Empress Yuan (Northern Qi)

Empress Yuan (元皇后, personal name unknown) was an empress of the Chinese dynasty Northern Qi, known at times semi-formally as Empress Shuncheng (順成皇后) (due to her residence being Shuncheng Palace). Her husband was Emperor Xiaozhao (Gao Yan).

Her father Yuan Man (元蠻) was an official during the preceding Eastern Wei as a member of its imperial clan, and continued to serve in the Northern Qi government as a midlevel official. One of her uncles, Yuan Cha, was a regent of Northern Wei prior to its division into Eastern Wei and Western Wei. She married Gao Yan while or before he was the Prince of Changshan under the reign of his brother Emperor Wenxuan, the first emperor of Northern Qi, and she carried the title of Princess of Changshan. She bore him one son, Gao Bainian. In 559, when Emperor Wenxuan ordered a general execution of members of the Northern Wei imperial Yuan clan, Yuan Man and his household were one of the few households spared, on account of Gao Yan's intercession. Emperor Wenxuan granted Yuan Man's household a new surname, Buliugu (步六孤), but Yuan Man and Empress Yuan appeared to abandon the name once Emperor Wenxuan died later in the year.

Emperor Wenxuan was succeeded by his son Emperor Wenxuan. In 560, the prime minister Yang Yin, suspicious of the authority that Gao Yan and his brother Gao Zhan the Prince of Changguang wielded as the emperor's uncles, tried to strip them of power. Instead, Gao Yan and Gao Zhan set an ambush for Yang and his associates, capturing and then executing them. Gao Yan took over control of the imperial government and, later in the year, his mother Grand Empress Dowager Lou Zhaojun issued an edit deposing Emperor Fei and making Gao Yan emperor (as Emperor Xiaozhao).

Emperor Xiaozhao created Princess Yuan empress and created her son Gao Bainian crown prince. In fall 561, while, on a hunt near the secondary capital Jinyang (晉陽, in modern Taiyuan, Shanxi), Emperor Xiaozhao fell off his horse and suffered severe injuries. Believing that he was near death but believing that Gao Bainian to be too young to take the throne, at age five, issued an edict giving the throne to Gao Zhan. He died the same day, and Gao Zhan took the throne as Emperor Wucheng.

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