He Fani
Chinese empress
Empress He Fani (Chinese: 何法倪; 339 – 13 September 404), formally Empress Muzhang (穆章皇后, literally "the solemn and polite empress"), semi-formally Empress Yong'an (永安皇后), was an empress of the Eastern Jin dynasty. Her husband was Emperor Mu.
Life
He Fani's father He Zhun (何準) was a brother of the one-time prime minister He Chong (何充), who was an important official during the reigns of Emperor Cheng, Emperor Kang, and Emperor Mu. Both He Zhun and He Chong had already died by 357, when, based on the account of her high birth, He Fani was selected to be the empress on 19 September. Emperor Mu was 14 and she was 18.
Emperor Mu did not have any sons, with Empress He or any of his concubines. After he died in July 361, he was succeeded by his cousin Emperor Ai (son of Emperor Cheng), and Empress He was not given the title of empress dowager but instead was honored as Empress Mu. As she was given Yong'an Palace (永安宮) as her residence, she also became known as Empress Yong'an.
Little is known about her life during the reigns of Emperor Ai, his brother Emperor Fei, their granduncle Emperor Jianwen, or Emperor Jianwen's son Emperor Xiaowu. When the warlord Huan Xuan (Huan Wen's son) usurped the throne from Emperor Xiaowu's son Emperor An in 403, she was still alive, and as she was forced to move from Yong'an Palace, her procession went past the imperial temples, and she cried bitterly at the sight of the temples.
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This entry incorporates text from “He Fani” 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.