signals that he who was allowed and expected to have multiple wives was in fact subject to limits upon his relations with women. Far from being a mere expression of his personal will, polygamy was an institution that governed him by rules and values. It was a set of sexual and marital expectations that was intimately influenced by the relations between one man, many women, and their offspring.1
Some form of polygamy was the rule rather than the exception in royal courts throughout the world, including China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Siam, Laos, Java, Arabia, Persia, Mongol Central Asia, Mughal India, Ottoman Turkey, Nigeria, Mayan and Aztec regimes, ancient Ireland and Iceland, and ancient Biblical kingdoms, among others. It was in general institutionally regulated. The profligate ruler who staged orgies in his harem was relatively rare, although widely known about. By the time of the Sui ruler, how to be a polygamist was something that had existed for centuries as a system of principles and beliefs. Besides what could be written down and preached, there was also that which the people around the emperor did to influence and affect him, of whom the murderous Sui empress was an extreme and transgressive example. Together the institution and the actions of people around him...