Empress Dowager made Grand Empress Dowager and holds court
The Wei shu basic annals record that in the sixth lunar month of Chengming 1 (AD 476), after entries for the wuyin day, the Empress Dowager was honoured as Grand Empress Dowager (太皇太后) and attended court and issued decrees in her own name (臨朝稱制).
What this does and does not establish
An official history compiled 551-554 by Wei Shou under the Northern Qi from Northern Wei records; the English is an AI working translation. The passage does not name the Empress Dowager, and its day is given only by the preceding wuyin entry.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 承明 1 (承明元年 as numbered by the annals), lunar month 6
- How we use it
- Year assigned from the lunar month under which the Wei shu annals enter the item; the sexagenary day was not converted to a Julian day.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Lunar month 6 of 承明 1 = Julian 476-07-08 to 476-08-05, per Academia Sinica 兩千年中西曆轉換 year table(s) 延興6.html (sha256 9614499eb03b…); 延興6-m2.html (sha256 bc3071d6de19…); 延興6-m3.html (sha256 72d69737ec34…); 延興6-m4.html (sha256 688b676382c8…); 延興6-m5.html (sha256 c698dc9d4cd6…); 承明1-m6.html (sha256 fc8d8742d832…); 承明1-m7.html (sha256 7b3b1ffc74bd…); 承明1-m8.html (sha256 0c2047579d2c…); 承明1-m9.html (sha256 49ce0e046d38…); 承明1-m10.html (sha256 cf5ba64caf9e…); 承明1-m11.html (sha256 580aaaf20949…); 承明1-m12.html (sha256 cb948d703544…); the whole month lies in AD 476.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Wei shu (Book of Wei), basic annals
Wei Shou (魏收), Northern Qi court historian
The credit or link shown here was corrected after an audit of the retained source.
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
尊皇太后為太皇太后，臨朝稱制。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
The Empress Dowager was honoured as Grand Empress Dowager; she attended court and issued decrees in her own name.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Wei shu, juan 7上, zh.wikisource transcription (revision 2460668). English renderings are AI working translations, not published translations.
Exact source version
0693886d2723ee4e12db21f31cf59563aaf7f1fb88dc5612ba1a810632fc49ebChecks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1h_476_wei_2
Exact revision fingerprint
df4fb265270a94ee39e0fee80e8e64bbf2f51d419bee58bef0f3b735389884ed