(Image of Li Tang)
In 662, Long Shuo did not die in June of the second year of the year.
Wu Zetian gave birth to the fourth son of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, Li Zhi, and was named "Li Dan".
"Dan" has a bright meaning in the Chinese, and they named their son "Li Dan" in the hope that he can have a bright future.
Every child born in the royal family faces two paths in the future, the first of which is to be crowned king, to become an imperial nobleman, and to spend his life in glory and abundance.
The other is to seal the Ninth Five-Year Plan, become the emperor, and become the new master of the Tang Empire.
Both roads look rich and glorious, and they are extremely revered.
But in a way, either way, it's a road of no return.
The obscure, unremarkable Li Dan took the first road without accident.
But there were too many princes in the Tang Empire, not more than him, not more than him.
When Li Dan's brother Li Xian, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang, ascended the throne and became emperor, everyone thought that Li Dan's fate was doomed, and he was just an idle prince.
Not only do the government and the public think so, but even Li Dan thinks so.
Because when the emperor is not buying lottery tickets, as long as the luck is good enough, there will always be a day to win, even if it is a consolation prize of five dollars.
When the emperor needs strength, no one will look favorably on a prince who has no strength, is not favored, and has no background.
He knew that he had never been a strong contender for the throne, and he had never been loved by his father, Emperor Gaozong of Tang, let alone his birth mother (Empress) Wu Zetian.
But what he did not expect was that his brother Li Xian was deposed by Wu Zetian only 55 days after he ascended the throne.
The reason is very simple, since the death of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, Wu Zetian has been firmly in control of the government, and she supported Li Xian, just to find a "puppet emperor" who obeyed him, but Li Xian was not very willing to listen to Wu Zetian's words, and he wanted to do it alone.
Wu Zetian was Li Xian's biological mother, so when she faced a disobedient emperor, it was as simple as facing a mischievous child.
If you disobey, I will punish you.
The disobedient Li Xian was punished by being ousted from the throne, deposed as king, and exiled to Junzhou.
On the day that the deposed Li Xian left Chang'an, Li Dan, as a younger brother, personally practiced for him.
The brother, who had always had great ambitions, looked at himself with an extremely complicated look, said nothing, and silently got on the carriage to Junzhou.
(Chang'an City: Daming Palace)
Lee Hsien is gone.
However, the Tang Dynasty has thousands of miles of fertile land, tens of thousands of officials, and the country cannot be without a monarch for a day.
Wu Zetian looked around, and Li Dan, who was also his own son, appeared in his field of vision.
In this way, Li Dan took over his brother's throne and became the fifth leader of the Tang Empire, known in history as "Tang Ruizong".
But one thing that everyone knows is that Li Dan, the "leader," has been hollowed out.
Li Dan understood even more that although he became emperor, he was a "puppet emperor" in name only.
He did not have the courage to tear the skin of his brothers Li Xian and Wu Zetian, so he quickly accepted all of Wu Zetian's arrangements.
Except for the daily necessity of the morning dynasty, Li Xian was placed under house arrest in the palace most of the time, and he could not enter and leave the palace, and even his movements in the palace were restricted.
On the surface, he was an incomparably revered emperor, and when he went to the court, even a slight cough could frighten the ministers who bowed down and trembled, but when he returned to the palace and returned to his residence, he was just an ordinary prisoner.
Prisoners, on the other hand, have no dignity to speak of.
This is tantamount to the greatest humiliation of an emperor.
You can kill me, but you can't take away my right to rule the world.
Li Dan endured.
This seemingly stoic emperor never wanted to be an emperor, and he could become an emperor, which was completely a coincidence and pushed the boat along the water.
In other words, in Wu Zetian's eyes, this "puppet emperor" seat could be sat by anyone, but it just happened to let Li Dan sit.
For Li Dan himself, his dream all along is just to live well.
Therefore, when Wu Zetian said that he wanted to return the government to him, Li Dan's first reaction was not joy, but fear.
He knew that his fierce mother would never return power to herself with kindness, she was just testing her own mind and thoughts.
Therefore, he repeatedly resigned, indicating that he was not capable enough and could not be competent.
In order to survive, even if he is reduced to a prisoner who has lost his freedom and dignity, he is willing.
Even if the person who controlled him was his biological mother.
You can say that Li Dan has no blood, but I think that he is just like the vast majority of people in the world, living in his own survival instinct.
Although Li Dan gave up resistance, there were many people in Li's imperial family who dared to rebel against Wu Zetian.
Li Yuanlu the Prince of Huo, Li Shen the Prince of Ji, Li Yuanjia the King of Han, Li Xu the Prince of Jiangdu, and many other Li relatives and nobles all raised the banner of revenge against Wu Zetian.
They were either the sons of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, Li Yuan, or the brothers of Emperor Gaozong of Tang.
In their eyes, Wu Zetian was a foreign relative, not a member of the Li family.
They could not bear that a dynasty created by the Li family would end up being controlled by people surnamed Wu, so they raised troops one after another and vowed to fight with Wu Zetian.
They had the courage to call the sun and moon a new chapter, but without exception they all lost to Wu Zetian.
As losers, they were also slaughtered by Wu Zetian without exception.
In this battle, Wu Zetian almost killed Li Tangzong's chamber.
The means and wisdom of this unprecedented female politician who has never come before or since, and who has crowned history, are simply not comparable to them.
Killing was not Wu Zetian's aim, she had more ambitious ambitions and ideas, and this idea would soon be realized in the near future.
The first year of the Celestial Mandate, 690 AD.
(Portrait of Wu Zetian)
Hundreds of officials persuaded him to advance, and Wu Zetian was proclaimed emperor.
We don't know what the Tang courtiers at that time thought.
Maybe it was forced by the situation, maybe it was for the sake of survival, maybe it was really that Wu Zetian could be the first person to open up the world.
Perhaps, like Li Dan, they just wanted to survive under the cruel and ruthless political situation at that time.
But they have eaten Tang Lu in the world, and they have been blessed by the emperor, even if they do not have the courage of those Li Tang relatives and nobles to fight to the death, should they still have a little bit of courtesy in this critical moment when the country and the mountains change masters?
It is very regrettable that when Wu Zetian stepped onto the emperor's throne step by step, no one dared to say a word.
Wu Zetian was proclaimed emperor.
Li Dan finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Yes, you read that right, Li Dan, who was stripped of the throne by his own mother and demoted to the throne, was not lost, not angry, but relieved.
Because in his view, being a puppet emperor controlled by Wu Zetian is like being pressed on a cutting board, and it is possible to fall into a situation of perdition at any time.
And obediently giving up the throne, being an imperial heir who is far away from right and wrong, is really an ideal life for him.
Six years of emperorhood, more than 1,800 trembling days and nights were finally over, and he could finally be relieved.
After this, Li Dan almost disappeared into the history of the Tang Dynasty.
Because Li Dan, who stepped down from the throne, was really not the protagonist of that era.
If it were not for Wu Zetian in his later years who made a decision that surprised everyone, perhaps he would have been forgotten by people and turned into an ordinary name in the long river of history.
From the turbulent displacement of the girlhood, the heartache and bitterness, to the pampering and arrogance in middle age, to the rampant for a while, and then to the monopoly of power in the later years, the Ninth Five-Year Plan was sealed.
Wu Zetian has experienced too much, the two men have written her love story together, and the abolition of the two emperors has also witnessed the unique success of this female politician in that era of male power.
But Wu Zetian is an empress, not a goddess, and she also has an aging day.
In her later years, Wu Zetian may have been relieved of her power, and she decided to return the fate of the Tang Dynasty to the descendants of the Li clan.
So she recalled her son Li Xian, whom she had not seen for fourteen years (that is, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang at that time), and returned the throne to Li Xian in a bloodless coup.
The emperor, who had been exiled for many years, had long since lost the great talent of his youth, and had only sat in the emperor's seat for five years before dying.
Li Xian's wife Wei Hou was a very powerful woman, and his great strength was that she actually had the courage to follow Wu Zetian's set of cosplay, and after Li Xian's death, li Xian's youngest son Li Chongmao became emperor, and she herself ruled the dynasty and controlled the power of the government.
Big ambitions and good ideas.
But unfortunately, Empress Wei was not Wu Zetian, nor could she become Wu Zetian.
The heart of the Tang Dynasty courtiers had long been torn apart by the commanding Empress Wuhou, and now a Version of Wu Zetian 2.0 had emerged.
It is intolerable, and the uncle cannot bear it.
Li Longji, the king of Linzi, the third son of Li Dan, staged a coup d'état and, after destroying Wei in one fell swoop, coerced Li Chongmao to take his place in his father Li Dan.
(Portrait of Tang Xuanzong)
After twenty years, Li Dan regained the throne.
He finally no longer had to be silent and patient, nor would he be a puppet emperor who supported the throne, but an upright and righteous Tang Emperor.
But soon after, he found that although he had escaped the situation in which he had been put under house arrest and taken away from power as an emperor, he had ushered in a crisis that was very different from the past.
This crisis is not someone else, it is his own son, Li Longji who helps himself.
Li Dan, who returned to the imperial throne, wanted to turn his years of grievances and unwillingness into ambitions to govern the empire in his lifetime.
In the coup d'état after the murder of Wei, Li Longji, who bore the brunt of it, believed that he should get the maximum benefit.
After thinking twice, after a complicated psychological struggle, Li Dan still ceded the throne to Li Longji, and under Li Longji's step-by-step pressure, Li Dan completely surrendered his power and became the Emperor Taishang who did not care about the world.
The grand plan of hegemony is empty, and the return is already a dream person.
Today, Li Dan understands what kind of emotions lie in his eyes when he bid farewell to his brother Li Xian outside Chang'an City.
It was a mercy.
Mercy on the royal princes.
Because whether it is Li Dan, Li Xian, or Wu Zetian, or even the later Li Longji.
Although they are pampered, prosperous, powerful, and have seen the world, they have lost the most precious thing as ordinary people.
That's affection.
The royal family has had no kinship since ancient times.
Mother and child cannibalize, father and son centrifuge.
Flesh and blood, the struggle between you and me took turns in the Tang Dynasty, never stopping.
This is the Tang Empire, but it is also the cultivation field of human nature.
Good people can't live.
And this may be the biggest tragedy that Li Dan, who has always been kind and soft-hearted, was born in the royal family.