Chechiyegen

Checheyigen ( – after 1253) was the second daughter of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, and his first wife Börte. As part of Genghis's policy of marrying his daughters to powerful rulers in exchange for their submission, she married a prince of the Oirat tribe, who lived near Lake Baikal, in 1207. There, she assumed a high-ranking administrative role among her husband's people, organising people and flocks like other high-ranking nomadic women. Over the following decades, Checheyigen arranged a series of advantageous marriages for her seven children and, after she backed the successful side in the Toluid Revolution of the early 1250s, her Oirat family became one of the most powerful in the empire. However, her descendants failed to take full advantage of their position, and eventually lost most of their influence.

==Biography== ===Background and early life=== Checheyigen's mother, Börte, was born into the Onggirat tribe, who lived along the Greater Khingan mountain range south of the Ergüne river, in modern-day Inner Mongolia. She married a Mongol leader named Temüjin after a seven-year betrothal. Over the next twenty or so years, Börte gave birth to nine children: four sons named Jochi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui, and five daughters named Qojin, Checheyigen, Alaqa, Tümelün, and Al-Altan, in order of birth. After her last birth, Temüjin's children came from other women whom he had married, but these always remained inferior in status to Börte and her children.