Dugu Xin
One of the Eight Zhu guo of Western Wei
Dugu Xin (Chinese: 獨孤信; 503 – 24 April 557), Xianbei name Qimitou (期彌頭), known as Dugu Ruyuan (獨孤如願) before 540, was a general and official during the chaotic Northern and Southern dynasties period of imperial China. In 534, Dugu Xin followed Emperor Xiaowu of Northern Wei to the west to join the warlord Yuwen Tai, and in the ensuing years led Western Wei forces against their nemesis, the Eastern Wei. Despite an early debacle (after which he fled to and stayed for three years in the southern Liang state before returning to the northwest), he captured the former Northern Wei capital Luoyang from Eastern Wei in 537. He became one of the Eight Pillars of the State (八柱國) in 548. When the Northern Zhou replaced Western Wei, Dugu Xin was created Duke of Wei (衛國公), but was soon forced to commit suicide by the powerful regent Yuwen Hu. He received the posthumous name Li (戾; lit. ''unrepentant'').
He is best remembered today due to his three daughters: it is because of their marriages that he was a father-in-law to two emperors from two Chinese dynasties (Emperor Ming of Northern Zhou and Emperor Wen of Sui), and maternal grandfather to two emperors from two dynasties (Emperor Yang of Sui and Emperor Gaozu of Tang), all after his death. In fact, every Chinese emperor for 3 centuries (from 604 to 907, with the exception of Wu Zetian and self-proclaimed rebels) was descended from him. During the Sui dynasty, Dugu Xin was honored as Duke Jing of Zhao (趙國景公) by Emperor Wen. In 583, Empress Wenxian built a temple dedicated to his memory in the capital Daxing, the remains of which were discovered in 1997 on the campus of Xi'an Jiaotong University.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dugu Xin” as one of the Eight Zhu guo of Western Wei. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6131181. VIAF identifies the subject as 745152932534509830004. The Library of Congress control number is n2018033586. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dugu Xin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.