【龙腾网】为什么中国皇帝有成千上万的妃子，而西方皇帝只有一个妻子?

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原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译：魏晋余孽 转载请注明出处

Why did the Chinese emperors have thousands of concubines, while the Western emperors had only one wife?

为什么中国皇帝有成千上万的妃子，而西方皇帝只有一个妻子?

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原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译：魏晋余孽 转载请注明出处

Ge Wang, lives in China
Usually the emperor only have one woman that has the title皇后, which is equivalent to a queen. The queen and the emperor''s mother (which was also a queen when the emperor''s father was ruling) are the two most powerful women. Other women are tools to produce an heir, although they do have some kinds of less important titles. The queen is usually sexted from noble and well educated families and is married to the emperor(who may be a crown prince) at a young age (around 15). The queen is the first few women the emperor had in his life.
It is not easy to upgrade to the queen for other women even when the queen becomes old. The queen’s first son would be next emperor. And when they don''t have a son, other women''s son would be given to the queen. The queen is the mother of all the sons by law. But the new emperor would respect his real mother and name her the title after his succession, so there may be three most powerful women in the palace. Sometimes a more beautiful woman who may also come from a noble and powerful family may challenge the queen and the emperor may like her and support her. A lot stories may happen. However, changing a queen who don’t conduct any bad behaviors is against the mainstream value so most scholars and the emperor''s cabinet and advisors will argue with the emperor.
By the way, it is legal for every man, not only the emperors, to have more than one wife at the same time.

通常皇帝只有一个头衔为“皇后”的女人，相当于一个女王。女王和皇帝的母亲(在皇帝的父亲统治时期也是女王)是两个最有权势的女人。其他女性是生育后代的工具，尽管她们确实拥有一些不那么重要的头衔。女王通常是从贵族和受过良好教育的家庭中挑选出来的，在很年轻的时候(大约15岁)就嫁给了皇帝(可能是皇太子)。女王是皇帝一生中遇到的第一个女人。

即使女王年纪大了，其他女人升级为女王也是不容易的。女王的长子将成为下一任皇帝。当他们没有儿子的时候，其他女人的儿子就会被送给女王。根据法规，女王是所有儿子的母亲。但新皇帝会尊重他的亲生母亲，并在他继位后给她头衔，所以皇宫里可能有三个最有权势的女人。有时，一个来自高贵和强大家庭的更漂亮的女人可能会挑战女王，皇帝可能会喜欢和支持她。可能会发生很多故事。然而，更换一个没有任何不良行为的女王是违背主流价值观的，所以大多数学者和皇帝的内阁以及谏臣都会与皇帝争论。
顺便说一下，在同一时期，不仅是皇帝，每个男人有一个以上的妻子都是合法的。

Melania Van（回复Steve Lukis）
Nope. Empress Consort can be abolished, however not easy. Wu Zetian tried to set up Empress Consort Wang, thus she could be the Empress Consort. Wang was imprisoned for years before getting killed. It was much easier to murder the Empress Consort than try to abolish her.

不。后妃是可以废除的，但并不容易。武则天想陷害王皇后，这样她自己就可以成为皇后。王在被杀前曾被囚禁多年。杀死皇后比废除她要容易得多。

Valeri Leaver（回复Melania Van）
Sounds great just another form of slavery to keep women in a place where they have no place in society and no place in the world. I''m glad don''t live in that world. That would have made her a mistress , whatever the hell you want to call it. Still humanity in its worst form

听起来很好，不过是另一种奴役妇女的形式，让她们在社会上没有地位，在世界上也没有地位。我很高兴没有生活在那样的世界里。那会使她成为一个情妇，不管你怎么称呼她。人类仍然处于最糟糕的状态。

Melania Van（回复Valeri Leaver）
Not that bad as u think. Those ladies could still claim power, and even controlled the entire Empire. i.e. the Empress Dowager Lv Zhi, Cixi, and the solo female Emperor of China, Wu Zetian. Ladies were not restricted in one place, they still have the chance to revisit thier family, go for tours, etc.

没有你想的那么糟。这些妇女仍然可以要求权力，甚至控制整个帝国。比如吕雉、慈禧太后和中国独霸天下的女皇帝武则天。女士们没有被限制在一个地方，她们仍然有机会去拜访她们的家人，去旅游等等。

Anonymous
It’s because of Christianity. Christianity prescribes monogamy.
Similar to China, European queens were drawn from a sext pool. They were daughters of prominent families. A prince’s marriage was a big political event. That is how states or political factions made alliances in the olden days.
What was different is the treatment of the king’s women other than the queen. In China, it was perfectly legal and was in fact institutionalized. In Europe, it was illegal but tolerated. European kings had mistresses. It was normal and tolerated. However, from the point of view of the state, those mistresses didn’t exist. They were not part of the royal court. They had no influence on the running of the state, except through their personal influence on the king. Besides that, mistresses didn’t enjoy the legal and political protection of a queen. A king can dump his mistress anytime, but he can’t dump his queen easily.
A king and queen are bound by a legal marriage. In the olden days, divorce was hard; at least it was hard in Europe. Besides that, a queen always came from a prominent family. Dumping a queen was also making a prominent family your enemy, not something you would do without a good reason.
I am not sure how was the position of concubine in ancient China. However, considering that the concubinage was institutionalized and concubines had an important job, namely to produce children, I believe concubines of Chinese Emperors were safe as long as they produced children and the empress wasn’t unusually nasty. Besides that, the children of the concubines were legally considered to be the children of the queen. Legally, they had one father (the emperor) and two mothers (the queen and the concubine). Therefore, the queen had a good reason to actually treat the concubines well.

Yao Zhan, Masters History, La Trobe University (1997)
The power of the Catholic Christian church that’s why. The all powerful Catholic church taught that polygamy was evil even though it was not expressively forbidden in the Bible; Christianity imposed monogamy in Western societies. It was so strict that even Kings were not allowed to have 2nd wives, divorce was also frowned upon. The children of illegitimate unxs not consecrated by the church had limited legal rights.
Western Kings did have mistresses though. They aren’t exactly concubines in the Asian sense, their relationship is a bit clandestine. They were rarely acknowledged and of course their offspring/children were not in the line of the throne.
Chinese society was not under the influence of Christianity and consequently didn’t follow Christian teaching or consent to the authority of the church. Concubines were just a fact of court life in ancient China (or Japan). With no hangups over Christian teaching, China society felt no reason to hide them from public gaze.
At least one of the Japanese Emperors was the son of a concubine.

这就是天主教和基督教的力量。强大的天主教教会教导一夫多妻是邪恶的，尽管在圣经中并没有明文禁止。基督教在西方社会推行一夫一妻制。是如此严格，即使国王也不允许有第二个妻子，离婚也不被允许。私生子不会被教会神圣化，他们的合法权利是有限的。西方国王也有情妇。她们并不是亚洲意义上的小妾，他们的关系有点秘密。她们很少被承认，当然她们的后代也不在王位的继承人之列。
中国社会不受基督教的影响，因此不遵循基督教的教义，也不同意教会的权威。在古代中国(或日本)，妾是宫廷生活的一部分。中国社会没有基督教教义式的偏见，没有理由在公众的注视下隐藏她们。
至少有一位日本皇帝是小妾的儿子。

Jesse Pollard（回复Yao Zhan）
It wasn’t the Christian church - as Rome also had Emperors before Christianity existed, and they did not have more than one wife either.
I believe what prevented it was that Rome was run by families, and rather than weaken the emperor, only one wife was taken. A second wife would have weakened the hold/standing of the first wife’s family, invoked the rath of the family of the first wife… and the result would weaken the power of the emperor, with possible retaliation by the first wife’s family.

不是基督教的原因——因为在基督教存在之前，罗马也有皇帝，他们也没有一个以上的妻子。
我认为，罗马之所以这样，是因为它是由家族统治的，罗马皇帝因只娶了一个妻子而没有被削弱。第二个妻子会削弱第一个妻子家庭的地位，引起第一个妻子家庭的愤怒，这一结果将削弱皇帝的权力，并可能遭到第一位妻子的家人的报复。

Sam Meehan（回复Jesse Pollard）
Plus it’s messy on issues like inheritance, tax and such to have multiple spouses. Mistresses and concubines can be more safely ignored when considering these things.

此外，在遗产、税收等问题上，多配偶会造成混乱。
考虑到这些东西时，情妇和嫔妃的身份能被安全的忽视。

John Fozdar（回复Yao Zhan）
I don’t think this is true. It is reported that Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor had 6 or 8 wives. Martin Luther defended the Duke of Bavaria who was a bigamist. He challenged the Pope to show where bigamy was forbidden and got no answer.

我不认为这是真的。据记载，第一位神圣罗马帝国皇帝查理曼大帝有6到8个妻子。马丁·路德为重婚的巴伐利亚公爵辩护。他要求教皇指出重婚在哪里是被禁止的，但没有得到回答。

Alfred W Croucher, A diligent student of history.
Western Kings didn''t have to sleep with their wife and often didn''t. The marriage was usually a symbol of a political alliance. They had mistresses and courtesans to keep them amused.

西方国王不必和他们的妻子睡觉，通常也确实没有睡。这桩婚姻通常是政治联盟的象征。他们有情妇和妓女逗他们开心。

Quora User
Monogamy was the custom in Greek/Roman culture, and this was also adopted by the early Christian church. This was in contrast to ancient Judaism, which recognized polygamy. Dropping polygamy, like dropping circumcision and Jewish dietary restrictions, was a way of making Christianity acceptable to non-Jewish Europeans.
As others have said though, this didn’t necessarily mean that powerful European men restricted themselves to one woman, just that the children of extramarital relations had no claim on the man’s inheritance.

一夫一妻制是希腊/罗马文化的习俗，这也被早期的基督教会采用。这与古代犹太教形成了对比，古代犹太教承认一夫多妻制。取消一夫多妻制，就像取消割礼和犹太饮食限制一样，是让非犹太欧洲人接受基督教的一种方式。然而，正如其他人所说，这并不一定意味着有权势的欧洲男人只局限于一个女人，只是婚外关系的孩子无权继承男人的遗产。

Assaph Mehr, I like to read.
were common across all cultures, not just Chinese.
In Western Europe it was a less common practice probably due to Christian influences that have roots in Latin and Greek cultures.
But don''t fool yourself that European rulers limited themselves to just their wife when it came to sleeping arrangements. They just didn''t keep harems.

在所有文化中都很普遍，不仅仅是中国。在西欧，这是一个不太常见的做法，可能是由于基督教的影响，根源于拉丁和希腊文化。但不要自欺欺人地认为，欧洲统治者在睡觉问题上只局限于他们的妻子。他们只是不养后宫而已。

Anonymous
It’s unlikely that European kings had only one sexual partner. It should be remembered that European royals married not for love, but for political alliance. There is very good chance that many of such couples were unhappy with each others, yet divorce was not an option. After all, if a political alliance was sealed by a royal marriage, then divorce could be seen as breaking that alliance.
However, the fact that Catholic church insists on monogamy and the fact that Vatican was seen to be above the kings and is independent of the kings means that European kings couldn’t keep a stable of concubines of an obscene size like the Chinese monarchs did: “No limits were set for these consorts. This later created situation when more than 20,000 women were living in the Palace during the reign of Emperor Huan
and Emperor Ling.”
This is quite unusual. In most other civilizations, the priests were subject of the kings (which means the kings can do as they wish) or the kings were the chief priests (which also means the kings can do as they wish). Muslim kingdoms also had obscenely large stable of royal concubines even though Islam allows only up to 4 wives because Islam (or at least, Sunni Islam) has never had any Vatican-like institution.

欧洲的国王不可能只有一个性伴侣。应该记住，欧洲王室结婚不是为了爱情，而是为了政治联盟。很有可能的是，许多这样的夫妻对彼此都不满意，但离婚又不是一个可选项。毕竟，如果一个政治联盟是由皇室婚姻所缔结的，那么离婚可能会被视为打破了这个联盟。
然而，事实是天主教会坚持一夫一妻制，梵蒂冈被视为凌驾于国王之上，独立于国王之外意味着欧洲国王不能像中国君主那样养一群小妾：（中国）这些配偶没有受到任何限制，这就造成了后来桓帝和灵帝统治时期，有两万多名妇女居住在宫中的局面。
这很不寻常。在大多数其他文明中，祭司是国王的臣民(这意味着国王可以做他们想做的事)，或者国王本身就是祭司长(这也意味着国王可以做他们想做的事)。虽然伊斯兰教只允许4个妻子，但穆斯林王国也有大量的妃子，这是令人厌恶的，因为伊斯兰教(或至少是逊尼派伊斯兰教)从来没有类似梵蒂冈的机构。