China’s Only Female Emperor
According to dynastic China’s Confucian worldview, women were unfit to rule. Wu Zetian (624 – 705) did not care much for that bit of Confucian conventional wisdom: from 683 to 705, she ran the country unofficially as an empress consort, then empress dowager, and finally, as official empress. She became the sole officially recognized empress during China’s more than two millennia of imperial rule. A strong, wily, and ruthless woman, the tale of her rise to power, and how she held on to it, could have taught Machiavelli some new tricks had he known of her.
Wu Zetian was born into a wealthy family, and her father saw to it that she received a good education, encouraging her to read and develop her mind. That was quite unusual for her day and age, but fortunately for Wu, her father was not too hung up on convention. As a result, she grew up well-versed in literature, music, history, politics, and governmental affairs. She was also drop-dead gorgeous, and at age 14, she was taken into Emperor Taizong’s harem as a concubine.
The combination of beauty and brains served her well. The emperor was an old stick in the mud who was not into intelligent women, and thus did not favor Wu. Being an intelligent woman, and looking ahead, she had an affair with his son and eventual successor, who was not intimidated by smart women. When he became Emperor Gaozong after his father’s death, he made Wu his favorite concubine, and eventually elevated her to his second wife – a huge jump in the imperial harem’s rankings. Not content to remain second fiddle, however, Wu reportedly strangled her own infant daughter, and framed the emperor’s first wife for the death. The intrigue worked, and Wu became the emperor’s official consort.
Her power grew steadily, as she steadily eliminated opponents and potential threats. When Emperor Gaozong died in 683, Wu became empress dowager in her own right and regent, running the empire in the name of her son, Emperor Zhongzong. When Zhongzong ascended the throne in his own right in 684, he tried to buck his mother and get out from under her thumb. He lasted only six weeks on the throne, before Wu had him deposed, exiled, and replaced with her youngest son, whom she made Emperor Ruizong. She maintained all power in her own hands, and six years later, she tired of bothering with any pretense about who actually ran China, and made Ruizong relinquish the throne. Wu officially proclaimed herself empress regnant, and ruled in that capacity until she was overthrown in 705.