Cixi

**Rarity** | TBA

**Cixi** is one of the Future Work in Progress Champions in Aeon Clash.

## Background

* **Source:** Wikipedia Article

Empress Dowager Cixi; born Yehe Nara Xingzhen (29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908), was a Chinese noblewoman of the Manchu Yehe Nara clan, concubine and later regent who effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Selected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, the young boy became the Tongzhi Emperor, and she assumed the role of co-empress dowager, alongside the Emperor's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency along with Ci'an, who later died. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of her son, the Tongzhi Emperor, in 1875. This was contrary to the traditional rules of succession of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644.
Cixi supervised the Tongzhi Restoration, a series of moderate reforms that helped the regime survive until 1911. Although Cixi refused to adopt Western models of government, she supported technological and military reforms and the Self-Strengthening Movement. She supported the principles of the Hundred Days' Reforms of 1898, but feared that sudden implementation, without bureaucratic support, would be disruptive and that the Japanese and other foreign powers would take advantage of any weakness. She placed the Guangxu Emperor, who, she thought, had tried to assassinate her, under virtual house arrest for supporting radical reformers, publicly executing the main reformers. After the Boxer Rebellion led to invasion by Allied armies, Cixi initially backed the Boxer groups and declared war on the invaders. The ensuing defeat was a stunning humiliation. When Cixi returned to Beijing from Xi'an, where she had taken the emperor, she became friendly to foreigners in the capital and began to implement fiscal and institutional reforms aimed to turn China into a constitutional monarchy. The deaths of both Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in November 1908 left the court in the hands of Manchu conservatives, a child, Puyi, on the throne, and a restless, deeply divided society. Historians both in China and abroad have debated her legacy. She has conventionally been depicted as a ruthless despot whose reactionary policies – although successful in managing to prolong the ailing Qing dynasty – led to its humiliation and eventual downfall in the Wuchang Uprising. However, revisionists have suggested that Nationalist and Communist revolutionaries scapegoated her for deep-rooted problems which were beyond salvaging, and laud her maintenance of political order. She was responsible for numerous effective, if belated, reforms, including the abolition of slavery, ancient methods of torture and the old civil service examination system in her ailing years. The latter was supplanted by institutions including the new Peking University.

### Champion Skill

* **CHAMPION SKILL:** TBA
	+ TBA
		- **COOLDOWN: 25s**