Empress Pan (Da)

Empress Pan
A Qing dynasty portrait of Empress Pan
Empress of Eastern Wu
Born	(Unknown)
Died	252
Names
Traditional Chinese	潘皇后
Simplified Chinese	潘皇后
Pinyin	Pān Huánghòu
Wade–Giles	Pan Huang-hou

Empress Pan (died 252), personal name unknown, was an empress of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. She was the only empress of Wu's founding emperor, Sun Quan, even though he had a succession of wives before her.

Lady Pan was from Juzhang County (句章縣; within present-day Ningbo) in Kuaiji Commandery. Her father, who served as a low-ranking official, was executed for committing an offence whose details are not recorded. Both Lady Pan and her elder sister ended up as workers in a textile factory. Once, Sun Quan encountered her and felt that she was extraordinary so he took her as his concubine. In 243, while she was pregnant, she dreamt of receiving a dragon head and gave birth to Sun Liang later. In 250, in the aftermath of a succession struggle between Sun Quan's sons Sun He and Sun Ba, Sun Liang was designated as the crown prince by his father. In the same year, Lady Pan requested Sun Quan to arrange a marriage for her elder sister and he agreed. In 251, Sun Quan instated Lady Pan as the empress. Empress Pan was known for being jealous and malicious as she never ceased slandering and harming Sun Quan's other wives until her death.

When Sun Quan became seriously ill in 252, Empress Pan asked Sun Hong (孫弘), the Prefect of the Palace Writers (中書令), about how Empress Lü Zhi seized power after the death of her husband (Emperor Gao of the Han Dynasty). She herself also fell sick due to the stress of continuously attending to Sun Quan. However, she was ultimately murdered that year, but how she was murdered remains a controversy. Wu officials claimed that her servants, unable to stand her temper, strangled her while she was asleep and claimed her death was of natural causes; while a number of historians, including Hu Sanxing, the commentator to Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian, believed that top Wu officials were complicit, as they feared that she would seize power as empress dowager after Sun Quan's death. Investigation into her death resulted in the executions of 6-7 people. Sun Quan died soon after in the same year. Empress Pan was buried together with Sun Quan at the Jiang Mausoleum (蔣陵; at the Purple Mountain, Nanjing, Jiangsu). The historian Hu Sanxing commented in his annotations to the Zizhi Tongjian that the murder of Empress Pan was probably a conspiracy by top officials in Eastern Wu because they feared that she would seize power after Sun Quan's death.