His family was initially from what would eventually become Shan Prefecture (陝州, roughly modern Sanmenxia, Henan), but as his father Shangguan Hong (上官弘) served as the deputy director of Emperor Yang of Sui's palace at the secondary capital Jiangdu (江都, in modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu), the Shangguan household relocated to Jiangdu and settled there.
Late in Emperor Yang's Daye era (605–618), Shangguan Hong was killed by the general Chen Leng (陳稜).
[4] Emperor Taizong also heard of Shangguan's talent and made him an imperial scholar and later an official at the archival bureau.
He also gave Shangguan the designation Tong Dong Xi Tai Sanpin (同東西臺三品), making him a chancellor de facto.
By 664, Emperor Gaozong was said to be deeply fearful and resentful of his powerful second wife Empress Wu, as she interfered too much every day with his decisions and took many of the imperial orders arbitrarily against his will.
After the eunuch Wang Fusheng (王伏勝) reported to Emperor Gaozong that Empress Wu had, against strict regulations, engaged the Taoist monk Guo Xinzhen (郭行真) to engage in sorcery, Emperor Gaozong was angry, and he summoned Shangguan to ask for advice on what to do.
However, because among Emperor Gaozong's attendants were her allies, she found out, and she immediately entered the great palace with the soldiers in an authoritarian manner appeared before him to defend herself.
From then on, whenever Emperor Gaozong presided over imperial meetings and makes all the day-to-day decisions of the empire, Empress Wu would sit behind a pearl screen behind him to hear the all movements and reports and see and the real power of the state was fully and directly in the imperial meetings of that on Empress Wu.
A number of officials close to Shangguan, including fellow chancellor Liu Xiangdao, were demoted.