This Week in China’s History: July 25, 710
There are two almost canonical exceptions to the statement “All of China’s emperors have been men.” Most recently, Cixi, the empress dowager, ruled the Qing dynasty for most of its last half century, ruling through her son and nephews as regent. More than a millennium earlier, Wǔ Zétiān 武则天 reigned as de facto emperor of the Tang dynasty, and for 15 years as emperor of her own Zhou or Wu Zhou dynasty, in the seventh century. She remains the only woman to have ruled in her own name.
That Wu Zetian was China’s only female emperor was not for lack of trying. In the years following her death, several women aspired to the throne and came close to grasping it. In the golden age of the Tang — a popular subject for soapy costume dramas — court machinations saw at least two women reach the very cusp of supreme power in two coups in the imperial palace. Coincidentally, and conveniently for this column, the two coups took place on consecutive weeks, three years apart. For the next two weeks, then, let’s look back at the rise and fall — and rise…and fall — of Princess Taiping, the only surviving daughter of Wu Zetian.
First, a brief recap. The woman who became known as Empress Wu was born in 624, and little about her life is uncontroversial. We would expect sources to be biased against her — as the only woman to rule in her own name in a couple of millennia of imperial history — but that is not to say that they are necessarily wrong. She entered the court of Emperor Taizong at age 14, and after his death, nine years later, was recalled to serve his son and heir, Emperor Gaozong. She became the primary consort of Gaozong, eventually being installed as empress and bearing him six children before he died in 683.
One of those children born to Gaozong and Wu Zetian was a daughter — born in exactly what year we do not know — who would come to be known as Princess Taiping. Sources, all of which must be viewed critically, suggest she was cut from the same cloth as her mother: politically savvy, ambitious, and capable. By all accounts she was included in many affairs of state, attracting both supporters and rivals while her parents — and then other relatives — ruled.
Gaozong’s successor was one of Wu Zetian’s sons, who reigned as the Emperor Zhongzong. Wu Zetian retained much power and influence during his reign, but she took that further, deposing him and placing her youngest son on the throne, while also excluding him from power. Wu Zetian ruled as regent for her son for 16 years until 690, when she pronounced a new dynasty — the Wu Zhou — with herself as emperor. (She remains the only woman to rule as huangdi — emperor — as opposed to huanghou, or wife of the emperor.) Her reign lasted until 705, when she restored her son, the Emperor Zhongzong, to the throne, and, along with him, the Tang dynasty. She died just a few months later and — despite having reigned as emperor for more than a decade — was memorialized in death as “Zetian huanghou”: Empress Zetian.
Court intrigue did not die with “Empress Wu.” To the contrary, her unorthodox rise to power suggested to others that there were alternate paths to the throne, including for women. One of these was the Empress Wei, another wife of Emperor Zhongzong.
Empress Wei had, along with her husband, been exiled under house arrest for 14 years during Wu Zetian’s Zhou dynasty. Recalled along with Zhongzong as Wu Zetian neared death, Empress Wei stepped immediately into the center of court life when her husband regained the throne. She politicked masterfully, often ruthlessly, among the Tang nobility, wielding almost limitless power over affairs of state.
The court was divided into factions: Empress Wei’s supporters on the one hand, Princess Taiping’s on the other. Out of power, Princess Taiping worked largely behind the scenes, concealing her political ambitions while building support for an eventual return to power. In contrast, Empress Wei flaunted her success. She rewarded her supporters with “free access to the palace, and they began arbitrarily to make accusations of unsubstantiated crimes against ministers who did not cooperate with them,” according to Chen Shangjun and Lily Xiao Hong Lee. Rumors abounded of sexual impropriety — multiple affairs with court officials and members of the royal families — but all of these (unsubstantiated) rumors are hard to take seriously, coming, as they do, from the Confucian-tinted retelling of Empress Wei’s life. Only when she orchestrated the murder of a military officer who complained to the emperor about Empress Wei’s behavior was she censured.
Days after the killing, carried out by a high official and known supporter of Empress Wei, the emperor died. Poisoned cake, the official histories say, with Empress Wei or her daughter the likely perpetrators, though the evidence supporting this is circumstantial. In any event, Empress Wei covered up the death for as long as she could, using the delay to gather some 50,000 troops loyal to her cause in the capital and arrange to have one of the emperor’s young sons succeed to the throne. Empress Wei would remain as empress dowager and regent, retaining her power.
With the capital in chaos and knives out — literally and figuratively — Empress Wei prepared to rid herself of her longtime rival, Princess Taiping, laying plans to kill the Princess and Li Dan, the former Emperor Ruizong. This would clear a pathway for Empress Wei to assume the throne herself.
Before she could enact her plans, though, the tables were turned.
The young Emperor Shang took the throne on July 8. Two weeks later, an alliance among Princess Taiping, the former Emperor Ruizong, and his brother the Emperor Xuanzong (there were a lot of former emperors roaming the halls of Chang’an!) engineered a coup of their own. On July 21, supporters of Princess Taiping, having won over (or bribed) the palace guards, burst into the palace’s inner chambers. Trying to flee, Empress Wei was killed by the soldiers she had brought to the palace to protect her. “It was a smooth operation,” writes historian Richard Guisso in the Cambridge History, “one which required both money and influence”: the hallmarks of Princess Taiping. Empress Wei’s head — along with that of her daughter, Princess Anle — was set on a spike in the city’s Eastern Market.
Two days later, Princess Taiping completed the coup. In a scene befitting Cersei Lannister, she interrupted an imperial audience, seized the teenage emperor by the collar, and pulled him, quite literally, from the throne. She then had the suddenly demoted former emperor arrested and reinstalled her brother, Emperor Ruizong.
Ruizong was again emperor, but there was no illusion about who held power. Princess Taiping, it seemed certain, would soon follow in her mother’s footsteps and assume the throne in her own name.
It seemed certain.
This Week in China’s History is a weekly column.
