Princess Qianjin

Qianjin was a princess of the Northern Zhou and of its Yuwen house. She was a daughter of Yuwen Zhao, the prince of Zhao. In 580 she went north as the bride of Taspar Khan.^[1] She was the katun of three khans of the Göktürks in turn.^[2] The Chinese histories record her because she stood between the khans and two Chinese dynasties. She drove Ishbara to war on the Sui. The Sui then adopted her into their house, and in the end they demanded her death.^[3]

Marriage to Taspar

In 579 Taspar asked the Zhou for a marriage.^[4] The Zhou Shu calls the request heqin, a peace bound by a marriage.^[5] The emperor gave the daughter of the prince of Zhao the title Princess Qianjin and promised her to Taspar. He also told Taspar to seize the Qi pretender Gao Shaoyi, who had fled to his court.^[6] One account calls her a cousin of the Zhou emperor Xuan.^[7] In the second month of 580 Göktürk envoys came with tribute to fetch her.^[8] The Zhou sent Shenqing, duke of Runan, and Zhangsun Sheng to escort her to the Göktürks.^[9] In the same year, after the marriage, Taspar handed Shaoyi over to the Zhou.^[5]

Her house fell soon after she left. In 580 Yang Jian, the chancellor of the Zhou, accused her father of conspiracy. He killed him and his sons.^[9] In 581 Yang Jian took the throne himself and founded the Sui.^[10]

War against the Sui

After Taspar’s death she became the wife of his nephew Ishbara, who took the throne in 581.^[10] The Zhou Shu records the custom of the levirate. When a father, an elder brother or an uncle died, his sons, younger brothers and nephews married his widows.^[5] The new Sui emperor treated the Göktürks coldly.^[3] Qianjin grieved that the ancestral sacrifices of her house had been cut off.^[3] She spoke to Ishbara of revenge on the Sui day and night.^[3] The Zizhi tongjian gives Ishbara’s words to his officials: “I am a kinsman of the Zhou; now the duke of Sui has made himself emperor, and I could not stop it; with what face could I see the katun again?”^[11] In one account she hated the Sui emperor because he had executed the Zhou nobles at court and spared only the Göktürk Empress Ashina. Ishbara let her persuade him.^[12] In the Tongdian she is the one who raised the whole people for war when she heard that the Zhou had fallen.^[13] In 582 Ishbara raised his whole people, four hundred thousand bowmen. He invaded the Sui in the first of the wars with the Sui.^[10]

Daughter of the Sui emperor

The war went badly, and Ishbara’s cousins turned against him.^[3] Then Qianjin wrote to the Sui emperor and asked to be counted as one of his children.^[3] The Zizhi tongjian says that she asked to take the surname Yang and become the emperor’s daughter. It enters the request under 584.^[14] The emperor sent the official Xu Pinghe to Ishbara.^[3] In his letter of 584 Ishbara called the emperor his wife’s father and himself the emperor’s son-in-law.^[3] The emperor answered that he was sending his minister Yu Qingze to see his daughter and to see Ishbara.^[3]

Ishbara received the envoy seated and said that he was ill and could not rise.^[3] Qianjin told Yu Qingze privately: “The khan has the nature of a jackal and a wolf; if you quarrel with him too much, he will bite.”^[3] After the submission of 585 the emperor gave her the imperial surname Yang. He entered her in the register of the imperial house and renamed her Princess Dayi.^[3] The Zizhi tongjian gives her the new title a year earlier, with the embassy of Xu Pinghe.^[14] One account has Sui diplomats visit her at Ötüken and makes the title a kind of dowry.^[15] Encouraged by the title, she urged her husband to seek the protection of the Sui.^[15]

The poem on the screen

After Ishbara’s death in 587 she became the wife of Tulan, whom the Sui Shu calls Ishbara’s son.^[16] The Sui conquered the Chen in 589.^[17] The emperor sent Princess Dayi a screen that had belonged to Chen Shubao, the last Chen emperor.^[3] She had never made her peace with the Sui. On the screen she wrote a poem about the fall of the Chen and about herself.^[3]

Rise and fall are like morning and evening, the way of the world like floating duckweed. … I was born a child of an imperial house and have drifted into the court of the barbarians. … Only the song of Mingjun grieves for a bride married far away.^[3]

Sui Shu (Book of Sui)

The emperor heard of the poem and disliked it. His gifts to her grew fewer.^[3]

Death

In 593, by the Zizhi tongjian, a refugee named Yang Qin came to the Göktürks.^[18] He claimed that Liu Chang, the duke of Peng, was plotting a rising with the Yuwen house. According to him, Liu Chang wanted Princess Dayi to send troops against the frontier.^[3] Qianjin also allied herself with Niri, the khan of the western Göktürks.^[3] Then her affair with a hu of her following came out, and an edict deposed her.^[3] The Zizhi tongjian names the man An Suijia.^[18]

Yami, whom the Sui Shu calls Rangan, then held the north as Tuli Khan. He asked the Sui for a bride.^[3] The emperor had the official Pei Ju tell him: “Kill Princess Dayi, and then the marriage will be granted.”^[3] Yami slandered her to Tulan, and Tulan in his anger killed her in his tent.^[3] The Sui Shu adds, in its life of Pei Ju, that Pei Ju himself had asked to go to Tulan and persuade him to execute her.^[19] One account sets the bargain in 597. In it Yami murders her in return for the promise of the princess Anyi.^[20] The Zizhi tongjian enters the killing under 593.^[18] The death of Princess Dayi cleared the way for the Sui marriage of Yami in 597.^[3]

Name

千金公主ChineseZhou Shu 50
大義公主ChineseSui Shu 84
可賀敦周千金公主ChineseSui Shu 84

Qianjin has been rendered as “a thousand gold” and Dayi as “great righteousness”.^[21] The Sui Shu also calls her “the katun, the Zhou princess Qianjin”, with the title of the khan’s wife.^[3] Her murder had far-reaching consequences for the relations between the Göktürks and China.^[22]