Empress ruled the Empire?, Of empress dowagers and a female emperor

Yun I took this quote from you, on the Who is the most despotic emperor? post.

I would like to know when it all happened, why it happened, and all that fun stuff. I mean what did she do with the concubines, did she get male ones? Did she get a ligimate heir? Because if she married and got kids, wouldn't her husband just become Emporer?

OK, this empress Wu Zetian is extremely manipulative and a cold-clear-rational-mind that makes her an adroit political manoueverer and skilled administrator.

She was simply a concubine of Tang Taizong that Emperor Gao Zhong of Tang retrieved from the nunnery (she was forced to go to a nunnery when Tai Zhong died, but the emperor Gao Zhong had her fished out of that place again) and was given a title rank of Gui Fei or something. She latter killed her own daughter and blamed it on the empress. The emperor believed Wu and deposed the empress and made Wu the new empress. Wu latter manipulated the emperor against his own sons, and he banished his crown prince and heir apparent on counts of treason.

Later, Emperor Gao Zhong died and Wu proclaimed herself the new Emperor of the Wu Zhou dynasty. She is not just an empress. She is an EMPEROR. She executed a couple of her sons who shown signs of discontent and many other diehard supporters of the Tang royal house of Li. She also greatly promoted Buddhism as well as scholarly pursuits and improved the examination system such that even the sons of peasants could aspire to become a high official as well. She listened to some clever and skilled advisors such as Di Ren Jie and Zhang Jian Zhi, but at the same time she also made use of cruel and evil judges such as Lai Jun Cheng to get rid of political opponents for her.

Her personal life also paralleled that of most emperors. She is extremely promiscuous. It was recorded that during her short interval as a nun she had a secret affair with a monk and when she became the emperor she gave him a lot of bonuses. This monk would later abuse his position and rape girls with a gang of despicable men and thus he would be executed. Wu also had lotsa male lovers which included captains of the guard, her personal doctor and some she even shared with her own daughter!! The most notorious of her lovers would the brothers Zhang Zhong Bao (I forgot the names of the other ones). They served Wu when she's in her later years (60++). They were extremely disrespectful to the officials in Wu's court, and everyone gives them a huge berth except for Di Ren Jie who have absolutely no respect for them. The brothers thus complained to Wu, but Wu reprimanded them and told them harshly that even she had to give Di a wide berth herself!

There's also some secret histories that said that Wu is very much in love with Di Ren Jie but Di Ren Jie maintained his standing and did not bend to serve the emperor's will, but rather that of the people. Once when he was accused of treason by Lai Jun Cheng he simply admitted. Wu was rather surprised and demanded that she oversee the trial herself. Eventually, it is clear that Di is not guilty and he was set free. If Di had not admitted he would probably be tortured by the evil Lai. In another occasion, Wu ordered the building of great pagodas and Buddha statues, and gave orders that each monk in the nation should contribute. However, Di who was the supervisor of the project refuse to even get started. Wu thus demanded an explanation. Di thus said that the contributions that monk provide are just a portion of what they exact from the people. The money thus ultimately comes from the poor peasants who wish to have a better life. If he was to implement this the monks would abuse their positions to get money from the people, and thus he refuse to get started. Wu was unhappy but didn't do anything to Di.

Zhang Jian Zhi would eventually lead an uprising against Wu when Wu was old and ill. Zhang Jian Zhi supported the prince (I forgot his name) and demanded Wu to return the throne to her son. Wu had no choice but to capitulate. Btw, her male concubines were killed by the vengeful palace guards...She died at 82.

Just to add on: Empress (or Emperor) Wu Zhao ran into a constitutional dead-end when she founded her Zhou dynasty, because if she passed the throne to her son he would be a Li, and the Tang dynasty would start all over again. And if she passed her throne to a daughter, she would still still be a Li and furthermore would also take the family name of her husband.

Wu Zhao tried to get around this by appointing her nephew (brother's son) Wu Chengsi as her heir. In 698, she sent Wu Chengsi's son Yanxiu to the Tujue for him to marry the Tujue Kaghan's daughter in a marriage alliance. But the Tujue Kaghan refused, saying, "I asked to marry my daughter to a prince of the Li house, so what's a Wu doing here? Are you the son of an emperor, or aren't you?" The Kaghan locked Wu Yanxiu up and sent a letter back to the Zhou court, saying, "This Wu boy isn't royalty, and isn't fit to marry my daughter. I won't settle for anything less than an emperor's son." He also threatened to invade Hebei if snubbed again.

Wu Chengsi and his brother Wu Sansi were the only nephews that Wu Zhao had, and they believed that the throne should go to one of them. Wu Zhao now changed her mind and decided that Wu Sansi was a better choice as emperor. But Di Renjie stepped in and asked a question that put her in a spot: "Which is a woman closer to, her son or her nephew?" He went on to argue, "If Your Majesty makes a son the heir, Your Majesty will still be enjoying offerings in the temple many generations from now. But no one has ever heard of a nephew making offerings to his aunt in the family temple." Wu Zhao risked becoming a hungry ghost if she did not make her son the heir to the throne!

Di Renjie continued arguing about the necessity of passing the throne to a son of the Li house, and extolling the past glories of the Tang dynasty, until Wu Zhao finally relented and appointed her eldest son Li Zhe as her heir (his name was then changed back to Li Xian). 15 years ago, Li Zhe had been stripped of his position as Emperor by his mother after just 35 days, and was in exile. When he returned to Luoyang, he prostrated himself before his mother in tears, bu Wu Zhao pointed to Di Renjie and said, "He's the one you should thank." Wu Chengsi was so dismayed by this turn of events that he fell badly ill and eventually died.

However, in her last years Wu Zhao showed signs of wanting to pass the throne to her lover Zhang Changzong (he and his brother Zhang Yizhi had grown so powerful that they had even made Li Xian's son and daughter commit suicide for criticising them). Although Wu Zhao made no move to remove Li Xian from his position as heir, the ambitions of Zhang Changzong and his brother were increasingly apparent.

In 705, the 82-year-old Wu Zhao was forced to hand over the throne to Li Xian by a group of ministers led by Zhang Jianzhi. They surrounded the palace with 500 palace guards and killed Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi on charges of "treason". Then Li Xian came up and demanded that Wu Zhao hand the throne over. Wu Zhao had no choice but to agree. Two days later, she officially handed the throne over to Li Xian. The name of the dynasty was changed back to Tang, and Wu Zhao was given the ceremonial title of "Zetian Dasheng Huangdi" (Great Holy Emperor Zetian) - hence the name Wu Zetian by which she is commonly known to history.

That winter, the old and broken Wu Zhao died. On her deathbed, she supposedly left instructions to change her title from "Zetian Dasheng Huangdi" to "Zetian Dasheng Huanghou" (Great Holy Empress Zetian). Her dream of founding a dynasty had ended, so what was the use of the title "emperor" to her?

However, Wu Zhao's legacy would live on for a while more. Li Xian's empress, Empress Wei, conspired with her lover Wu Sansi (Wu Zhao's nephew) to set herself up as a female Emperor after Li Xian's death. Also in the conspiracy was Li Xian's daughter the Princess of Anle, who wanted to become Empress Wei's heir (she later married Wu Yanxiu, whom the Tujue Kaghan had rejected). In 707, the Crown Prince Li Chongjun rose up to overthrow the Empress, and managed to kill Wu Sansi but was then defeated and killed. [Chongjun was not Empress Wei's own son - her son Chongrun had been killed for insulting Zhang Changzong] In 710, Empress Wei poisoned her own husband Li Xian. Li Longji, Li Xian's nephew, then led a coup that killed Empress Wei and the Princess of Anle, putting his father Li Dan (Li Xian's brother) on the throne.

However, Li Dan's sister the Princess of Taiping (a daughter of Wu Zhao) had become very powerful at court, and she herself had ambitions of following her mother's footsteps. In 712, Li Dan passed the throne to Li Longji (Tang Xuanzong), and the conflict between Longji and the Princess of Taiping reached breaking point. The Princess tried to poison Li Longj, but the plot failed. Then in 713, Li Longji massacred all of the Princess' followers and forced her to commit suicide. It was only then, 8 years after the death of Wu Zhao, that her ghost ceased to haunt the politics of the Tang dynasty.

I heard that Japan had the earliest Empress in East asia.....Followed by Korea....which follows to China

Japan had an early tradition of empresses succeeding to the throne after the death of their husband (the emperor), and eventually passing the throne back to their sons. The semi-mythical Empress Jingu is even supposed to have led an invasion of Korea in the 3rd century while pregnant with the child of her late husband the emperor (this son was later deified as the Japanese war god Hachiman).

In actual history, the practice of empresses succeeding their husbands (though not always directly) began with Emperor Suiko. Suiko was the daughter of Emperor Kimmei (r. 539-571), wife of the next emperor Bidatsu (r. 572-585), and sister of Emperor Yomei (r. 585-587) who succeeded Bidatsu. Yomei was succeeded by Emperor Sushun (r. 587-592), but when Sushun was murdered by the powerful courtier Soga no Umako in 592, Suiko was made Emperor by the Soga clan. Her appointed heir was the famous reformer Shotoku Taishi, son of her brother Emperor Yomei. But Shotoku Taishi died 7 years before Suiko did, so he was unable to succeed to the throne.

Suiko reigned from 592 to 629, and was then succeeded by Emperor Jomei (r. 629-641). Upon the death of Jomei, his 49-year-old empress reigned for three years as Emperor Kogyoku. Kogyoku was a shaman, which suggests that she played a religious role in the state like the earliest Yamato ruler who is mentioned in Chinese records, the Priestess-Queen Himiko of the 3rd century. Kogyoku was pressured into giving up the throne to her brother Emperor Kotoku in 645. After Kotoku's death in 654, she became Emperor again with the title of Saimei. She was already 60 years old, and she shared power with her son Naka no Oe, who formally acceded as Emperor Tenji in 668 (seven years after Kogyoku/Saimei's death in 661).

The next female emperor was Empress Jito, a daughter of Tenji who reigned after the death of her husband Emperor Temmu in 686. She was not formally installed as emperor until 690, but even during the reign of Temmu (when she was known as Empress Uno), she had ruled jointly with him. Because of this Temmu left the post of Great Minister vacant throughout his reign. After seven years of rule, Jito abdicated in favour of her grandson, who reigned as Emperor Mommu (r. 697-707). She remained powerful in state affairs, with the title Dajo Tenno (Chinese Taishang Tianhuang - Grand Emperor).

After Mommu's death at the age of 26, his mother Princess Abe ascended the throne as Emperor Gemmei. Abe was another daughter of Tenji who had been borne to him by the sister of Empress Jito's mother - an emperor marrying two sisters was not unheard of even in China, but marrying your half-sister's son was not considered ethical by the Chinese! Gemmei abdicated in 715 and put her daughter on the throne as Emperor Gensho.

In 724, Gensho was succeeded by Mommu's son (hence her nephew and Gemmei's grandson) Obito, as Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749). Shomu's mother was a daughter of the powerful courtier Fujiwara Fubito, and so his accession received much support from the Fujiwara clan. Shomu also married another daughter of Fubito (his aunt!), and this concubine, Asukabehime, bore him a son. This son was named Crown Prince at birth, the first time this had happened in Japan. But he died in less than a year, and another concubine had recently borne a son to the emperor. To secure their position, the Fujiwara forced the court to raise Asukabehime's rank to Empress, even though this position had always been reserved for princesses of the imperial family (in other words, emperors took their half-sisters or cousins as empresses). In 729, Asukabehime became Empress Komyo, but she bore no more sons to Shomu.

In 740, Shomu made Empress Asukabehime/Komyo's only surviving child, a 21-year-old daughter, Japan's first crown princess. In 749, he abdicated the throne and she succeeded him as Emperor Koken. However, Koken's power was challenged by the powerful Fujiwara Nakamaro, who enjoyed the support of Komyo (now Empress Dowager). In 757, Nakamaro removed the crown prince chosen by Shomu on his deathbed (he had died in 756) and replaced him with another prince related to the Fujiwara by marriage. In 758 Nakamaro forced Koken to abdicate in favour of this prince, who became Emperor Junnin.

However, Great Emperor Koken made a comeback in 762, issuing an edict to attack Nakamaro's deeds and question the legitimacy of Junnin. She announced that in future, all important affairs of state would be handled by her, and only minor ceremonial functions would be taken care of by Junnin. In 764, Nakamaro plotted to replace Junnin with another more forceful candidate, but Koken reacted quickly by sending guards to capture him. Nakamaro was banished and later killed. Junnin was deposed and Koken took the throne again as Emperor Shotoku (r. 764-770).

In about 758, Koken/Shotoku had been healed from an illness by the Buddhist priest Dokyo, and he became her religious mentor. It is said that in her reign as Shotoku, she was prepared to pass the throne over to Dokyo after her death. The popular image of this incident is that Shotoku and Dokyo were having an affair, but other historians have argued that Shotoku actually respected and admired Dokyo's learning without any romantic or sexual element to the relationship. In any case, after Shotoku's death the Fujiwara intervened and sent Dokyo into exile. They then convened a council and made a ruling that Empresses would no longer occupy the imperial throne. The superficial reason was the danger of another Dokyo incident, but the real motive was probably that the Fujiwara were planning to dominate the imperial court by marrying their daughters to future emperors as empresses, so that the reigning emperor would always have a Fujiwara father-in-law. It was impossible for a Fujiwara to occupty the throne directly, either as emperor or empress, so the Fujiwara had no interest in seeing an empress on the throne because that would mean she was not one of theirs.

Because of this, from 770 onwards no empress ruled over Japan again, until the Tokugawa period a thousand years later, when two women did reign as puppet emperors under the dominance of the Tokugawa shoguns. But from 592 to 770 Japan had six female emperors who had eight reigns (two of them reigned twice), which is half of the total of 16 reigns in that period.

(Material for this post was taken from "The Male Present Versus the Female Past: Historians and Japan's Female Emperors", an article by E. Patricia Tsurumi)

:D:D:D:D

I am sure that Koizumi is up with this historical invention to brainwash his people back to WW2 with his "East Asia Empire yeah we don't discrimiate asians but we kill and rape all of them and make them our slaves" idea! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yes, whether the early Yamato state of Japan ever invaded Korea, not to mention occupied territory there, is still debated. The Japanese "Kojiki" (their earliest historical work, written in 712 AD) says that Japan held a base in Minama (Kaya in Japanese), near modern Pusan, until about 562 AD. Many Korean historians are sceptical that this actually happened, and maintain that Kaya was an independent Korean state with diplomatic and commercial ties with Yamato Japan.

The Nihon Shoki puts the invasion of Korea under Empress Jingu at around 200 AD, but there is no such record in the Chinese and Korean histories. The whole story, in which the Korean king is awed into submission and made an oath to send annual tributes of 80 boats with gold, silver, cloth and other valuables items, is probably a mere myth. However, one historian, Anthony Bryant suggests that such an invasion actually took place in 366. From 390 to 400, the Japanese also sent armies to help the Korean state of Paekche to fight against Silla and Koguryo, but were defeated by King Kwanggaeto of Koguryo.

Wu Zetian was really a ruthless Empress. But still, I would rate her as a good and capable ruler.

All powerful, capable and ambitious empresses or empress dowagers in Chinese history have had to be even more ruthless than their male counterparts, because they have had to face much more opposition from their male courtiers. This flies in the face of traditional Chinese notions of womanly virtue, which is why strong-willed women like Lu Zhi (Western Han), Jia Nanfeng (Western Jin), Empress Dowager Hu (Northern Wei), Wu Zetian and Cixi have all been condemned while more self-effacing empresses like Empress Zhangsun (Tang Taizong's wife) and Empress Ma (Zhu Yuanzhang's wife) have been praised for being content simply to give their husbands good advice from behind the scenes. Furthermore, Chinese historians never fail to bring up the sexual promiscuity of the strong empresses while generally taking for granted the emperors' use of their own absolute power to collect large numbers of concubines.

In the West, however, the attitude towards strong female rulers has been far more tolerant - as seen for example in historical assessments of Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. While male chauvinism was always alive and well in Europe, the European intellectual was not constrained by the Confucian patriarchal ethic and was thus able to accept and respect the idea of a female ruler.

Actually, there is a powerful empress dowager called Deng Sui, but neither is she known for promiscuity...She is famous for overworking and dying at the age of 36.

I would like to point out that Wu Zetian's grave has a blank tablet. I do not know how true the reason why it was blank, but she wanted the people to judge her themselves according some legends.

Yes, I've heard of this "wordless stele" too. The implied message was that "History will be my judge".

Deng Sui 邓绥 (80-121 AD) was the Empress of Emperor Hedi (Liu Zhao) of the Eastern Han, and became Empress Dowager at the death of Hedi (in 105 AD) when she was only 25 and Hedi was 27. She was beautiful, kind and wise, but had no son of her own. Hedi had two sons by his concubines - the elder had a terminal illness, and the the younger was just three months old. Deng Sui decided to make the younger son Hedi's successor, but he too died within a year (his posthumous title was Emperor Shangdi). A 12-year-old nephew of Hedi was then put on the throne (later known as Emperor Andi), while court affairs remained in the hands of Deng Sui. Deng Sui believed strongly in Mencius' doctrine that "Only the virtuous are fit to rule", and set a fine example of virtue as Empress Dowager.

But after her death in 121, Andi proved to be a weak ruler and relied on the less scrupulous relatives of his wife, Empress Yan. This empress was no paragon of virtue and although like Deng Sui she was childless, she poisoned the only concubine who had borne Andi a son, and then had the son himself demoted from the position of Crown Prince. Her own candidate, a nephew of Andi, reigned for only a few months before being killed in a eunuch-led coup. The eunuchs then restored the former Crown Prince to the throne - he was the Emperor Shundi, then aged 11. The decline of the Eastern Han began from this point, with the next few emperors being young and short-lived, while eunuchs and imperial in-laws (the relatives of empresses) jockeyed for power in the court. When 14-year-old Huandi succeeded to the throne in 146 and managed to live for another 22 years, the end had already begun, and Huandi only made it all the more certain when he left power in the hands of the eunuchs.

If the Eastern Han had had a few more good Empress Dowagers like Deng Sui, the wars of the Three Kingdoms might never have happened.

A nice picture of Deng Sui:

(from the website http://www.946.com.cn/tmtk/zhouli.htm - painting by Zou Li 邹莉: http://www.c2000.com.cn/zouli/main01/zlyyt.htm )

Article in Chinese about Deng Sui:
http://ny.henanews.org.cn/xinye/dengsui.htm

As you all know, Wu Zetian was the 1st female emperor (empress) in chinese history. Her political ruthlessness allowed her to ascend the throne of the Tang dynasty.

I've been reading an article about how many lovers she had at http://heritage.tom.com/1053/2004716-23830.html . It tells that since an emperor could have many wives and concubines, why can't an empress has many men or husband? Perhaps, Wu Zetian was trying to prove history accomplishment of the social reform but she never 'married' again after Gaozong's death. However, she kept many male lovers at the backcourt to serve her needs after she became an empress.

Among the famous one are Xue Huaiyi 薛怀义, who was an old time lover during the times when Wu Zetian was a nun at Ganye Monastery. However, Xue Huiyi was later killed by Wu Zetian. Later Wu Zetian had another two lovers (the brothers Zhang Changzong 张昌宗 and Zhang Yizhi 张易之)

Nevertheless this, compared to the 40,000 concubines of Tang Xuanzong was quite little... does anyone know exactly how many lovers Wu Zetian had?

Hey...that website of Chinese Empress paintings is awesome...
And I never thought that lady Dong E, high ranking concubine of Emperor Shun Zhi of Qing dynasty ever existed...I thought she's just some random character made up in the TV show of Xiao Zhuang Mi Shi...looks like I gotta read up more about her. She's played by a very beautiful lady in that series.