正文翻譯
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Why did the Chinese emperors have thousands of concubines, while the Western emperors had only one wife?

為什么中國皇帝有成千上萬的妃子，而西方皇帝只有一個妻子?

評論翻譯
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://www.ltaaa.com 翻譯：魏晉余孽 轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處

Ge Wang, lives in China
Usually the emperor only have one woman that has the title皇后, which is equivalent to a queen. The queen and the emperor''s mother (which was also a queen when the emperor''s father was ruling) are the two most powerful women. Other women are tools to produce an heir, although they do have some kinds of less important titles. The queen is usually sexted from noble and well educated families and is married to the emperor(who may be a crown prince) at a young age (around 15). The queen is the first few women the emperor had in his life.
It is not easy to upgrade to the queen for other women even when the queen becomes old. The queen’s first son would be next emperor. And when they don''t have a son, other women''s son would be given to the queen. The queen is the mother of all the sons by law. But the new emperor would respect his real mother and name her the title after his succession, so there may be three most powerful women in the palace. Sometimes a more beautiful woman who may also come from a noble and powerful family may challenge the queen and the emperor may like her and support her. A lot stories may happen. However, changing a queen who don’t conduct any bad behaviors is against the mainstream value so most scholars and the emperor''s cabinet and advisors will argue with the emperor.
By the way, it is legal for every man, not only the emperors, to have more than one wife at the same time.

通?；实壑挥幸粋€頭銜為“皇后”的女人，相當(dāng)于一個女王。女王和皇帝的母親(在皇帝的父親統(tǒng)治時期也是女王)是兩個最有權(quán)勢的女人。其他女性是生育后代的工具，盡管她們確實(shí)擁有一些不那么重要的頭銜。女王通常是從貴族和受過良好教育的家庭中挑選出來的，在很年輕的時候(大約15歲)就嫁給了皇帝(可能是皇太子)。女王是皇帝一生中遇到的第一個女人。

即使女王年紀(jì)大了，其他女人升級為女王也是不容易的。女王的長子將成為下一任皇帝。當(dāng)他們沒有兒子的時候，其他女人的兒子就會被送給女王。根據(jù)法規(guī)，女王是所有兒子的母親。但新皇帝會尊重他的親生母親，并在他繼位后給她頭銜，所以皇宮里可能有三個最有權(quán)勢的女人。有時，一個來自高貴和強(qiáng)大家庭的更漂亮的女人可能會挑戰(zhàn)女王，皇帝可能會喜歡和支持她?？赡軙l(fā)生很多故事。然而，更換一個沒有任何不良行為的女王是違背主流價值觀的，所以大多數(shù)學(xué)者和皇帝的內(nèi)閣以及諫臣都會與皇帝爭論。
順便說一下，在同一時期，不僅是皇帝，每個男人有一個以上的妻子都是合法的。

Melania Van（回復(fù)Steve Lukis）
Nope. Empress Consort can be abolished, however not easy. Wu Zetian tried to set up Empress Consort Wang, thus she could be the Empress Consort. Wang was imprisoned for years before getting killed. It was much easier to murder the Empress Consort than try to abolish her.

不。后妃是可以廢除的，但并不容易。武則天想陷害王皇后，這樣她自己就可以成為皇后。王在被殺前曾被囚禁多年。殺死皇后比廢除她要容易得多。

Valeri Leaver（回復(fù)Melania Van）
Sounds great just another form of slavery to keep women in a place where they have no place in society and no place in the world. I''m glad don''t live in that world. That would have made her a mistress , whatever the hell you want to call it. Still humanity in its worst form

聽起來很好，不過是另一種奴役婦女的形式，讓她們在社會上沒有地位，在世界上也沒有地位。我很高興沒有生活在那樣的世界里。那會使她成為一個情婦，不管你怎么稱呼她。人類仍然處于最糟糕的狀態(tài)。

Melania Van（回復(fù)Valeri Leaver）
Not that bad as u think. Those ladies could still claim power, and even controlled the entire Empire. i.e. the Empress Dowager Lv Zhi, Cixi, and the solo female Emperor of China, Wu Zetian. Ladies were not restricted in one place, they still have the chance to revisit thier family, go for tours, etc.

沒有你想的那么糟。這些婦女仍然可以要求權(quán)力，甚至控制整個帝國。比如呂雉、慈禧太后和中國獨(dú)霸天下的女皇帝武則天。女士們沒有被限制在一個地方，她們?nèi)匀挥袡C(jī)會去拜訪她們的家人，去旅游等等。

Anonymous
It’s because of Christianity. Christianity prescribes monogamy.
Similar to China, European queens were drawn from a sext pool. They were daughters of prominent families. A prince’s marriage was a big political event. That is how states or political factions made alliances in the olden days.
What was different is the treatment of the king’s women other than the queen. In China, it was perfectly legal and was in fact institutionalized. In Europe, it was illegal but tolerated. European kings had mistresses. It was normal and tolerated. However, from the point of view of the state, those mistresses didn’t exist. They were not part of the royal court. They had no influence on the running of the state, except through their personal influence on the king. Besides that, mistresses didn’t enjoy the legal and political protection of a queen. A king can dump his mistress anytime, but he can’t dump his queen easily.
A king and queen are bound by a legal marriage. In the olden days, divorce was hard; at least it was hard in Europe. Besides that, a queen always came from a prominent family. Dumping a queen was also making a prominent family your enemy, not something you would do without a good reason.
I am not sure how was the position of concubine in ancient China. However, considering that the concubinage was institutionalized and concubines had an important job, namely to produce children, I believe concubines of Chinese Emperors were safe as long as they produced children and the empress wasn’t unusually nasty. Besides that, the children of the concubines were legally considered to be the children of the queen. Legally, they had one father (the emperor) and two mothers (the queen and the concubine). Therefore, the queen had a good reason to actually treat the concubines well.

Yao Zhan, Masters History, La Trobe University (1997)
The power of the Catholic Christian church that’s why. The all powerful Catholic church taught that polygamy was evil even though it was not expressively forbidden in the Bible; Christianity imposed monogamy in Western societies. It was so strict that even Kings were not allowed to have 2nd wives, divorce was also frowned upon. The children of illegitimate unxs not consecrated by the church had limited legal rights.
Western Kings did have mistresses though. They aren’t exactly concubines in the Asian sense, their relationship is a bit clandestine. They were rarely acknowledged and of course their offspring/children were not in the line of the throne.
Chinese society was not under the influence of Christianity and consequently didn’t follow Christian teaching or consent to the authority of the church. Concubines were just a fact of court life in ancient China (or Japan). With no hangups over Christian teaching, China society felt no reason to hide them from public gaze.
At least one of the Japanese Emperors was the son of a concubine.

這就是天主教和基督教的力量。強(qiáng)大的天主教教會教導(dǎo)一夫多妻是邪惡的，盡管在圣經(jīng)中并沒有明文禁止。基督教在西方社會推行一夫一妻制。是如此嚴(yán)格，即使國王也不允許有第二個妻子，離婚也不被允許。私生子不會被教會神圣化，他們的合法權(quán)利是有限的。西方國王也有情婦。她們并不是亞洲意義上的小妾，他們的關(guān)系有點(diǎn)秘密。她們很少被承認(rèn)，當(dāng)然她們的后代也不在王位的繼承人之列。
中國社會不受基督教的影響，因此不遵循基督教的教義，也不同意教會的權(quán)威。在古代中國(或日本)，妾是宮廷生活的一部分。中國社會沒有基督教教義式的偏見，沒有理由在公眾的注視下隱藏她們。
至少有一位日本皇帝是小妾的兒子。

Jesse Pollard（回復(fù)Yao Zhan）
It wasn’t the Christian church - as Rome also had Emperors before Christianity existed, and they did not have more than one wife either.
I believe what prevented it was that Rome was run by families, and rather than weaken the emperor, only one wife was taken. A second wife would have weakened the hold/standing of the first wife’s family, invoked the rath of the family of the first wife… and the result would weaken the power of the emperor, with possible retaliation by the first wife’s family.

不是基督教的原因——因?yàn)樵诨浇檀嬖谥?，羅馬也有皇帝，他們也沒有一個以上的妻子。
我認(rèn)為，羅馬之所以這樣，是因?yàn)樗怯杉易褰y(tǒng)治的，羅馬皇帝因只娶了一個妻子而沒有被削弱。第二個妻子會削弱第一個妻子家庭的地位，引起第一個妻子家庭的憤怒，這一結(jié)果將削弱皇帝的權(quán)力，并可能遭到第一位妻子的家人的報復(fù)。

Sam Meehan（回復(fù)Jesse Pollard）
Plus it’s messy on issues like inheritance, tax and such to have multiple spouses. Mistresses and concubines can be more safely ignored when considering these things.

此外，在遺產(chǎn)、稅收等問題上，多配偶會造成混亂。
考慮到這些東西時，情婦和嬪妃的身份能被安全的忽視。

John Fozdar（回復(fù)Yao Zhan）
I don’t think this is true. It is reported that Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor had 6 or 8 wives. Martin Luther defended the Duke of Bavaria who was a bigamist. He challenged the Pope to show where bigamy was forbidden and got no answer.

我不認(rèn)為這是真的。據(jù)記載，第一位神圣羅馬帝國皇帝查理曼大帝有6到8個妻子。馬丁·路德為重婚的巴伐利亞公爵辯護(hù)。他要求教皇指出重婚在哪里是被禁止的，但沒有得到回答。

Alfred W Croucher, A diligent student of history.
Western Kings didn''t have to sleep with their wife and often didn''t. The marriage was usually a symbol of a political alliance. They had mistresses and courtesans to keep them amused.

西方國王不必和他們的妻子睡覺，通常也確實(shí)沒有睡。這樁婚姻通常是政治聯(lián)盟的象征。他們有情婦和妓女逗他們開心。

Quora User
Monogamy was the custom in Greek/Roman culture, and this was also adopted by the early Christian church. This was in contrast to ancient Judaism, which recognized polygamy. Dropping polygamy, like dropping circumcision and Jewish dietary restrictions, was a way of making Christianity acceptable to non-Jewish Europeans.
As others have said though, this didn’t necessarily mean that powerful European men restricted themselves to one woman, just that the children of extramarital relations had no claim on the man’s inheritance.

一夫一妻制是希臘/羅馬文化的習(xí)俗，這也被早期的基督教會采用。這與古代猶太教形成了對比，古代猶太教承認(rèn)一夫多妻制。取消一夫多妻制，就像取消割禮和猶太飲食限制一樣，是讓非猶太歐洲人接受基督教的一種方式。然而，正如其他人所說，這并不一定意味著有權(quán)勢的歐洲男人只局限于一個女人，只是婚外關(guān)系的孩子無權(quán)繼承男人的遺產(chǎn)。

Assaph Mehr, I like to read.
were common across all cultures, not just Chinese.
In Western Europe it was a less common practice probably due to Christian influences that have roots in Latin and Greek cultures.
But don''t fool yourself that European rulers limited themselves to just their wife when it came to sleeping arrangements. They just didn''t keep harems.

在所有文化中都很普遍，不僅僅是中國。在西歐，這是一個不太常見的做法，可能是由于基督教的影響，根源于拉丁和希臘文化。但不要自欺欺人地認(rèn)為，歐洲統(tǒng)治者在睡覺問題上只局限于他們的妻子。他們只是不養(yǎng)后宮而已。

Anonymous
It’s unlikely that European kings had only one sexual partner. It should be remembered that European royals married not for love, but for political alliance. There is very good chance that many of such couples were unhappy with each others, yet divorce was not an option. After all, if a political alliance was sealed by a royal marriage, then divorce could be seen as breaking that alliance.
However, the fact that Catholic church insists on monogamy and the fact that Vatican was seen to be above the kings and is independent of the kings means that European kings couldn’t keep a stable of concubines of an obscene size like the Chinese monarchs did: “No limits were set for these consorts. This later created situation when more than 20,000 women were living in the Palace during the reign of Emperor Huan
and Emperor Ling.”
This is quite unusual. In most other civilizations, the priests were subject of the kings (which means the kings can do as they wish) or the kings were the chief priests (which also means the kings can do as they wish). Muslim kingdoms also had obscenely large stable of royal concubines even though Islam allows only up to 4 wives because Islam (or at least, Sunni Islam) has never had any Vatican-like institution.

歐洲的國王不可能只有一個性伴侶。應(yīng)該記住，歐洲王室結(jié)婚不是為了愛情，而是為了政治聯(lián)盟。很有可能的是，許多這樣的夫妻對彼此都不滿意，但離婚又不是一個可選項(xiàng)。畢竟，如果一個政治聯(lián)盟是由皇室婚姻所締結(jié)的，那么離婚可能會被視為打破了這個聯(lián)盟。
然而，事實(shí)是天主教會堅(jiān)持一夫一妻制，梵蒂岡被視為凌駕于國王之上，獨(dú)立于國王之外意味著歐洲國王不能像中國君主那樣養(yǎng)一群小妾：（中國）這些配偶沒有受到任何限制，這就造成了后來桓帝和靈帝統(tǒng)治時期，有兩萬多名婦女居住在宮中的局面。
這很不尋常。在大多數(shù)其他文明中，祭司是國王的臣民(這意味著國王可以做他們想做的事)，或者國王本身就是祭司長(這也意味著國王可以做他們想做的事)。雖然伊斯蘭教只允許4個妻子，但穆斯林王國也有大量的妃子，這是令人厭惡的，因?yàn)橐了固m教(或至少是遜尼派伊斯蘭教)從來沒有類似梵蒂岡的機(jī)構(gòu)。