Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Wu Zetian: China’s Only Female Emperor (Encore)

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

In the very long history of China, it has had exactly one female ruler.  She was a woman who managed, against all odds, to inch her way closer to power over a period of years until she reached a point where she could claim power for herself.  By all accounts, she was beautiful, brilliant, cunning, and absolutely ruthless.  Learn more about Wu Zetian, China’s only female emperor, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Visit meminto.com and get 15% off with code EED15.  Listen to Expedition Unknown wherever you get your podcasts.  Get started with a $13 trial set for just $3 at harrys.com/EVERYTHING. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the very long history of China, it has had exactly one female ruler. She was a woman who managed, against all odds, to enter her way closer to power over a period of years, until she reached a point where she could claim power for herself. By all accounts, she was beautiful, brilliant, cunning, and absolutely ruthless. Learn more about Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. In the ancient world, there were very few female rulers. Rome had absolutely none. There were no women who ruled Persia, Babylon, Greece, or Assyria. Egypt did have a few, including Hatshepshut, who ruled in her own right, as did Cleopatra. Celtic and Germanic tribes would sometimes be led by a woman like Queen Budica in Britain.

Likewise, Razia Sultana ruled the Delhi Sultanate in India in the 13th century. Usually when a woman amassed a great deal of power in the ancient world, she wasn't the power in name, only in fact. They may have exercised their power from behind the throne and not on it. They had husbands or sons who ruled and then they controlled their men. So how was it that in a civilization like China, which had strict legal and cultural rules preventing women from ruling, that a woman managed to make it all the way to sit on the imperial throne, and not just sit on the throne, but actually be considered one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history?

Well, it took an extremely talented and ambitious woman. The story of Wu Zetienne begins with her birth in 624. during the very early years of the Tang Dynasty. Zetian was born to a father who was a wealthy timber merchant and a chancellor under the Tang Dynasty. She was born in the Shangxi region of northern China. And I should address the issue of her name, because it can be confusing. Wu is the surname of her father, which always goes first in Chinese. Over the course of her life, she had several different names and titles that she went by. To this extent, she is a lot like the Roman Emperor Augustus, who went by different names throughout his life.

She is alternatively known as Wu Zhou and Wu Mei, which is how most Chinese might refer to her. Wu Zetienne is her imperial name, which she took when she ascended to the throne. For the sake of simplicity, I am simply going to refer to her as Zetienne, her imperial name for the entire episode. This is what she almost always is referred to in English. Zetienne was raised by her father in an untraditional manner for girls. Zetienne was given an education that was normally. reserved for boys. She was taught to read and write, and she was instructed in politics and history, as well as public speaking. She could play music and write poetry, both of which were prized skills

at the time. At the age of 14, she was selected by the Emperor Tai Song to become an imperial concubine. Needless to say, Zetienne's mother was not thrilled at the idea of her daughter becoming a concubine, but Zetienne eased her mother's concerns by telling her, quote, How do you know that it is not my fortune to meet the son of heaven? In the case of the Chinese imperial court, most concubines had other duties involved in the management of the royal household beyond, how shall we say, marital ones. Zetienne started out at the bottom wrong of the concubine ladder doing laundry. However, one day while she was doing her chores, she came across the emperor by himself,

and she decided to shoot her shot. She dared to start a conversation with the emperor of China about Chinese history. The emperor was astonished at the intelligence of his concubine. Not only was she beautiful, but she was intelligent, a witty conversationalist, and she could read and write. He was so taken with her that he promoted her to his personal secretary, which was a significant position. As secretary, she was intimately involved with the affairs of state and the managing of the empire. In her position as secretary, she received the attention of many of the men at court. In particular, she began an affair with the son, an heir apparent of the throne, Li Ji. Li Ji became infatuated with Zetienne,

but he was already married and she was one of the emperor's concubines. Zetienne's next big break came with the death of Emperor Taishong. Normally when an emperor died, his wife and all of his concubines had their heads shaved and were taken to a convent where they would live for the rest of their lives. However, when Li Ji ascended to the throne and became known as the Emperor Gao Zhong, one of his first acts was to bring back Zetian. to become his first concubine. Technically, this was against the law, but it's good to be the emperor. Zetienne's sudden rise to first concubine drew the ire of several other women in the imperial court.

In particular, the wife of the emperor, Lady Wang, and the former first concubine, Lady Shao. Lady Wang had not born a son for the emperor, and Lady Shao had a son, but was now lower in status than Zetienne was. Because Lady Wang had no son, the announced heir to the throne was the announced heir to the throne was the son of her uncle who was the chancellor to the emperor. However, in 652 at the age of 28, Zetienne had a son named Li Hong. The next year, she had another son. Now, with sons and potential heirs to the throne, Zetienne became more of a threat. At this point in the story, you might

think of Zetienne as a smart, attractive woman who used her smarts to get a high-ranking position in the imperial court. However, what happened next shows just how ruthless she could be in her pursuit of power. In 654, she had another child, a daughter. However, the baby died soon after birth. Infant mortality wasn't something that uncommon at that time, but in this case, there was evidence that the child was strangled to death in her crib. There's no evidence as to actually who committed the crime, but Zetienne didn't let the opportunity go to waste. She accused Lady Wang and Lady Xiao of the murder and then accused them of witchcraft. The accusation stuck, and both Lady Wang and Shao were placed under house arrest. The Emperor divorced Lady Wang,

and in 655, Zetienne was elevated to the position of wife and empress. For almost 1,500 years, there has been speculation that Zetienne killed her own daughter to consolidate her position with the emperor. The Emperor turned out to be rather weak and easily influenced by his new wife. Many court officials, sensing the power shift, aligned themselves with Setien. In 656, the Emperor, formerly changed his heir to Li Hong, the firstborn son of Zetienne and the emperor. She began purging any official who had opposed her and eliminating possible claimants to the throne who could rival her son. In 660, the emperor became ill, and she began issuing orders and running the empire on behalf of her husband. She even would wear a yellow robe, which was

reserved solely for the emperor. When the emperor held an audience, she would sit right behind him behind a beaded curtain. When anyone met with Yimber, the first question he would always ask is, have you discussed this with Lady Wu? She had become the co-ruler of China, and was the de facto ruling power in the country. She had changed her title to Empress of Heaven to match that of the emperor's title, son of heaven, implying that she too ruled by divine right. In 675, her son and crown prince, Li Hong, suddenly died. Again, many people suspected that she poisoned her. her son. Her second son, Li Xi'an, was now named Crown Prince, but her relationship with him disintegrated to the point where she charged him with treason and had him exiled. The role of

heir apparent now fell to her third son, Li Jé. This came to a head in 683, when the Emperor Gao Zhang died. A few months later, in February 684, Li Jais ascended to the throne with the new imperial name Emperor Zhang Zong. The new emperor was incredibly weak, but but was even more influenced by his wife than he was by his mother. His wife, Lady Wei, was heavily influenced by Zetienne, which of course made her a threat. Just six weeks after he took the throne, Emperor Zhang Zong advocated the throne and was replaced by his younger brother, the youngest son of Zetian, Li Dan, who became known as Emperor Rui Zong.

She then sent troops to her oldest surviving son, Li Xian, who had been exiled and had him commit suicide. Ruizhong was nothing more than a figurehead. She completely controlled all physical access to him. Court officials had to talk to her and could not talk to the emperor directly. She began carrying out and approving policies without even getting the emperor's rubber stamp. She was now the ruler of China in every way except in name. That eventually changed in the year 690, when she forced her son to abdicate the throne and assumed it herself. She took the title of Huang Di. Huang Di doesn't translate to English exactly as emperor, as the term has no gender specificity like emperor or empress does. The closest translation might be sovereign, which could be male or female.

While Chinese law and tradition didn't allow for women to obtain the title of Huang Di, by this point it didn't really matter because she had been the de facto ruler of the country for 30 years since her husband became ill. For the last six years as regent, she had literally been approving and administering everything in China. This last step simply ended the charade by giving her the formal title, as well as the power she already held. While the story of Wu Zetienne involved a lot of palace intrigue, her rule resulted in many significant policy changes for China.

She allowed citizens from every class of society to take the imperial exams, so that they could find the very best civil servants regardless of class. And these new lower class officials subsequently had a great deal of loyal to. to her personally. She proclaimed a new dynasty called the Wu Zhou dynasty, of which she would be the founding ruler, named after the ancient Zhou dynasty of a thousand years earlier. She reformed the system of taxation, which stabilized the coffers of the government. She elevated Buddhism as the state religion over that of Taoism.

She instituted pay raises for the lowest level of civil servants. She ordered the printing and distribution of farming manuals so that the best farming techniques would be widespread. spread. She engaged in military campaigns against Korea and Tibet. She also reopened the Silk Road, which had been closed due to an epidemic, and she even introduced new Chinese characters, which became known as the Zetian characters. All of these policies made her very popular with the people of China, and many historians still consider her to be one of China's greatest rulers. However, she also established a secret police force, which she used to retain her grip on power,

and was responsible for the deaths of many high-ranking Chinese officials, including possibly three of her own children. And she supposedly executed 12 entire branches of the imperial family who threatened her rule. Wu Zetienne's rule came to an end in the year 705. At the age of 81, she resigned her post due to illness, passing the throne to her son, the emperor Zhang Zong, who had previously been removed after only six weeks. In the end, Wu Zetian ruled

China for 15 years in her own name and a total of 45 years in some capacity, including that of co-ruler and regent. She managed to achieve all of this, which no woman has been able to do before or since in China through a unique combination of beauty, intelligence, cunning, and ruthlessness. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners

of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.