Queen Seondeok is renowned as a sponsor of the arts and education, but few specific details of her patronage survive. She arranged marriages between the families of Taejong the Great and General Kim Yu-sin this power bloc would later lead Silla to unify the Korean Peninsula and end the Three Kingdoms period. In addition to external affairs, Seondeok also encouraged alliances among the leading families of Silla. The implicit threat of Chinese intervention helped to ward off attacks from Silla’s rivals, Baekje and Goguryeo, although the queen was not afraid to send out her army as well. When King Jinpyeong died in 632, the 26-year-old Princess Deokman became the first ever outright female monarch, Queen Seondeok.ĭuring her fifteen years on the throne, Queen Seondeok used skillful diplomacy to form a stronger alliance with Tang China.
The princess explained that there were no bees or butterflies in the painting - hence her prediction that the blossoms were not fragrant.Īs the oldest child of a queen, and a young woman of great intellectual power, Princess Deokman was selected to be her father’s successor. The act was not unusual within Silla, however, queens had ruled only as regents for their sons or as queens dowager - never in their own names. When they bloomed, the poppies were indeed odorless. After studying the picture, Deokman predicted that the flowers would have no scent. When she was a young woman, the Emperor Taizong of Tang China sent a sample of poppy seeds and a painting of the flowers to the Silla court. Princess Deokman was well-known for her intelligence and accomplishments, according to the surviving historical records. Although some of Jinpyeong’s royal concubines had sons, neither of his official queens produced a surviving boy. We know that she was born Princess Deokman in 606 CE to King Jinpyeong, who was the 26th king of Silla, and his first queen Maya. Not much is known about Queen Seondeok’s early life. Her success paved the way for future ruling queens of Silla. She was the second female sovereign in East Asian history and encouraged a renaissance in thought, literature, and the arts in Silla. Although Queen Seondeok led her kingdom in a war-torn and violent era, she was able to hold the country together and advance Silla culture. Queen Seondeok of Silla was Silla’s twenty-seventh ruler, and its first reigning queen.