Seondeok (선덕여왕, Seondeok-yeowang; birth name 德曼, Deokman, 595~610note – 647) was Queen of Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, from 632 to 647. The twenty-seventh ruler of Silla, she was also the first Korean queen regnant to rule in her own right and the second reigning female monarch on East Asian historical record. Though many records of her reign were lost to time, she was reputed for her wisdom.
Seondeok was born Princess Deokman, the daughter of King Jinpyeong and Queen Maya. Sources differ as to whether she was the elder or younger sister to Jinpyeong’s other daughter, Princess Cheonmyeong. note Jinpyeong had no sons after fifty years of ruling, which was a problem in the rigid bone rank system of Silla society that dictated social status and privileges based on one’s bloodline. The highest social rank and royal family was of the sacred bone (Seonggol) class, of which there would be no more living men after Jinpyeong’s death. Jinpyeong was thus faced with the choice of either completely reworking the social class system or allowing a woman to take the throne for the first time; he chose the latter and named Deokman his heir.
The move was not completely unprecedented: high class women in Silla society had a considerable degree of influence and power as heads of families and land owners (matrilineal bloodlines were considered as important as male ones for bone rank), and some had served as regents for their sons or grandsons in the past (Jinpyeong’s grandmother, Queen Dowager Sado, ruled as a regent on his behalf when he was thirteen). But Jinpyeong’s choice was met with controversy; before Deokman even took the throne, noblemen Ichan Chilsuk and Achan Seokpum plotted a rebellion in 631 and were executed, along with their families as per the values of the time, after its suppression.
When Seondeok’s reign began in 632, her first act as queen was to establish aid for the common people by sending royal inspectors throughout Silla to check on the poor and the elderly. She sent emissaries to China to pay tribute to Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty, but her shows of diplomacy initially went ignored because he refused to acknowledge a woman’s rule.note She also reduced taxes for the middle class and outright gave peasants tax exemption for a year, which contributed mightily to her public support.
Seondeok’s most famous achievement came in 633, when she ordered for an astronomical observatory to be built. The observatory was named Cheomseongdae (첨성대; “star gazing tower”) and built out of three hundred and sixty-five pieces of granite, one for each day of the year, with twenty-seven brick courses to signify her status as the twenty-seventh monarch. She oversaw a renaissance in science, literature, and the arts, and encouraged the rise of Buddhism as Silla’s state religion by sponsoring the construction of numerous Buddhist temples (she had Bunhwangsa Temple built near Gwangju in 634 and saw Yeongmyosa Temple completed in 644). At the advice of a Buddhist monk named Jajang, she commissioned known architect Abiji to build a nine-story pagoda for the temple of Hwangnyongsa (“Temple of the Illustrious Dragon”), the center of Buddhism in Silla, as a show of strength against invading enemies. Each of the nine stories represented an enemy of Silla (Japan, China, Wuyuenote , Eungnyu, Tangna, Mohenote , Danguk, Yeojeok, and Yemaeknote ).
Though Seondeok’s domestic policies were largely successful, her reign was beset by conflicts and violent skirmishes that ranged from enemy kingdoms to her own court. In 642, King Uija of Baekje oversaw a military campaign against Silla that took forty fortresses; in 643, Baekje allied with Goguryeo and they conquered the fortress of Danghang, which blocked off a crucial trading route with China. Seondeok sent another diplomat to Taizong to ask for his help and broker an alliance, to which he agreed on the condition that Seondeok abdicate the throne for a Tang prince to rule Silla instead. Seondeok refused and yet was able to negotiate for his assistance anyway; Taizong sent his army and several thousand uniforms and Tang army banners with which Silla could better intimidate her enemies, but the Tang and Silla joint army was defeated by Goguryeo in 644.
In 647, a high-ranked Silla nobleman named Bidam, who served as the Sangdaedung (the highest office in court second only to the throne) to the government council of court officials, led a rebellion against Seondeok with the rallying cry of “Women rulers cannot rule the country”. A famous anecdote claims that on the night of Bidam’s rebellion, he and his men saw a falling comet and proclaimed it a sign that the queen too would fall. Seondeok had her men fly a flaming kite into the sky in response to show that her star was back in the sky. Her renowned generals, Kim Yushin and Kim Alcheon, defeated the rebellion within ten days, and Bidam and his co-conspirators were summarily executed.
Folk legends about Seondeok were widely known and circulated, telling of her wisdom and (probably) exaggerating it to the point of clairvoyance. One story told of an incident where Taizong sent a sample of peony seeds with a painting of the flowers and she correctly predicted that the flowers would have no scent, which she explained she knew by stating that if the flowers had been fragrant, butterflies or bees would’ve been in the painting.note
Different stories told of her insight and reported clairvoyance: in one incident, she saw a group of white frogs croaking in the Jade Gate pond at Yeongmyosa Temple in winter and immediately sent an army of two thousand soldiers to Yeogeunguk Valley (“Woman’s Root Valley”), west of the capital in Gyeongju, where they found a force of five hundred invaders from Baekje lying in wait and wiped them out. When asked by her courtiers how she knew that the Baekje soldiers would be there just from the sight of frogs, Seondeok answered that the croaking frogs represented hostile soldiers, white signified the west in astronomy, and their appearance at the Jade Gate (an euphemism for women’s anatomy) indicated their location in the Women’s Root Valley.
One story told of the Silla people’s love for Seondeok in a tale about a peasant man named Jigwi, who fell madly in Love at First Sight with the queen when he saw her from afar and followed her retinue so obsessively that the guards beat him. Seondeok took pity on him and called them off, and allowed him to accompany her retinue on her journey to Yeongmyosa Temple. While she prayed there, he waited for her outside until he fell asleep under a pagoda. She found him sleeping and left him her bracelet as a gift for his devotion; when he awakened, he was so joyous at receiving her bracelet that his heart burst into flame, which burned him down with the pagoda.
Seondeok died on February 17 just before the end of Bidam’s rebellion, most likely from illness, and her body was entombed within the sacred mountain of Nangsan (“Wolf Mountain”) in Gyeongju. As Seondeok had never married nor had any children, she named her young cousin, Kim Seung-man, as her heir; Seung-man took the throne as Queen Jindeok and oversaw the rebels’ execution.
Legend states that Seondeok told her courtiers before her death the exact day that she would die and that she should be buried in a place called “Tushita Heaven”; when they asked her where that was, she pointed out a place on Nangsan. Ten years later, a temple called Sacheonwangsa ("The Temple of Four Heavenly Kings") was constructed on the slope below her tomb. The courtiers realized that it fulfilled Seondeok’s last prophecy from Buddhist scripture, where the Four Heavenly Kings were said to reside below the Tushita Heaven in Mount Meru.
Seondeok’s legacy lived on in the Silla-Tang alliance, which persisted after her death and would eventually crush Baekje (in 660) and Goguryeo (in 668) to pave the way for Silla’s uniting of Korea. Cheomseongdae still stands to this date as the oldest surviving astronomical observatory in Asia.
Bonus fact: despite the English translation, Seondeok's title would not have literally been "Queen" in her time. Her title was yeowang (여왕), literally "female king" (the feminine equivalent of wang, the title for kings); the term traditionally used for queens was wangbi ("king's wife"). Seondeok, Jindeok, and Jinseong were the only queens of Silla to hold the title of "yeowang".
Portrayals of Seondeok in fiction:
Film
- Played by Yoon So Yi in The Bracelet of Blue Tears note
Literature
- The Royal Diaries: Sondok is the protagonist of Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars by Sheri Holman.
Live-Action TV
- Played by Lee Ae-jung in Jump (2005)
- Played by Lee Hyun Jung in Yeon Gaesomun (2006)
- Played by Lee Yo-won and Nam Ji-hyun in Queen Seondeok (2009)
- Played by Park Joo-mi, Sun Joo-ah, and Hong Eun-hee in The King's Dream (2012)
- Played by Ahn So Ri in Chronicles of Korea (2017)
Theatre
- Queen Seondeok: A 2010 musical.
Video Games
- Civilization VI: She is the leader of the Korean civilization in the Rise and Fall expansion pack.
