Empress Feng Run

Empress Feng Run (馮潤) (died 499), formally Empress You (幽皇后, literally "the lonely empress") was an empress of the Chinese/Xianbei dynasty Northern Wei. She was the second empress of Emperor Xiaowen.

Feng Run was a daughter of Feng Xi (馮熙) the Prince of Changli, who was a brother of the powerful Grand Empress Dowager Feng, the wife of Emperor Wencheng and regent over his son Emperor Xianwen and grandson Emperor Xiaowen. (Through her father, she was therefore also a great-granddaughter of the Northern Yan emperor Feng Hong.) Her mother was Feng Xi's concubine Lady Chang. When she was 13, Grand Empress Dowager Feng selected her and a sister of hers to be Emperor Xiaowen's concubines. Both were favored by Emperor Xiaowen, but her sister soon died of an illness, and she herself grew ill (may be of smallpox) and was sent back to her home. She subsequently became a Buddhist nun, but was said to have been sexually immoral during this timespan as well.

In 493, Feng Run's younger sister by a different mother (probably Feng Xi's wife Princess Boling), Feng Qing, became Emperor Xiaowen's empress. Subsequently, Emperor Xiaowen, perhaps through Feng Qing, found out that Feng Run had recovered from her illness, and took her back into the palace as an imperial consort, with the title Zhaoyi (昭儀). She became Emperor Xiaowen's favorite again. Because Feng Run was Emperor Xiaowen's concubine earlier and was an older sister, she refused to submit to Feng Qing and tried to undermine Feng Qing's position as an empress, including accusing Feng Qing of disobeying Emperor Xiaowen's Sinicization regime. In 496, Emperor Xiaowen deposed Feng Qing, and in 497, he created Feng Run empress.

Because Emperor Xiaowen often spent his time on the frontlines battling rival Southern Qi, he was not often at the palace in the capital Luoyang. Empress Feng therefore carried on an affair with her attendant Gao Pusa (高菩薩). With the eunuch Shuang Meng (雙蒙) protecting her, few knew or dared to say anything about the affair, and when her attendant Ju Peng (劇彭) tried to counsel her to stop the affair, she would not, and Ju died in fear and anger. At the same time, however, Empress Feng tried to force Emperor Xiaowen's sister Princess Pengcheng (who had been widowed after the death of her husband Liu Chengxu (劉承緒), to marry her brother Feng Su (馮夙). Emperor Xiaowen approved of the marriage, Princess Pengcheng was unwilling to marry Feng Su, so she fled out of Luoyang and sought out Emperor Xiaowen on the frontline, revealing to him Empress Feng's affair with Gao. Emperor Xiaowen was initially unwilling to believe the accusation and kept it secret, but Empress Feng became nervous and, along with her mother Lady Chang, engaged witches to try to curse Emperor Xiaowen, who was already ill by this time, to death.

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