Consort kin

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The consort kin or outer kins (Chinese: 外戚; pinyin: wàiqī) were the kin or a group of people related to a consort or mother of a ruler in the Sinosphere. The leading figure of the faction was either a (usually male) sibling, cousin, or parent. While consort kins can be seen as a manifestation of nepotism in Sinospheric court politics, it is a moot point in a system where most positions were inherited via male primogeniture. The majority of the criticism lobbied against consort kins comes from the Confucian gentry class, who were often their political rival. In certain periods of Chinese history (such as the reign of Emperor Wu of Jin), consort kins were empowered by emperors in order to create political balance or to garner support for policies or actions unpopular among the Confucian elites. In other cases, emperors relied on their consort kins to hold onto power at the beginning of their reigns, because they lacked the political network a more established ruler may have had. The perception of their outsized role in dynastic decline may be due to a bias in official historical texts, mostly written by Confucian scholars. They considered the political involvement of consort kins (and eunuchs) a disruption of the proper order, while downplaying their own negative contribution. For example, Fan Ye's Book of the Later Han focuses primarily on court corruption and eunuchs as a major factor in the fall of the Eastern Han, leaving out the social and political stagnation caused by the Confucian gentry class.