Empress Dowager Cixi (November 29, 1835 – November 15, 1908), popularly known in China as the West Dowager Empress, was from the Manchu Yehe Nara Clan. She was a powerful and charismatic figure who became the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, ruling over China for 47 years from 1861 to her death in 1908. Coming from an ordinary Manchu family and having been selected by the Xianfeng Emperor as a concubine, she exercised almost total control over the court under the nominal rule of her son the Tongzhi Emperor and her nephew the Guangxu Emperor, both of whom unsuccessfully attempted to rule in their own right. She was largely conservative during her rule, and many historians considered her reign despotism, and attribute the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and therefore Imperial China, as a result of Cixi's rule.