Foreword: Meet God to kill God, meet ghosts and kill ghosts. All those who should be killed were killed, and those who should not be killed were also killed, and finally Wu Zetian stepped on the 6 stepping stones of 6 sons and daughters and ascended to the emperor's throne.
Wu Zetian
First, Wu Zetian, who had a deep heart, went from being a talented person of Emperor Taizong to becoming the empress of Emperor Gaozong all the way.
Wu Zetian was originally the daughter of Emperor Taizong Li Shimin, who entered the harem at the age of fourteen (638 AD), and was given the title of "Talented Man" by Emperor Taizong of Tang and given the title of "Wu Mei", known as "Wu Mei Niang".
Emperor Taizong liked this "wumei" very much, and when he was seriously ill, he also let her serve on the side.
Li Shimin drew eyebrows for "Wu Meiniang" and only wished to paint eyebrows for Qing Qing all his life
But Wu Zetian, a woman with great cunning, was on the side of Taizong's sickbed, and secretly communicated with the crown prince Li Zhi, this year Wu Meiniang was 25 years old, she had been in the palace for 10 years, so all aspects were very mature and charming, and her charm was infinite, so the prince Li Zhi could not stop.
In order to hide his eyes, Li Zhi sent Wu Zetian to a nunnery for three years after Li Shimin's death, and then carried the name of incest and then put her in the palace.
When a nun hides her eyes and ears, but she cannot hide history
In 651, at the age of 27, Wu Meiniang was given the title of Zhaoyi by Emperor Gaozong Li Zhi, and after another fight, she was finally made empress, and was honored with the title of Queen of Heaven, and was called the Second Saint with Emperor Gaozong of Tang.
From the perspective of age, it is true that Li Zhi and Wu Zetian are more compatible
However, Wu Zetian, the woman who became the queen of heaven, was not satisfied, because she wanted to become empress herself after Li Zhi's death.
Together, Wu Zetian and Gaozong Li Zhi continued to have six children: 4 sons and 2 daughters, and the children were originally the flesh of the mother's heart, but now, the sons have become her obstacles to the highest power.
How will Wu Zetian choose?
Second, Wu Zetian's six biological children each had a different tragic fate, "In the next life, there will be no more births to the imperial family!" ”
1. Wu Zetian's eldest daughter was Princess Anding, who died at the age of 1, and she was strangled to death by Wu Zetian herself.
According to history, when Princess Anding was still in her infancy, she was strangled to death by Wu Zetian herself. Why be so cruel? Because Wu Zetian wanted to compete for the throne, the stakes were not big enough, and she used her daughter's death to frame Li Zhi's then empress dowager.
Anda Princess
This dangerous move was very successful, and Li Zhi was furious and gave the empress to death, so Wu Zetian ascended the throne as empress. Princess Anding became the first stepping stone of Wu Zetian.
2. The eldest son, Li Hong, was poisoned to death by Wu Zetian.
Li Hong was the first son of Wu Zetian, who was made crown prince by Li Zhili, and was very shrewd and capable, and Wu Zetian once liked him the most.
But on one point, Li Hong didn't listen much to his mother, Wu Zetian, and he was defeated by rumors that Wu Zetian's political enemies had created for him: he recognized that he was not born of Wu Zetian, and he came together with the opposition.
This is something that Wu Zetian cannot tolerate, so what about his own son? kill!
Prince Li Hong, after all, is still too young
However, after all, it was his own son, and Wu Zetian still made an exception to posthumously award Li Hong as emperor, with the title of "filial piety", and was buried in Tang Gongling with the etiquette of tianzi.
3. After Wu Zetian came to power, he sent people to force the death of his second son Li Xian.
Li Xian was the most outstanding of Wu Zetian's 4 sons, and he was more powerful than the eldest brother Li Hong. Unfortunately, he did not learn from the murder of his eldest brother Li Hong.
After Li Hong's death, out of the Confucian traditional idea that "women are not allowed to interfere in politics", a large number of important ministers and ministers in the court began to move closer to the new crown prince Li Xian, which was something that Wu Zetian could not tolerate.
The mother and son then turned against each other, and Wu Zetian forcibly deposed Li Xian with the "Ming Chongyu" case as the first hand.
Crown Prince Li Xian was given death
After Emperor Gaozong's death, he was given to death in the exiled prefecture of Ba Prefecture (ba prefecture, in present-day Ba County, Sichuan Province). So from this point of view, I think Li Xian is not smarter than Li Hong.
4. The third son, Li Xian, was a man of bitter fate, the historical Emperor Zhongzong of Tang, who was deposed and abolished, deposed and established, and became emperor twice in his life, and finally did not die at the hands of his mother but died at the hands of his wife and daughter.
Li Xian was deposed after he first became emperor, ostensibly because he wanted to establish Empress Wei's father, Wei Xuanzhen, as a servant and establish his own power base. But in fact, wu Zetian still wants to control the power of the DPRK himself, and his son wants to fight with himself for power? Absolutely not.
Emperor Zhongzong of Tang
By the time Wu Zetian wanted to depose Li Xian for the second time, she was already too ill, which allowed Li Xian to escape death. However, Li Xian was eventually poisoned by his wife Wei Hou and his daughter Princess Anle.
Wei Hou conspired with Princess Anle to poison and kill Li Xian
5. The fourth son, Li Dan, was Tang Ruizong, who was deposed and deposed by Wu Zetian, and was also a person who had been emperor twice in his life, but he was relatively clever, and finally enjoyed his old age with his second Zen position.
Li Dan saw the key to the problem from the fate of his three brothers: he could become emperor because his mother Wu Zetian needed to transition a step by himself, and he was just an instrumental transitional figure.
Therefore, when Wu Zetian was ready, he immediately went to the Zen throne and ceded his imperial throne to his mother Wu Zetian.
In 690, Wu Zetian officially proclaimed himself emperor and changed tang to Zhou, and Li Dan asked for the surname Wu (Wu Zetian did not agree so he still had the surname Li), changing from emperor to crown prince and then to prince.
Tang Ruizong Li Dan
Not only that, when Li Dan's own son Li Longji wanted to become emperor, he once again wisely zen the throne and became emperor taishang.
In addition to killing her daughter and son, Wu Zetian also killed the concubines of Crown Prince Li Dan, Liu Shi and Dou Shi (of which Princess Dou was Li Longji's biological mother), and killed li Chongrun (Li Xian's son) and eldest grandson's eldest grandson (Li Xian's daughter and son-in-law). As for the other clans of the Tang Dynasty, they were killed by Wu Zetian and never became a climate again.
6. The youngest daughter, Princess Taiping, made countless contributions to Wu Zetian's ascension to the throne; but it was she who finally forced Wu Zetian to abdicate.
Princess Taiping, unlike her brothers, was not a stepping stone, she was a knife in Wu Zetian's hand.
Since childhood, she has been Wu Zetian's side, and after marriage, she can still enter and leave the Great Interior and the court at any time, and many of Wu Zetian's conspiracies have the wisdom of Princess Taiping, and she uses her special status and power to help her mother Wu Zetian do a lot of very important "dirty work", so that the two emperor brothers Li Xian and Li Dan love and fear her.
Princess Taiping was also a woman who wanted to be an empress
What Wu Zetian did not expect was that Princess Taiping's knife was a double-edged knife, and in the end, she also "slashed" Wu Zetian herself.
In 705, the Tang Dynasty ministers Cui Xuanwei, Zhang Kamzhi, Jinghui, Huan Yanfan, Yuan Shuji, and five others launched the "Shenlong Coup" with the support of Princess Taiping, killing Zhang Changzong, Zhang Yizhi's brothers and other red people in front of Wu Zetian; Princess Taiping forced the seriously ill Wu Zetian to return the emperor's throne to her brother Li Xian, and restored the Tang dynasty name.
Third, Wu Zetian's last good hand.
After Wu Zetian was forced to abdicate helplessly, he moved into Shangyang Palace. On December 16 of the same year, Wu Zetian died of illness at the Xianju Hall of Shangyang Palace at the age of 82.
However, when he was dying, this brilliant Wu Zetian, who had a brilliant life, played another good chess hand.
Before her death, she left a will and testament, changing "Zetian Dasheng Emperor" to "Zetian Dasheng Empress", which obviously means that she returned her identity to the position of "little daughter-in-law" of Li Zhi of Li Tang.
From the Zetian Dasheng Emperor to the Zetian Dasheng Empress, yi'an was able to enter the Zongzong Temple and be sacrificed endlessly
After her death, Wu Zetian once again achieved her goal: she was not only not held responsible for changing dynasties, but also not responsible for killing countless people.
In May 706, Li Xian decreed that Wu Zetian and Emperor Gaozong would be buried together in Qianling, fulfilling Wu Zetian's last wish to return to the mausoleum after his death.
Conclusion: Oh, so power, since ancient times, will make people lose their hearts, reach the peak of power, which of the hands is not stained with ticking blood? In Wu Zetian's life, her 6 children were actually stepping stones for her to reach the peak of her power.