There have been many women in history who have been in a dictatorship, such as Lü Lu, Wu Zetian and Cixi, among these people, Wu Zetian and Cixi are all in the husband's life when they are alive, and only after the husband's death did they completely begin to usurp power, and even when the husband was alive, Li Zhi and Xian Feng were more afraid of their wives.
Lü Yan was different from the two of them, her husband was Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, as the founding emperor, and liu Bang, who started from scratch, was naturally not afraid of his wife, but why was Lü Yan still able to gradually take power, was Liu Bang unwilling to move Lü Yan or Liu Bang could not move her?
Liu Bang was reluctant to move Lü Yan
Liu Bang only married Lü Yan in his forties, at that time Lü Yan's family was relatively wealthy, and Liu Bang was just a small from a peasant background, And Lü Taigong was able to look up to Liu Bang and marry his daughter to him, which is enough to show that Lü Taigong was optimistic about Liu Bang's future, that is, after Lü Yan married Liu Bang, his life began to become different.
At that time, Lü Yan was not only the biggest supporter of Liu Bang's entrepreneurial resources, but also a good wife and mother, their family gave everything they had to pave the way for Liu Bang, even if Liu Bang had been wanted for an incident, the Lü Yan family still did not give up hope for Liu Bang, they took good care of Liu Bang's old father on the one hand, and on the other hand, they spent money to make various relationships to help Liu Bang get rid of his crimes.
Even Liu Bang's later entrepreneurial team has an inseparable relationship with Lü Yan to a large extent, such as Fan Duo can always follow Liu Bang with a dead heart, one of the most important reasons is that Liu Bang acted as a matchmaker to marry Lü Lu's sister to him, which completely stabilized Fan Duo, in the later entrepreneurial process, Fan Duo was always Liu Bang and Lü Lu and other people's confidants, especially the relationship between Lü Lu and others and Fan Duo was even more unusual.
When Liu Bang's career improved, he first occupied Fengyi, and then gradually spread outward, and left his hometown to start a business, during this period, Lü Yan would occasionally visit Liu Bang, in addition, it was safe to take care of Liu Bang's family at home, saying that Lü Yan was a good wife and mother and a virtuous helper, which was not exaggerated.
After Liu Bang finally achieved something in his career, Lü Yan and Liu Taigong, at the invitation of Liu Bang, planned to go to the city to find Liu Bang to live a good life, but they only went to the halfway point, Liu Bang was defeated by Xiang Yu and scattered, Lü Yan and Liu Taigong just happened to be captured by Xiang Yu and taken to Xiang Yu's base camp.
Xiang Yu initially planned to use Liu Taigong and Lü Yan to threaten Liu Bang and let him come out and challenge himself, but Liu Bang was still resolutely unwilling to come out even in the face of the threat of his father being boiled by Xiang Yu, presumably from that moment on, Lü Yan had clearly seen Liu Bang's cold side.
Lü Yan and Liu Taigong, as well as those who later had an inexplicable relationship with Lü Yan, spent more than two years in Xiang Yu's base camp for their lives before finally returning to Liu Bang's team, at that time Liu Bang had already achieved fame, but Lü Yan was old and fading, and the women around Liu Bang had long been replaced by Lady Qi.
For any woman, after seeing such a situation, she will definitely suddenly be like a dead heart, she has paid everything for Liu Bang, and in the end, what she has exchanged is that others have snatched the fruits of victory, presumably at that time, the biggest motivation for Lü Yan to live is the prince Liu Ying, as long as there is a prince, his position will not be affected.
It was also from this time that Lü Yan's personality changed dramatically, and the woman who was once virtuous and virtuous suddenly became a strong political woman. After the establishment of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Bang was busy going out to quell the rebellion of the princes with different surnames, and Lü Yan stayed in the palace with Xiao He and others to assist the crown prince in supervising the country, during these periods, the development of the Western Han Dynasty was also normal, which was enough to see that Lü Yan's political level was indeed not low.
At this time, Liu Bang, with his guilt, gratitude and trust for Lü Yan, was completely reluctant to move Lü Yan, after all, Lü Yan could help him stabilize the political situation in the Western Han Dynasty, so that he had time to clean up the princes with different surnames, and for Liu Bang, the threat of princes with different surnames was obviously greater than that of Lü Yan.
In fact, at that time, the role played by Lü Yan was far more than a woman who helped Liu Bang stabilize the Western Han Regime, she was also an important figure with Liu Bang to stage black face and white face, for example, in the process of cleaning up Han Xin and Peng Yue, Lü Yan played the role of black face, Liu Bang also wanted to clean them up, but because of their merits, it was difficult to turn over and start, Lü Yan and Liu Bang had completely different identities, and could play blackface to eradicate it, and Liu Bangli should be outside and have no flaws.
Liu Bang in this period was very much in need of a role like Lü Yan, who did not pose much threat to himself, but also could successfully achieve his goals, and only by eliminating all the princes with different surnames could Liu Bang's imperial power be stable and his descendants could sit safely on the throne, otherwise it would be very dangerous.
Liu Bang could no longer move Lü Yan
Power is often a double-edged sword, it helps people to solve some difficulties and problems, but also at the same time will produce new problems, Lü Yan's threat to Liu Bang is in the process of eradicating the princes of different surnames, in the very beginning, Lü Yan is just an ordinary empress, at the behest of Liu Bang to assist the prince to supervise the country, but in the later period, Lü Yan has already established his own political interest group through the process of eradicating the princes of different surnames, this group is constantly growing stronger, and eventually Liu Bang has no power to change it.
Liu Bang was when Lady Qi instigated herself to depose Liu Ying's crown prince and newly establish Liu Ruyi as crown prince, only to find that Lü Yan was no longer a person who could move if he wanted to, but at this time, everything was already difficult for Liu Bang to change.
He resolutely deposed the crown prince Liu Ying, according to Liu Bang's character, he initially felt that as long as he decided on something, he could definitely get it done, but he only proposed to abolish the prince's statement, and there were many ministers who opposed him, which made Liu Bang a little overwhelmed, and what was worse was that later Lü Yan actually invited Shangshan Sihao to help them protect Liu Ying's position as prince, which Liu Bang could never have imagined.
Shangshan Sihao was a person who could not even invite himself, and now he was actually invited out by Lü Yan, how much influence Lü Yan had, Liu Bang suddenly understood, so he abolished the matter of Liu Ying's position as prince, and from then on Liu Bang did not mention a word, because he understood that he had long been unable to influence the overall situation, and it was even more impossible to move Lü Yan, but Liu Bang was obviously still unwilling.
Why is Liu Bang not willing? We can see from the last thing he did before his death, when he was already critically ill, but he still arranged for Chen Ping and Zhou Bo to kill Fan Duo, which was actually to eliminate Lü Yan's forces, after all, Fan Duo was Lü Lu's brother-in-law, and once Liu Bang died, Fan Duo would have only listened to Lü Lu's dispatches.
Zhou Bo and Chen Ping killed Fan Duo, we all saw, the two have already fully understood Lü Yan's political influence, preferring to risk great dangers to delay time, until Liu Bang died, the two went back to make friends, from their behavior, we can see from the side where Lü Yan's power is, and it is more clear that Liu Bang was already unable to move Lü Yan at that time.
In this way, Liu Bang quietly passed away with endless regrets, after his death, Lü Yan really fell in power, completely emptied the new emperor Liu Ying, and threw Liu Bang's favorite Lady Qi into the toilet, even after Liu Ying saw it, he exclaimed that Lü Yan was not a person, and Liu Ying, who was frightened, never went to the court again, and finally ended up depressed.
After Liu Yingying's early death, Lü Yan continued to set up some puppet emperors and controlled the direction of the entire Western Han Dynasty, but fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Zhou Bo and others, he put down the rebellion of Zhu Lü and eradicated all the descendants of the Lü clan, and only then did he regain the Western Han Dynasty back into the hands of Liu Bang's descendants, otherwise it is estimated that the Western Han regime would not belong to the Liu Bang family.
epilogue
Just as the so-called raising tigers is a problem, many times, people tend to ignore the threat and influence of the people around them, especially in the face of huge interests, there are too many things that cannot be considered with conventional thinking, many things, once more than a degree, will completely lose control, and then regret helpless only themselves, Liu Bang is a living example!
Remarks: The picture comes from the Internet, infringement must be deleted, welcome to comment to leave interesting ideas,