The Han shu gives one of the greatest consort families a single sentence: 孝元王皇后，成帝母也。家凡十侯，五大司馬，外戚莫盛焉。自有傳 — the queen of Emperor Yuan, mother of Emperor Cheng; ten marquises and five grand commanders-in-chief in one house, no consort kin more powerful; her own biography is elsewhere. Ten and five, and nothing else: no names, no dates. This article takes that ledger entry and measures it against the Shiji's opening, where the same subject is put as six clauses in three pairs about three dynasties.
The Three Pairs
The Shiji opens its chapter with an argument: 非獨內德茂也，蓋亦有外戚之助焉 — a founding house did not stand on its own virtue alone; consort kin helped. Then six clauses in three pairs: 夏之興也以涂山，而桀之放也以末喜; 殷之興也以有娀，紂之殺也嬖妲己; 周之興也以姜原及大任，而幽王之禽也淫於褒姒. A rise and a fall, each paired with one marriage or one woman, three times. The moral follows: 夫婦之際，人道之大倫也。禮之用，唯婚姻為兢兢 — the bond of husband and wife is the great relation of the human way, and in the use of rites marriage is what one treads carefully.
The six clauses in three pairs are an argument in a preface, not a roll of evidence, and the chapter says so when it reaches its own day: 太史公曰：秦以前尚略矣，其詳靡得而記焉 — before Qin the record is thin and the detail cannot be written. The Shiji stops at Emperor Wu; the Han shu carries the account on to Emperor Ping. The Han shu takes the same subject later and turns the whole span into two numbers: 序自漢興，終于孝平，外戚後庭色寵著聞二十有餘人，然其保位全家者，唯文、景、武帝太后及邛成后四人而已 — from the founding to Emperor Ping twenty-odd people were famous for favour, and only four kept their position and their families whole. More than twenty in, four whole: a ratio, not a story.
Ten and Five
The Wang sentence is a ledger entry, not a life: 家凡十侯，五大司馬，外戚莫盛焉. The 自有傳 belongs to the entry's honesty — the page that counts them is not the page that names them; the biography is elsewhere in the book, outside this chapter, and this article does not fill in the ten names or the five offices. What the sentence gives is the scale. For the Shiji's families it is one number each: 薄氏侯者凡一人; 竇氏凡三人為侯; 王太后家凡三人為侯; 衛氏枝屬以軍功起家，五人為侯. For the Wang of the late Han it is ten and five. The five commanders are not named on this page either; the entry is a count, and the count is the point.
The Shiji's four houses and the Han shu's Wang are not the same account and are not merged here. The 王太后 of the Shiji is the consort of Emperor Jing and mother of Emperor Wu; the 孝元王皇后 of the Han shu is the consort of Emperor Yuan and mother of Emperor Cheng. Two pages, two ages; what is comparable is only the way both books count — how many marquises, how many commanders — and nothing else is compared.
The One That Came by War
The Wei family is the Shiji's other kind of rise. The Wei empress had been a singer in the household of Princess Pingyang; her brother Wei Qing and her nephew Huo Qubing made their names against the Xiongnu, and the chapter's ledger reads 衛氏枝屬以軍功起家，五人為侯 — the Wei branches rose by military merit, five of them marquises. A song of the time is quoted: 生男無喜，生女無怒，獨不見衛子夫霸天下 — do not rejoice at a son, do not rage at a daughter; have you not seen how Wei Zifu holds the world? The page gives the song and the count, and no judgement on either.
The chapter then ends on a harder case: Emperor Wu's 鉤弋夫人, mother of the young Emperor Zhao. Before he made the boy heir he had the mother killed, and gave his reason: 往古國家所以亂也，由主少母壯也 — in antiquity states fell into disorder because the ruler was young and the mother in her prime. The page adds, flatly, 故諸為武帝生子者，無男女，其母無不譴死 — every woman who bore Wu a child, boy or girl, was put to death. This article reports the words and the practice and does not grade the emperor.
The Four Who Kept Whole
The Han shu's verdict keeps the arithmetic: 保位全家者，唯文、景、武帝太后及邛成后四人而已, and then 其餘大者夷滅，小者放流 — four kept position and family; the rest, the great ones wiped out, the small ones sent away. One case is told at length before the verdict and stands for the others: Empress Xu of Emperor Cheng, 凡立十四年而廢，在昭臺歲餘，還徙長定宮 — fourteen years as empress, then deposed, a year in Zhaotai, moved to Changding; and at the end 天子使廷尉孔光持節賜廢后藥，自殺 — the emperor sent the commandant of justice with the token and the medicine, and she killed herself. The Han shu gives her fourteen years and a move; the Shiji does not have her at all.
That is what a family's rise and fall looks like at the scale the Han shu works in: years counted, a palace named, and then a death with an official in the room. The chapter does not moralise over Xu; the moralising is left to the verdict.
The Reckoning
The Han shu's last word: 易著吉凶而言謙盈之效 — the Changes sets out fortune and misfortune and speaks of the effect of modesty and fullness; then 夫女寵之興，繇至微而體至尊，窮富貴而不以功，此固道家所畏，禍福之宗也 — favour at court starts from the smallest place, reaches the highest honour, and exhausts wealth and rank without merit; this is what the Daoists fear, the root of fortune and misfortune. And the close: 鑒茲行事，變亦備矣 — look at how these things were done, and the changes are all there. The verdict is quoted; no verdict is added.
The limits. No genealogy: the pages name far more people than can be followed here, and only three things are used — the six clauses in three pairs on three dynasties, the Wang ledger entry of ten and five, and two endings, the Wei rise by war and the Xu fall by deposition. The lists of exemplary women and the fourteen palace ranks are other articles, and so are the chapters on bondservants and on knights-errant. No essay on consort kin seizing power, and no grading of persons.
What the pages do not give: the ten names and five offices of the Wang, the dates of most of these lives, and any general law about consort families. The Han shu is the later book and follows the Shiji where the two overlap — one subject in two tellings, not two witnesses. The export used in this round drops page headers and renders variant marks away, so the headers are not re-checked here and no marked character is treated as settled text.
Related reading：Drawing Water and Stepping to the Loom: Two Ways Han Women Were Written Down · From Zhaoyi to Yezhe: Fourteen Ranks of the Han Palace and Their Stipends · Royal Fields and Private Dependants: Slaves and Two Edicts in Han China
Sources & further reading
- 《史记》卷四十九·外戚世家第十九（西汉司马迁撰；维基文库本，白文无注，页头未标 textquality，未与中华书局点校本复核） — The earlier book, and the one that carries the argument: 非獨內德茂也，蓋亦有外戚之助焉, followed by eight clauses pairing a dynasty's rise and fall with a marriage or a woman — 夏之興也以涂山，而桀之放也以末喜, and the same for Yin and Zhou. The chapter then says the pre-Qin record is too thin to write in detail, and turns to Han families, each with a count: 薄氏侯者凡一人, 竇氏凡三人為侯, 王太后家凡三人為侯, 衛氏枝屬以軍功起家，五人為侯. It gives the Wei rise through military merit, with the song 生男無喜，生女無怒，獨不見衛子夫霸天下, and it closes on 鉤弋夫人 and the emperor's reason for killing her, 往古國家所以亂也，由主少母壯也, with the flat statement that every woman who bore Wu a child was put to death. Text supplied from the team's saved export of the page; page headers could not be re-checked in that export.
- 《汉书》卷九十七下·外戚传第六十七下（东汉班固撰；维基文库本，白文无注，页头未标 textquality，未与中华书局点校本复核） — The later book on the same subject, and not a second witness: it follows the Shiji where the two overlap and keeps its own accounts for the Han. It opens with the family this article uses as its scale, 孝元王皇后，成帝母也。家凡十侯，五大司馬，外戚莫盛焉。自有傳 — the ten and five are given as a ledger entry, with the biography that names them elsewhere. Its verdict supplies the arithmetic: 序自漢興，終于孝平，外戚後庭色寵著聞二十有餘人，然其保位全家者，唯文、景、武帝太后及邛成后四人而已, and 其餘大者夷滅，小者放流. One case is told at length, Empress Xu, 凡立十四年而廢，在昭臺歲餘，還徙長定宮, ending with 天子使廷尉孔光持節賜廢后藥，自殺. The 贊曰 closes on 夫女寵之興，繇至微而體至尊，窮富貴而不以功，此固道家所畏，禍福之宗也 and 鑒茲行事，變亦備矣. The long documents of this section (the empresses' memorials and the emperor's replies) are not used. Text supplied from the team's saved export; page headers could not be re-checked.
