Empress Gi

Empress Gi was born in Haengju (행주, 幸州; modern Goyang), Goryeo to a lower-ranked aristocratic family of bureaucrats. Her father was Ki Cha-o. Lady Gi's maternal great-grandmother was Princess Consort Im of the Jangheung Im clan, one of the prominent clans in Goryeo Kingdom. In 1333, the teenaged Lady Gi was among the concubines sent to Yuan by the Goryeo king, who had to provide a certain number of beautiful teenage girls to serve as concubines of the Yuan emperor every three years. It was considered prestigious to marry Goryeo women. Extremely beautiful and skilled at dancing, conversation, singing, poetry, and calligraphy, Lady Gi quickly became the favorite concubine of Toghon Temür. When Toghon Temür tried to promote Lady Gi to secondary wife, which was contrary to the standard practice of only taking secondary wives from the Mongol clans, it created such opposition at court to this unheard of promotion for a Goryeo woman that he was forced to back down. The collapse of Yuan dynasty in 1368 forced her to flee to Yingchang's city (now Inner Mongolia). She was shortly captured and died a year before her husband in 1369. == Family ==