Consort Yang (Wenzong)

Consort Yang, imperial consort rank Xianfei (楊賢妃, personal name unknown) (died February 12, 840), was an imperial consort of the Chinese dynasty Tang Dynasty. She was a concubine of Emperor Wenzong who became involved in the selection process of his heir and who died as a result of her involvement.

Little is known about Consort Yang's background, as there was no biography of her among the biographies of the empresses and imperial consorts in either the Old Book of Tang or the New Book of Tang. However, in an allegation that Emperor Wenzong's brother Emperor Wuzong later made against her (posthumously) and the chancellor Yang Sifu, Emperor Wuzong stated that Yang Sifu had written a letter to her urging her to assume regency as an empress dowager in which Yang Sifu referred to her as an aunt. This allegation, if true, would suggest that she was a daughter of Yang Sifu's grandfather Yang Taiqing (楊太清), who served as a county magistrate, and a sister to Yang Sifu's father Yang Yuling (楊於陵), who was an honored official during the reign of Emperor Wenzong's father Emperor Muzong. (However, it should also be noted that Emperor Wuzong also referred to a younger brother of Consort Yang as Yang Xuansi (楊玄思), and it would have been somewhat unusual, although not highly so, for Yang Xuansi and Yang Yuling to be brothers but not share a character in their personal names.)

It is not known when Consort Yang became Emperor Wenzong's concubine, but it is known that as of 837, she was an imperial consort with the rank of Zhaorong (昭容), the sixth highest rank possible for imperial consorts. In 837, she was promoted to the rank of Xianfei (賢妃), the fourth highest rank for imperial consorts, while fellow imperial consort Consort Wang, the mother of Emperor Wenzong's oldest son Li Yong, was promoted from the rank of Zhaoyi (昭儀) (fifth highest rank) to Defei (德妃) (third highest rank). There was no indication as to whether she was involved in Yang Sifu's becoming chancellor in 838.

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