Li Xian was the third son of Wu Zetian, and his two older brothers, Li Hong and Li Xian, had both served as crown princes, but had died one after another, and many of the claims were that both were killed by Wu Zetian.
In any case, after the two older brothers, Li Xian was made crown prince. After the death of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, Li Xian, as crown prince, successfully succeeded him, that is, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang. But at the same time, Li Xian's mother, Wu Zetian, as the empress dowager, was in charge of the dynasty.
In fact, this already shows Wu Zetian's ambitions, and generally the empress dowager's title system shows that her son is still young, but at that time Li Xian was not small, and his wives were married.
Therefore, Wu Zetian just did not want to give up the power in his hands, and even wanted to go further, that is, to be called emperor.
As for Li Xian, the emperor, he inherited all the shortcomings of his father, but did not inherit a little advantage, and incompetence, fainting, and weakness were his labels.
Li Xian also wanted to establish his own team, and he did not have any cronies around him, so Li Xian took a fancy to his wife Wei Hou's relatives. So he promoted Wei Hou's father Wei Xuanzhen from Puzhou to Yuzhou Assassin History, and wanted to be promoted to shizhong (shizhong ( chancellor ) , but was opposed.
Li Xianqi did not bat an eyelid, and said angrily, "I give Wei Xuanzhen the world, and I have nothing to do, do you still have to be stingy with a waiter?" Such a statement, although it is an angry word, is obviously inappropriate.
As a result, after Wu Zetian learned of this, he was greatly annoyed and directly deposed Li Xian, and demoted him to the position of King of Luling. He also made Li Dan ascend the throne as emperor. In Wu Zetian's heart, Li Xian wanted to resist and was not easy to control.
After all, Wu Zetian was going to be an emperor, and there was such a person around him, and there was no small trouble. Therefore, after Li Xian's depose, Wu Zetian demoted him to Junzhou (present-day Danjiangkou City, Hubei Province) and Fangzhou (present-day Fang County, Hubei Province), and for fourteen years Li Xian was terrified, although he was still a prince, but everyone knew that the life of this prince was just a sentence of Wu Zetian.
For many years, Li Xian had been panicked, and often woke up by nightmares shortly after falling asleep at night. As soon as he heard the emperor's envoys coming, he was almost scared to pee his pants. The Old Book of Tang says, "Whenever the Emperor hears of the edict, he commits suicide in fear." ”
However, Li Xian eventually survived, and after being placed under house arrest for more than ten years, he was still taken back and re-made as the crown prince, and in the later period of Wu Zetian, Zhang Kamzhi and others launched a coup d'état to restore Li Tang's artifact.