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Kyungchang Gungju(慶昌宮主) Ryu Clan, the King Wonjong’s Queen Consort in Goryeo

Soojung Shin 1

1가천대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This is a reserch on Kyongchang Gungju Ryu clan, who was the queen consort of King Wonjong in Goryeo. According to the book of History of Goryeo(『高麗史』), Wang Hu(Empress) means a queen consort, and Gungju(宮主, an owner of a palace) was considered as a concubine. By means of the title, people may think that Kyungchang Gungju was a concubine of a king, but she was the empress of King Wonjong. To understand her in detail, I would like to focus on her family, marriage, and her position in the palace in the Goryeo dynasty. First, she comes from the royal family. Her father, Wang Chun(王佺), was a son of a princess of King Gangjong(康宗), and her mother was a princess of King Huijong(熙宗). Her original surname was Wang clan, but she changed family name into Ryu clan to hide the intermarriage between near relatives. She married King Wonjong as the second wife. This marriage was rather unusual because women of the royal family were the first consort for kings in Goryo before the times of the Mongol Yeun's intervention. The previous wife of King Wonjong was a granddaughter of Choi Yi, who was a ruler during the Military Regime in Goryeo. The first wife died after she gave birth to a son, so Kyngchang Gungju became the second consort. After the marriage, Kyngchang Gungju has been positioned in the first rank among women in the royal palace as a crown princess because no empress or empress dowager was alive. As a queen consort, she made a false charge against her stepson who would be a crown prince. Due to the incident, there could not establish a good rapport between two. At last her stepson, King Chungnyeol, acceded to the throne, so she had been in the position of the queen mother. By the way, the new king and his queen consort did not respect her as a queen mother. In addition, some eunuchs reported to the king that she had prayed with a magician monk to make her biological son as a king, so she was punished by the king. As a result, she degraded into a common person. Therefore, even though she was the queen consort of King Wonjong, her title was not recorded as an empress of King Wonjong, but as Kyungchang Gungju Ryu Clan.

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