Why was almost every Empress Dowager in Chinese history, with very few exceptions, a cruel and disastrous megalomaniac...

I don't know much about Chinese sources so it's a shot in the dark, but it's feasible it's just sources shit-talking because they presume women to be incompetent and self interest. They might not get the benefit of the doubt, sort of the same way Roman sources always shit-talk stepmothers.

This is probably the best answer.

Almost everything we know about Dowager Cixi and her supposedly cruel actions is from hostile sources who benefited from portraying her as an insane, cruel tyrant.

Because women were prevented from exercising power, the women who did achieve power were necessarily those who were brutal and ruthless.

but women ARE incompetent and self-interested...

Outside of those hostile sources though, we don't get a very positive picture either.

>Reversed all attempts at reforms
>Supported the Boxers
>May have poisoned her nephew

this

The vaginal jew

Combine the natural barbarity of orientals with the natural craziness of women and you shouldn't be surprised by the results.

>natural barbarity of orientals
>performs swedish drink
>barbeques jews
>nuthin personal yellow man

>performs lingchi
>boils dogs alive
>eats the population of a city in a seige
but you whiteys did bad things too so it doesn't count wwwwwww

So are men, in fact that describes most people

Because women are women. Theyre dumb, ignorant, arrogant, and overall power hungry.

>t. Im married

>Reversed all attempts at reforms
>Supported the Boxers
Why was that bad?

>May have poisoned her nephew
Boo fucking hoo, even if true.

Confucianism doesn't like women being in power, so those recording history have a vested interest in trying to focus on all the bad parts of empress dowagers instead of the good parts.
That said Cixi was definitely a grade A cunt.

Stuff like that was pretty much an average month in Piefaceland.

>Reversed all attempts at reforms
>Supported the Boxers
>Why was that bad?
because it led to the chinese getting absolutely wreckt for a century and a half by literally everyone.

Yeah but the natural barbarity of Europeans with the natural craziness of a man we did pretty well

>>boils dogs alive
Perhaps he's wondering why you would boil a dog, before skinning it and carving up its meat?

You're going to compare eating dogs to genocides on three continents and say asians are worse lol.

Why is it that 6 of the 10 most deadly wars in human history in terms of civilian casualties happened in East Asia?

Gooks keep their troubles in their own backyard

Close. 6 of the top 11 deadliest wars in human history happened in China, and out of those 5 were Chinese civil wars.

Because of confusianism, the son must respect her parents, this gave the empress dowager more power than the king.

youtu.be/4AHH0bdNKyM

lmao

Confucianism is quite particular about the child obeying their parent of the same gender. The son doesn't have nearly the same obligation to the mother as the father.

Can someone help me understand something about this board?

Do a anons really recognize some wealthy Asian woman from 200 years ago like this? Do you image search it?
I see it all the time, a pic is posted and its just some renaissance painting of an aristocrat in a big hat and somehow every one seems to know who it is.
Please explain

It may be hard to believe, but many of us have more useless historical knowledge tucked away than you could possiblyimagine

Her name is in the image file name..

I can do it with some Europeans, certainly someone can do it with Asians.

The Chinese population has always been huge so any war there is almost always bloody.

Dowager empresses aren't part of the line of succession. Even when they get to be regents, it's almost invariably as guardian of their son's rights and with an actual minister handling all the actual work. For an empress to actually hold real power, she has to basically coup the state and impose herself through backroom politicking. That kinda limits your character types to cruel megalomaniacs by itself.
Insofar as being disastrous, well old people with little life experience (hard to come by closed off in a mansion from birth to death) don't generally make for effective rulers.

>Can someone help me understand something about this board?
>Do a anons really recognize some random sportsman from the 80s like this? Do you image search it?
>I see it all the time, a pic is posted and its just some black and white photo of an a nigger in short shorts and somehow every one seems to know who it is.
You do realize that you just said the Veeky Forums equivalent of this, right?

Also:
>every one
Not everyone dummy. Only people interested in the subject of the thread.
It's not like everyone here recognizea every painting, but obviously one would recognize depictions of the more relevant historical figures of the periods one's interested in.

History has always been one of my main hobbies and now what I'm studying. I read about it a lot, talk about it a lot, listen to stuff about it a lot. If I can't tell who a person is, I can generally tell where and when that person is from from cues like clothing style/uniform or the style of painting/sculpture/photography, and from there extrapolate, search on my own. In European and East Asian History, at least. And yeah, if I really can't tell I just reverse image search, and it becomes a good opportunity to learn completely new things.

But Empress Cixi is pretty famous, user. I think most people with any interest in History would be able to recognize her.

Yes but I also don't talk to women, I've never had sex and will almost certainly never spread my genetics. It's give and take.