China’s Queen Bao Si was blamed for thousands of years. Science has cleared her name
What history has long portrayed as a cautionary tale of a woman’s vanity bringing down a dynasty may have been the result of climate change
Few women in Chinese history have been as scorned – or as misunderstood – as Bao Si. For nearly three millennia, the queen has been remembered not as a person, but as a symbol: the beautiful femme fatale whose cold heart and unparalleled beauty brought down a dynasty.
According to legend, Bao Si was a queen so aloof she never smiled.
They dashed in, again and again, only to find no enemy. And when the real threat came – the Quanrong nomads storming in from the north – the beacons burned once more. Only, this time, no one came.
The capital fell. The king died. The dynasty collapsed. And the story became a moral lesson: how one woman’s vanity destroyed a kingdom.
The tale has echoed through Chinese literature for over 2,000 years. The Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian painted Bao Si as icy and indifferent. The Classic of Poetry lamented: “The splendid Zhou dynasty. Did Bao Si wreck it all!”