Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Dowager Cixi (Mandarin pronunciation: [tsʰɹ̩̌.ɕì]; 29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908) was a Manchu noblewoman of the Yehe Nara clan who periodically controlled the government of the late Qing dynasty as empress dowager and regent from 1861 until her death in 1908.

Cixi was selected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence and gave birth to his son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, their son became the Tongzhi Emperor, and Cixi assumed the role of co-empress dowager alongside Xianfeng's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. She and Ci'an ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency together. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875. Ci'an continued to be co-regent with Cixi until her death in 1881.

Cixi oversaw the Tongzhi Restoration, during which she rejected Western political institutions but supported technological and military modernization. In 1898, she suppressed the Hundred Days' Reform initiated by the Guangxu Emperor and placed him under house arrest for the remainder of his life, likely eventually having him murdered by arsenic poisoning. (Though it is also speculated that Yuan Shikai may have been the one who may have murdered him due to potential reprisals against him due to his role in supporting Empress Dowager Cixi's coup, there are no reliable sources to prove who murdered the Guangxu Emperor.) During the Boxer Rebellion, Cixi initially supported the Boxers and declared war on the foreign powers, a decision that led to the occupation of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance and her flight to Xi'an. After the humiliating Boxer Protocol pushed the Qing dynasty to the brink of collapse, she initiated reforms aimed at establishing a constitutional monarchy. Cixi died in November 1908, two days after the Guangxu Emperor, leaving power in the hands of conservative regents amid a deeply divided and unstable society.