Bu Lianshi

Lady Bu was known to be very accepting towards Sun Quan's other wives and she recommended other women to her husband. As such, she remained in her husband's favour in the long term. In May 229, when Sun Quan declared himself emperor and established the state of Eastern Wu, he considered whether to install Lady Bu as the empress. Lady Bu's relative also promoted this issue through referring to Lady Bu as the Empress. However, no one else supported Lady Bu; instead, they nominated Lady Xu to be the empress. The crown prince, Sun Deng, always responded more favorably to Lady Xu's gifts than to those from Lady Bu when both of them gave him gifts. Furthermore, Sun Quan himself had no particular desire to establish an empress. Consequently, although over a decade passed, neither Lady Xu nor Lady Bu became empress during their lifetimes.

Lady Bu died in 238 and was posthumously honoured as an empress on 24 November of that year.

Lady Bu's personal name was not recorded in her biography in the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi), the authoritative source for the history of the Three Kingdoms period. However, the Jiankang Shilu mentioned that her personal name was "Lianshi", hence she was also known as "Bu Lianshi".

In popular culture

Lady Bu is first introduced as a playable character in the seventh installment of Koei's Dynasty Warriors video game series. She is referred to as "Lian Shi" in the game.