The Chinese TV show about the Qianlong emperor’s harem of concubines has viewers across Asia hooked; we look at four key players and their deadly game of one-upmanship.

Qianlong, the 18th-century Chinese monarch, would say yes — everything. With an incredible six-decade-long reign during the Qing Dynasty, Qianlong collected several European luxury textiles.

Qianlong Emperor, born in 1711, was the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty, ruling from 1735 to 1796. View Emperor Qianlong’s artworks on artnet. Learn about the artist and find an in-depth biography, ...

This striking plume of yellow is the fluorescing tail feathers of a male emperor bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea guilielmi). Birds-of-paradise are known for their bright colours and courtship displays.

Wu Zetian began her journey in the imperial court as a concubine to Emperor Taizong. After his death, she became a concubine to his successor, Emperor Gaozong. Her intelligence and ambition soon set ...

Qianlong Emperor -- seen here in a painting by Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian missionary and painter at the imperial court in the Qing Dynasty -- had his diets and menus meticulously recorded ...

The concubine would gaze south from the tower toward a mock mosque and bazaar the emperor had especially constructed to assuage her longing for home.

In fact, during this period the majority of emperors, male and female, were related to a previous emperor on both the paternal and maternal sides, going back no more than two generations.

The Qianlong-era piece was sitting in the corner of a kitchen, having been bought for "a few hundred pounds" in the 1980s.