Biography on empress wu

But inwhen she was 81 years old, the combined forces of the Li-Tang family took advantage of her weakening grip on the state and removed her from power. Wu Zetian died within a year. Her overall rule, in spite of the change of dynasty, did not result in a radical break from Tang domestic prosperity and foreign prestige. But she changed the composition of the ruling class by removing the entrenched aristocrats from the court and gradually expanding the civil service examination to recruit men of merit to serve in the government.

The development of the examination system during her reign was a critical step in the eventual transformation of the aristocracy to a meritocracy in the government. Although she gave political clout to some women, such as her capable secretary, she did not go as far as challenging the Confucian tradition of excluding women from participating in the civil service examinations.

Already in she had drafted 12 policy directives ranging from encouraging agriculture to formulating social rules of conduct. She maintained a stable economy and a moderate taxation for the peasantry. Her reign witnessed a healthy growth in the population; when she died in her centralized bureaucracy regulated the social life and economic well-being of the 60 million people in the empire.

Wu Zetian's collected writings include official edicts, essays, and poetry, in addition to a treatise to instruct her subjects on moral statecraft. She changed the compulsory mourning period for mothers who predeceased fathers from the traditional one year to three years—the same length as the mourning for fathers who predeceased mothers. Wu Zetian argued that since mothers were indispensable to the birth and nourishment of infants, the three years when the infant totally depended on the mother as caregiver should be requited with three years of mourning her death.

On a similar tone, she ordered that the mother of the Daoist sage Laozi Lao Tzuc. Overall Wu Zetian was a decisive, capable ruler in the roles of empress, empress dowager, and emperor. According to almost all her biographers, she was extremely cruel in her personal life, murdering two sons, a daughter, sister, niece, grandchildren, and many Li and Wu princes and princesses who opposed her.

Such killings were not uncommon among emperors before and after her. Her significance as an emperor and founder of a new dynasty lies in her redefining of the gender-specific concepts of the emperorship and the Confucian state. As an effective woman ruler, she challenged the traditional patriarchical biography on empress wu of power, state, sovereignty, monarchy, and political ideology.

Her experience reflected a reversal of the gender roles and restrictions her society and government constructed for her as appropriate to women. While functioning and surviving in the male-ruled and power-focused domain, she exhibited strengths traditionally attributed to men, including political ambition, long-range vision, skillful diplomacy, power drive, decisive resolve, shrewd observation, talented organization, hard work, and firm dispensal of cruelty.

The political success of Wu Zetian indicates that the attributes needed in diplomacy and rulership were not restricted to men. Functioning in a male-oriented patriarchy, Wu Zetian was painstakingly aware of the gender taboos she had to break in political ideology and social norm. She worked against the Confucian dictum that women must restrict their activities to the home and in the wildest imagination could not become emperors.

She contended with petitions against female dominance which argued that her unnatural position as emperor had caused several earthquakes to occur and reports being filed of hens turning into roosters. The reversal of gender roles was nowhere more objectionable than Wu Zetian's sexuality, in the eyes of the traditional historians. Wu Zetian's first two sexual partners were emperors and related to each other as father and son.

After the latter died inshe took on four or five lovers, including a monk whom she ordered executed when weary of his greed and abuse of power. Her last two lovers were the young and handsome Zhang brothers who put on makeup and exploited the relationship by obtaining offices, honors, and gifts for themselves and their family. InWu Zetian's grandson, the later Emperor Xuanzong r.

The earliest sources on Wu Zetian already contained rumors of sex scandals in her court. An active imagination produced pornographic novels in the 16th century focusing on her alleged sexual practices. Modern popular novels and plays, in Chinese, Japanese, and English, also exaggerate the sexual aspect of her rule. If Wu Zetian is judged by the traditional female virtues of chastity and modesty, then she falls short of expectations.

But if she is observed in the context of the sexuality of male rulers, then the number of her favorites is insignificant.

Biography on empress wu

In the last three decades, Marxist historiography on Wu Zetian in Mainland China has yielded a positive but unreliable and ideologically charged reappraisal. She appears in influential plays as a feminist and champion of the lower classes while her male rivals are shown to be aristocrats, landlords, and conservatives against the tide of history.

In sum, within the social and political context of her time, Wu Zetian was a leader who went biography on empress wu the traditional roles of submissive wife and home-bound mother to emerge as ruler, lawmaker, and head of state and society while her second husband, lovers, and sons were relegated to less powerful positions than traditionally expected.

Some historians have viewed her as blazing the trail for the women who came after her, and indeed her daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter aspired to emulate her success, but they failed and even died violently in the process. Thus Wu Zetian's experience might have caused some redefinition of gender in her time, but this direction has not translated into enduring gains in the society and political organization that she left behind.

Chen, Jo-shui. It was at this time that she gained favor from both emperor and empress; this earned her the position of Zhaoyi. The title meant that she was the highest ranked concubine out of the nine but still under the Empress. Historians say that it was during this time that Wu Zetian and Empress Wang conspired against Consort Xiao and relegated her into being a commoner.

A year later her second son was born in the palace and then a daughter in It was at this time that Wu decided to take the Empress position from Wang. Reports have it that before the Emperor returned from one of his travels, Wu strangled her own daughter shortly after Wang left. Wu Zetian was announced as the new Empress in Empress Wu Zetian participated in state affairs right away.

This paved the way for her to be a true ruler. During her long reign totaling 50 years, the empire became relatively stable, peaceful, powerful, and prosperous. Chinese empires were rarely ruled by womenand when it happened it was not thought auspicious. In the Tang Dynasty's case, Wu Zetian was thought of better. How did a woman become a ruler of the vast Tang Empire?

It partly had to do with the prominent role of women leaders in the foundation of the Tang Empire. Confucius had taught that only men should rule a kingdom. Women were owned as slaves or regarded as servants. For the centuries preceding, women played a subservient role in the political hierarchies in the region. However, women played a prominent role in the formation of the Tang Empireand from the beginning, the Tang Dynasty clan had a tradition of women ruling, receiving education, and being accorded greater rights and power.

In this regard, the Tang Dynasty was remarkable. The preceding Sui Dynasty fell due to uprisings against their harsh rule. Li Yuan's clan emerged as the dominant ruling clan, and one of Li Yuan's daughters, Pingyang, actually organized and led a large army. She was a popular general, and she led what was called the Women's Army because she led it.

She helped to capture Chang'an that was the Sui capital city. Her father, Li Yuan, became the first emperor of the Tang Dynasty, and he accorded her high rank and honor. Thereafter, women played a prominent role in the empireand they had much more freedom and rights than in earlier empires. The could pursue education and carry on business. This change of political philosophy allowed for the emergence of a woman supreme ruler.

Up until her time and afterwards too, the Emperor of China could only be a man. The empresses were decidedly secondary in official rank or much lower than second though they might actually have been the real ruler. To call herself the Emperor, Wu Zetian upset centuries of tradition and started her own very short-lived dynasty. In the yearWu Zetian's baby daughter was killed.

Empress Wang was allegedly seen near the child's room by eyewitnesses. She was suspected of killing the girl out of jealousy and was persecuted. Legend has it that Wu Zetian actually killed her own daughter, but the allegation may have been made up by her opponents or by Confucian historians. Soon after that, she succeeded in having the emperor create for her the extraordinary title of chenfeiwhich ranked her above the four concubines of the first rank and immediately below the empress consort.

Wu later had Wang and Xiao executed in a cruel manner—their arms and legs were battered and broken, and then they were put in large wine urns and left to die after several days of agony. After Emperor Gaozong started to suffer from strokes from November on, she began to govern China from behind the scenes. She was even more in absolute control of power after she had Shangguan Yi executed and the demoted crown prince Li Zhong forced to commit suicide in Januaryand henceforth she sat behind to the now silent emperor during court audiences most probably, she sat behind a screen at the rear of the throne and took decisions.

She reigned in his name and then, after his death, in the name of subsequent puppet emperors her son Emperor Zhongzong and then her younger son Emperor Ruizongonly assuming power herself in Octoberwhen she proclaimed the Zhou Dynasty, named after her father's nominal posthumous fief as well as in reference to the illustrious Zhou Dynasty of ancient Chinese history from which she claimed the Wu family was descended.

In Decemberten months before she officially ascended the throne, she had the government create the character Zhao, an entirely new invention, created along with 11 other characters in order to show her absolute power, and she chose this new biography on empress wu as her given name, which became her taboo name when she ascended the throne ten months later.

The character is made up of two pre-existing characters: "Ming" up top meaning "light" or "clearness"; and "kong" on the bottom meaning "sky. Even the pronunciation of the new character is exactly the same as "shine" in Chinese. On ascending the throne, she proclaimed herself Emperor Shengshen, the first woman ever to use the title emperor which had been created years before by the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang.

Indeed she was the only woman in the years of imperial China ever to use the title emperor and to sit on the throne instead of merely ruling from behind the throneand this again utterly shocked Confucian elites. Traditional Chinese political theory see the similar Salic law did not allow a woman to ascend the throne, and Empress Wu was determined to quash the opposition and promote loyal officials within the bureaucracy.

During her reign, she formed her own Secret Police to deal with any opposition that might arise.