Empress Cao

Empress Cao (曹皇后, personal name unknown) (died January 11, 937), formally Empress Hewuxian (和武憲皇后), was an empress of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Later Tang. Her husband was Later Tang's second emperor Li Siyuan (Emperor Mingzong), and she was empress dowager during the subsequent reigns of his son Li Conghou (Emperor Min) and adoptive son Li Congke. Eventually, when her son-in-law Shi Jingtang rebelled against Li Congke, establishing his own Later Jin and attacked the Later Tang capital Luoyang, she died in a mass suicide with Li Congke, his family, and some officers. Background It is not known when the future Empress Cao was born — indeed, virtually nothing was known about her background even by the time of the next succeeding united Chinese dynasty, Song Dynasty, as the Song author of the New History of the Five Dynasties, Ouyang Xiu, indicated. It is further unclear how she became the wife — or one of multiple wives — of Li Siyuan's, or whether two other wives or concubines of his, Lady Xia (the mother of his sons Li Congrong and Li Conghou) and Lady Wei (the mother of his adoptive son Li Congke, who was fathered by Lady Wei's original husband, named Wang), were considered of coequal status with her or not. It appeared that she had no son, but had at least one daughter, the future Princess of Wei, then of Jin, who married Li Siyuan's subordinate officer Shi Jingtang. Sometime during the reign of Li Siyuan's adoptive brother and predecessor Li Cunxu, Lady Cao, as Li Siyuan's wife, was created the Lady of Chu. After Lady Xia's death, Li Siyuan also took a Lady Wang as a concubine, and Lady Wang became his favorite, as Lady Cao was described to favor the simple life. As imperial consort and empress Li Cunxu was killed in a mutiny at the capital Luoyang in 926, and Li Siyuan subsequently claimed imperial title. Either that year (as stated by the New History of the Five Dynasties) or later, in 928 (as stated in the annals of Li Siyuan's reign in the History of the Five Dynasties, which otherwise lacked biographical information for her in its biographies for Later Tang empresses), she was given the imperial consort title Shufei (淑妃). (According to the History of the Five Dynasties, Lady Wang, who then carried the title of the Lady of Han, was given the lesser consort title of Defei (德妃) at the same time.) In 930, Li Siyuan was preparing to create Consort Cao empress.