I just watched Empresses in the Palace on Netflix -- it remembers me of Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern. Something that really interested me was the eunuchs taking parts and joining plots at the imperial harem -- don't know if this is the right word and probably it isn't. But since I don't speak any mandarim, I used the term that was on the subtitles.
So, my questions is: how influential were eunuchs during the Qing Dinasty and did they really participated in the concubines plots? There were this kind of sophisticated plots or it's just television?
(sorry if there's any bad english - it's not my native language)
Throughout Imperial Chinese history, palace eunuchs exerted great control, especially when there was a weak Emperor as they could control access to him. Factional conflicts between Eunuchs and Confucian scholars, the traditional government officials, arguably resulted in the collapse of the Ming. The early Qing emperors aware of this reduced the power of eunuchs but overtime the Manchus grew lax regarding this policy. Nonetheless, while eunuchs continued to take part of imperial intrigue, they overall did not regain such power again. Source: The Search for Modern China, Jonathan Spence