Nurse empress dowager ( zh, c=保太后, p=Bǎo Tàihòu ) was an honorific title given to

emperors The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/ grand empress dowager), or a woman who rule ...

wet nurse A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeding, breastfeeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known a ...

s of the

Xianbei The Xianbei (; ) were an ancient nomadic people that once resided in the eastern Eurasian steppes in what is today Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Northeastern China. The Xianbei were likely not of a single ethnicity, but rather a multiling ...

-led Chinese

Northern Wei dynasty Wei (), known in historiography as the Northern Wei ( zh, c=北魏, p=Běi Wèi), Tuoba Wei ( zh, c=拓跋魏, p=Tuòbá Wèi), Yuan Wei ( zh, c=元魏, p=Yuán Wèi) and Later Wei ( zh, t=後魏, p=Hòu Wèi), was an imperial dynasty of Chi ...

. The existence of the title owed itself to a peculiar institution of Northern Wei—that when a son of the emperor were to be made

crown prince A crown prince or hereditary prince is the heir apparent to the throne in a royal or imperial monarchy. The female form of the title, crown princess, is held by a woman who is heir apparent or is married to the heir apparent. ''Crown prince ...

, his mother, if alive, must be forced to commit suicide. The crown princes were therefore raised by wet nurses, and when they became emperors, they would typically honor their wet nurses as nurse empress dowagers. Often, later in their reigns, they would then honor their wet nurses as full

empress dowager Empress dowager (also dowager empress or empress mother; ) is the English language translation of the title given to the mother or widow of a monarch, especially in regards to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese monarchs in the Chines ...

s, and they often had just as much influence as the emperors' mothers would have had—rendering the rationale for the Northern Wei institution of putting mothers to death (that therefore empress dowagers would not dominate the political scene) somewhat ineffective.

References

Chinese empresses dowager Northern Wei Wet nursing Chinese courtiers {{China-hist-stub