Reflections | In ancient China, marriages between relatives weren’t completely taboo

Although frowned upon today, marriages between affinal relatives, or relatives by marriage, happened in history

Soon after the Manchus conquered China and established the Qing dynasty the practice fell out of favour

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Portraits of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Photo: AFP

Wee Kek Koon

Published: 5:15am, 27 Jul 2020Updated: 5:23am, 27 Jul 2020

It took me 11 years but I am finally reading Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall. Published in 2009, it is a fictionalised account of events in early Tudor-era England, and within the first few chapters, we are given to understand that all is not well with the marriage between King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his older brother, Arthur.

While not strictly speaking a levirate marriage, where a man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow, especially if the deceased brother is childless, the marriage between Henry VIII and his sister-in-law Catherine was arranged for geopolitical expediency.

Its eventual annulment, in 1533, would set in motion several key events in European history, among the, Henry VIII’s excommunication by the pope in Rome, and the birth of the Church of England and Anglican Christianity.

Many cultures today frown upon marriages between affinal relatives, or relatives by marriage, with some even prohibiting them as incestuous. Although such unions do not involve consanguinity, or blood ties, the idea of marrying one’s parents-in-law, siblings’ spouses, step-siblings, and so on, makes most people very uncomfortable.

In ancient and early imperial China – at least among the upper classes – people were not totally averse to marriages between relatives not related by blood. There are a number of examples but these were exceptions to the rule.

Lady Qijiang was the consort of two rulers of the state of Jin, Duke Wu (died 677BC) and then Duke Xian (died 661BC), who were father and son. In AD651, the Tang dynasty’s Emperor Gaozong took his late father’s consort out of a nunnery and into the palace, where she became his own consort. Four decades later, she would eventually ascend to the throne as Empress Wu Zetian, China’s only empress regnant.

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