Home China Culture Chinese Marriage Multiple wives with equal status

Multiple wives with equal status

* Emperors of some relatively minor dynasties are known to have multiple empresses.     * Created by special circumstances. For example, during wartime a man may be separated from his wife and mistakenly believe that she had died. He remarries, and later the first wife is found to be alive. After they are reunited, both wives may be recognized.     * Qianlong Emperor of Qing dynasty began to allow polygamy for the specific purpose of siring heirs for another branch of the family. Called "multiple inheritance", if a man is the only son of his father, and his uncle has no son, then with mutual agreement he may marry an additional wife. A male child from this union becomes the uncle's grandson and heir. The process can be repeated for additional uncles.       Beside the traditional desire for male children to carry on the family name, this allowance partially resolves a dilemma created by the emperor himself. He had recently banned all non-patrilineal forms of inheritance, while wanting to preserve the proper order in the Chinese kinship. Therefore, a couple without son cannot adopt one from within the extended family. They either have to adopt from outside (which was regarded by many as passing the family wealth to unrelated "outsiders"), or become heirless. The multiple inheritance marriages provided a way out when the husband's brother has a son. Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Show/Hide comments Write comment Show/Hide comment form Name Email Website Title Comment Write the displayed characters Add Comment Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.

 

< Prev		Next >