When I posted “A Song of Lasting Regret,” I didn’t want to burden the end-notes with pedantic details. But I did kinda gloss over a couple interesting things.
The first being those ‘sly references’ to the historical Yang Yuhuan, titled Guifei (“precious consort”). Every comparison Bai Juyi made of the consort to jade is a pun on her name: the Yu of her personal name means jade. Thus, the phrase “jade cheek” could be read either “jade-like cheek” or “Jade’s cheek.” More directly, though, Great Purity was her religious name during her brief stint as a Daoist nun -- a biographical detail he otherwise ignored.
Also ignored is that historically the Emperor was her second husband -- her first was his son, an imperial prince. His father made her take vows by way of forcing a divorce that severed their family relationship, so he could suitably marry her himself (after an almost immediate defrocking, of course). Not that the son treated her much better: he married her when she was 14 -- not being legal to marry until 15 was one of many laws the imperial family could, and all too often did, flout with impunity. FWIW, chronicles disagree when exactly the emperor married her, but she was around 17.
History is such the fun.
For the record, this adaptation (loose in the beginning, growing more literal by the end) is based on my own reading of the original, made without consulting other translations, though I did refer to commentaries in modern Chinese -- of which there are many, given the poem is studied in schools and the archaic literary language is difficult for those not used to it. The existence of hapless high school students is very helpful for foreign language learners.