I've recently become enamoured with this series, and I am fascinated with the workings of the Chinese Imperial Court during the Qing dynasty. However, I had a few questions:
What benefits would a concubine receive from being elevated to various ranks (First Attendant, Lady, Noble Consort etc)? Is it only for prestige, or were there practical benefits as well?
Multiple times in the series, characters were ordered to take their own lives rather than be killed via capital punishment. Why? What's the logic/reason behind this?
Herbalism is a strong theme throughout the series. Is there historical evidence of concubines or other Imperial members using herbs, remedies, poisons etc against one another, or is this pure fiction? For instance, one concubine laces another's ointment with musk in order to induce a miscarriage.
At one point, a concubine is burning offerings for her dead brother, and her servant cautions that doing so within the palace walls is forbidden. Why is this?
Thank you so much in advance for any answers to any of these questions!
What benefits would a concubine receive from being elevated to various ranks (First Attendant, Lady, Noble Consort etc)? Is it only for prestige, or were there practical benefits as well?
Believe it or not, being empress/consort/concubine was actually a full time job, as they were paid salaries from the emperor's private treasury, received subsidies and tributes, and various other items such as gold and silver ornaments, jade decorations, porcelain, bolts of silk, and even day to day items such as tea pots, chamber pots, and saliva pots. Volume 16 of the Guo Chao Gong Shi compiled in the Qianlong reign lists all these things in detail, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll only list their salaries and the number of serving girls assigned to them.
In addition, the construction of their palaces, the court apparel they wore, what kind of food they ate were all regulated according to their rank. So yes, there was a lot of practical benefit to being elevated in status.
Multiple times in the series, characters were ordered to take their own lives rather than be killed via capital punishment. Why? What's the logic/reason behind this?
Death by suicide was considered a much more noble way to die than being beheaded, as it preserves the body as a whole for the afterlife and it avoids the humiliation of a public execution. There were different kinds of suicide, with hanging and poison being the most common. Several important figures in Chinese history, such as Zhangsun Wuji, Princess Taiping, Imperial Consort Yang, Nian Gengyao, He Shen were executed via forced suicide.
Herbalism is a strong theme throughout the series. Is there historical evidence of concubines or other Imperial members using herbs, remedies, poisons etc against one another, or is this pure fiction? For instance, one concubine laces another's ointment with musk in order to induce a miscarriage.
Not too sure about the Qing, but in the Ming there were instances of poisoning concubines to induce miscarriages. Chenghua Emperor's concubine Lady Wan was said to have poisoned other concubines, so nobody dared to tell the emperor that he had a son (for fears that the son would be poisoned). Madam Ke, the Tianqi Emperor's wet nurse, was said to have done the same. This theme is quite popular in Chinese historical dramas though, so it's probably highly exaggerated here.
At one point, a concubine is burning offerings for her dead brother, and her servant cautions that doing so within the palace walls is forbidden. Why is this?
It was considered inauspicious and offensive to place offerings to dead people in the palace where the emperor might spend the night.