In the ancient history of our country, most of the people who held power were men, due to feudal ideas, there were almost no women above the court, and each dynasty and each generation had palace rules that the harem was not allowed to interfere in politics. But Empress Wu was indeed an exception, and her deeds could not be replicated. However, it is also impossible to avoid the situation that women have to intervene in politics due to various reasons, and they only have 2 ways to govern the government, listen to the government or listen to the government. During the Northern Song Dynasty, such a phenomenon occurred too frequently, so let's talk about it today. There were 9 emperors in the Northern Song Dynasty, and 6 empresses appeared to listen to the government, all relying on the tricks of the founding emperor.
In fact, in all dynasties and generations, there have been empresses who grasped the power of the dynasty and listened to the government, such as the first empress Lü Hou who seized power in the dynasty, after Liu Bang's death, she can be said to have mastered the Jiangshan of the Great Han; the Wang Zhengjun of the Western Han Dynasty listened to the government and assisted 4 generations of emperors in her lifetime, which eventually caused foreign relatives to interfere in political disasters and buried Jiangshan; Empress Hu of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Empress Feng was addicted to power and killed her own emperor son; to the Qing Dynasty, she had the lifeblood of the Great Qing Dynasty, and eventually buried her hands, and so on. There are too many similar things that have happened in history.
These deeds of the above and so on are all because at the end of the dynasty, the emperor ignored the government, and the mother was strong and the son was weak, causing the empress or empress dowager to begin to listen to the government, which eventually led to the collapse of the dynasty, almost all of which were the causes of foreign relatives interfering in the government. However, the Northern Song Dynasty did not have such deeds after the dynasty, even if women listened to the government, there was no powerful disaster caused by foreign relatives, which can be described as unique, and others could not imitate it. The Northern Song Dynasty was the richest era in history, but also the era of the strongest cultural development, the national treasury was sufficient, and there were also superb achievements such as the third of the four major inventions, which were inseparable from the merits of the 6 empresses who listened to the government.
Liu E, the wife of the first empress dowager, Song Zhenzong, made the society achieve unprecedented prosperity during her power, and her political achievements were outstanding, and the ministers were convinced of her and had the greatest power. After returning power to the next emperor, she formulated a perfect system of listening to the government, becoming a model for a generation and being praised by future generations. The second was Empress Cao of Song Renzong, who was stricter with herself and extremely restrained by the forces of foreign relatives to defend imperial power, and was known as a generation of empresses. Empress Gao of Song was praised for her selflessness and greatness for refusing to honor her family with a higher title. Empress Xiang of Song Shenzong was very effective, not only cleaning up the mess of the change, but also assisting the emperor in government affairs, and returning the imperial power when the imperial court was on track, without greed.
The fifth and sixth were all empresses of Song Zhezong, one of whom Liu shi did not contribute, called Yu Hou, while the other was the most meritorious of the 6 Meng clan, she saved Jiangshan from water and fire a total of 2 times, and also assisted Zhao Zhao in establishing the Southern Song Dynasty. The Northern Song Dynasty's ability to interfere in politics without chaos all depended on the credit of Zhao Kuangyin, because he formulated the strategy of advocating literature and suppressing martial arts, minimizing the power of soldiers and generals, and restricting each other between civilian officials and military attaches, so that foreign relatives had no chance to cause trouble.
I have to say that this dynasty is very powerful, and the phenomenon in history is worth learning from other dynasties.