Princess Li Shu'er of Anle was the youngest daughter of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang and Empress Wei, and although she was worth thousands of dollars, she experienced hardships from an early age.
After emperor Gaozong Li Zhi's death, the crown prince Li Xian ascended the throne, and at this time no one was able to stop Wu Zetian from usurping Tang's self-reliance and becoming an empress. Li Xian, without any strategy, promoted his henchmen and deployed forces to fight against his mother, but was deposed by his mother Wu Zetian as the King of Luling and demoted to Fangling.
(Princess Anle stills)
On the way to Fangling, Wei Hou gave birth to a baby girl, and she couldn't find a swaddle that could wrap the baby. Loving his daughter, Li Xian took off his robe and wrapped his daughter up and named her "Wrap".
Li Shu'er did not have a good day from birth to fifteen years old, which made Li Xian and Wei Hou have a strong sense of guilt for this daughter. He was obedient to her and swore that once he became rich, he would never let his daughter suffer a little and suffer a little sin, which also cultivated Li Shu'er's brutal and willful character.
If you use three words to describe Li Shu'er's life, it is: beautiful, ostentatious, and pit daddy.
First, glamorous
Princess Li Shu'er of Anle is often referred to as "the first beautiful woman of Datang" and "the most beautiful princess of Datang". What is the basis for this?
According to the New Book of Tang, Li Shu'er was "Shu Xiu Zhi Min" in her childhood, and when she grew up, she was even more "radiant and moving the world". Can just two words and nine words mean that she is the first beauty?
In the serious and rigid history of words, such a description is already the limit. Wu Zetian is also a big beauty, and her description is only three words "beauty stop", Yang Guifei's beautiful world is recognized, and the description of her is only four words "posture and heavenly". Therefore, Zhengshi's evaluation of Li Shu'er's beauty is the highest.
Second, show off your wealth
The most famous show-off in history is Shi Chong and Wang Kai of the Western Jin Dynasty, but the way they use sugar water to brush pots, use candles as firewood, and smash a few coral trees is simply pediatric compared with Princess Anle and her sister Princess Changning.
With the connivance of her parents, Princess Anle unscrupulously compared herself with her sister, and the two of them built a series of magnificent villas in the prosperous area of Chang'an, whose specifications and scale were comparable to the imperial palace. Instead of stopping it, the emperor rewarded Princess Anle with a mansion, which almost depleted the treasury in order to renovate it.
The sisters also allowed their domestic slaves to rob people in the street and snatch them back as slaves. The contest is to see who snatches back the large number of people and looks handsome.
(Princess Anle and Wei Hou stills)
What is even more bizarre is that Princess Anle actually took a fancy to the Kunming Pond in Chang'an City and asked her father to reward her with the Kunming Pool! I almost didn't surprise Li Xian's eyeballs.
Kunming Pond was excavated during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, with a radius of tens of miles, and by the Tang Dynasty, it has become an important fish and shrimp breeding base in Chang'an City, and also shoulders a variety of functions such as flood storage, water supply, tourism, etc. Rewarded to the princess, it will cause a series of unimaginable consequences. Therefore, this unreasonable request was rejected by Li Xianwanyan.
Princess Anle was greatly annoyed, and in a fit of rage, she seized the mintian nearly fifty miles south of Chang'an City, dug a pond larger than Kunming Pond, and named it "Dingkun Pond" to provoke her father. Li Xian, instead of getting angry, took the civil and military officials on a boat tour on the pool to help his daughter.
Princess Anle, who loves beauty, also made two distinctive skirts called "bird skirts". It is made of hundreds of feathers of rare birds and exotic animals, and in the sun, the skirt will be viewed from different angles, and it will emit four different colors, which is a masterpiece.
(Lee Hsien stills)
Suddenly, the rare birds and beasts in the mountain forest were hunted and killed countless times, and they were swept away. The value of a skirt is worth 100 million dollars!
Although the suffering of his youth made people pity and sympathize, but such an arrogant daughter, although it coaxed her daughter to be happy, but Li Xian was obviously not a qualified father. This connivance also brought ruin to Li Xian.
Third, pit daddy
The post-Wu Zetian era was brilliant and colorful, politics was no longer the privilege of men, and all kinds of women took Wu Zetian as an example and worked hard to grab more power, and Princess Anle was one of them.
Li Shu'er not only needs the vanity brought about by showing off wealth, but also the satisfaction brought by power. While living a life of extravagance and decay, she put her hand into the official arena. Not only did they sell officials and lords, allocate forces, but also interfere in judicial proceedings to suppress people. She often wrote the people she wanted to promote and the things she wanted to accomplish into a sonata, covered the content, and coddled her father, Li Xian did not ask much, and LeHe signed it for her.
With this special status, Princess Anle soon formed a certain political force, and she can also be called a storm in the political arena. Suddenly, many princes, nobles, civil and military officials fell at her feet, and this feeling was really wonderful and greatly stimulated her ambition.
Therefore, she boldly proposed to her father to make herself the "Imperial Lady". Although Li Xian was an inconspicuous emperor, he was not yet confused enough to make fun of Jiangshan Sheji and refused this request. However, Li Shu'er's half-brother, the crown prince Li Chongjun, could not sit still.
(Lee Chung-joon stills)
Because Li Shu'er had always been high-profile, together with her husband Wu Chongxun, she often bullied this prince's brother, and they even openly called Li Chongjun a slave. Coupled with this incident of the imperial concubine, although Li Xian refused Li Shu'er's request, he did not appease the prince. Li Chongjun felt a huge crisis, which made him angry from the heart to the side of the guts, decided to take a desperate risk and launch a coup d'état.
Due to the lack of careful planning, the coup was not successful, and Li Xian, Wei Hou, and Li Shu'er did not die, but Li Shu'er's husband Wu Chongxun and Gonggong Wu Sansi took their lives. However, Wei Hou and Li Shu'er did not give up because of this, and they went farther and farther on the road to seizing power, which finally aroused Li Xian's vigilance.
Wei Hou and Li Shu'er were mother and daughter, one quite empress and one quite imperial wife, in the face of the temptation of power, they were ambitious and lost the love between husband and wife and father and daughter. In the face of Li Xian, who had already developed doubts, they did not stop and ended the life of Emperor Zhongzong Li Xian with a bowl of poison cake soup.
In that kind of historical environment at that time, Li Tang's coming to power was the trend of the times, and Wei Hou's efforts deviated from the historical development of Li Shu'er's efforts and would not succeed. Although the mother and daughter made a careful plan, they could not stop Li Longji and Princess Taiping from counterattacking, and both died just one step away from the supreme imperial power.
Text: Bearfish laughs to themselves
Shallow and ignorant, just be generous.
References: Zizhi Tongjian, New Book of Tang, Old Book of Tang.