introduction
"Life is not a woman's body, and a hundred years of bittersweetness is enjoyed by others." China has experienced a long patriarchal society, and the tragic experience of women can be described as inexhaustible. Not only civilian women can't help themselves, even in the homes of rich and nobles, and even become the queen of the mother's world, once they lose the favor of their husbands, it is also rare to have a good end. 01
In the tenth year of Jiajing (1531 AD), Emperor Mingzong Zhu Houxi remained childless. For the Emperor of Heaven, the throne was not completely stable without the birth of a prince, so the ministers began to worry about the heir of the empire. Zhu Houxi followed the advice of the ministers, began to draft in the folk draft, and finally hand-picked nine of the fifty girls who met the criteria as concubines. Zhu Houxi's most satisfied of these nine people was Fang Concubine. Not only is she dignified and tall, but her hands are snow white and slender. It is rumored that Zhu Houxi has a very heavy "hand fetish", so he favors Fang Concubine alone. Subsequently, Zhu Houxi deposed Empress Zhang and feng Fang concubines to inherit the empress throne, so that this Empress Fang suddenly became one of the most honorable women in the world.
▲Image of Empress
Because she learned from Empress Zhang's previous experience, Empress Fang handled things smoothly in the palace, never easily offended people, and treated other concubines with courtesy, which was quite like walking on thin ice. However, the imperial palace is a cannibalistic place after all, and unlike the relationship between civil wives and concubines, the queen concubines have the opportunity to become empresses, so there is a contradiction between them that is difficult to reconcile. The clever Empress Fang gradually learned how to survive in this large dye vat. However, Empress Fang's exclusive favor treatment did not last long, and Wang Ning and Cao Duanfei were successively favored by Zhu Houxi, for whom Empress Fang was very afraid, afraid of following in Empress Zhang's footsteps, but it was difficult to find an opportunity to dispose of them. However, Empress Fang did not wait too long, and the "Change of The Palace of Nongyin" was her chance.
▲ Forbidden City (Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties) 02
Zhu Houxi was a Taoist tianzi who was also fascinated by Dan Dao. In order to live forever, Zhu Houxi raised a large number of Daoist monks to practice Dan for him, and listened to the nonsense of many Daoist monks. For example, at the suggestion of the Taoist priests, he selected many beautiful girls in the folk and forced them to take Dan medicine in order to refine the elixir. Most of these maidens were poisoned to death, and the few who survived were all gritted in hatred for the emperor.
▲Meise sect Zhuji Atsushi Image
Some officials may ask, doesn't Zhu Houxi himself often eat Dan medicine indiscriminately? How come I wasn't poisoned? This is because the Daoist monks themselves also know what they are practicing, and the people with fierce medicinal properties eat eight or nine out of ten and nine lives, so the basic poison refined for the emperor is as lightly toxic as possible, because different emperors have different preferences for buddhism and Taoism, and no one who holds such a believer does not want him to die.
▲Tomb of Emperor Ming Shizong - Yongling
In the twenty-first year of Jiajing (1542 AD), a group of palace women, planned by Wang Ning's concubines behind the scenes and led by Yang Jinying, quietly launched an assassination plan against the emperor. At this time, Zhu Houxi favored Cao Duanfei alone and stayed in Cao Duanfei's palace at night. Previously, Concubine Cao Duan had already given birth to Princess Chang'an and Princess Anning to Zhu Houxi. Because the emperor's recent whereabouts were fixed, the difficulty of the assassination was greatly reduced, so the assassination plan was officially launched. 03
That night, after Zhu Houxi entered Cao Duanfei's palace, the palace ladies rushed up and pressed him to a chair, and then a palace maid strangled Zhu Houxi's neck with a rope that had been prepared earlier, trying to suffocate the emperor to death. But the palace maid was too nervous, and the rope never really tightened Zhu Houxi's neck, so in a hurry, the palace maid did a stupid thing, a stupid thing without compromise - another knot was tied on the rope.
People with a little common sense in life know that if you tie two knots in a row when you tie your pocket, the final result will become a dead knot. That's right, the palace maid tied a dead knot to the rope, and it couldn't be pulled at all. At this time, the palace maid Zhang Jinlian was finally terrified to the point of collapse, and she betrayed a group of palace women and rushed to Empress Fang's palace to explain the situation. Empress Fang was shocked and immediately sent her bodyguards to rush into Cao Duanfei's palace and take Cao Duanfei and all the palace ladies.
At this time, Zhu Houxi never returned to Her Senses, and Empress Fang took advantage of this rare opportunity to torture her severely, and Shunten touched the melon to lure out Wang Ning's concubine behind her, and finally sentenced Wang Ning's concubine, a group of assassin palace women, along with the innocent Cao Duanfei, to capital punishment.
It turned out that Wang Ning concubine had originally been favored by the emperor, but the emperor had a grudge after empathizing with her love, and the woman who lost her mind was crazy, so she planned this action recklessly, and deliberately burned the fire to the emperor's favored Concubine Cao Duan. In the end, both were executed, perhaps to her expectation.
▲ Ming Dynasty empress stills
Empress Fang saved Tianzi from assassination and seized this opportunity to eliminate two great enemies, but unexpectedly, Zhu Houxi hated her for this. After all, Zhu Houxi and Cao Duanfei were in love with each other, and they felt even more sorry after suddenly losing them, and all the anger was naturally borne by Empress Fang. So many years later, when the Kunning Palace caught fire, Zhu Houxi knew that Empress Fang was also watching coldly in the palace, and even prevented the eunuch guards from fighting the fire, watching the Kunning Palace turn into ruins, allowing Empress Fang to be buried in the sea of fire and burned to death. epilogue
Later, in order to avoid bad public opinion, Emperor Mingzong held a grand funeral for Empress Fang and built a Yongling Tomb for her, and the scale of the funeral was unprecedented. After that, Zhu Houxi posthumously honored Empress Fang as Empress Xiaolie, and the god lord was placed in the Fengxian Hall. Judging from the encounters between Empress Zhang and Empress Fang, Zhu Houxi was a "man of temperament", he was not cold-blooded, but on the contrary, it was precisely because he liked to be emotional, so he would use very clumsy means to deal with the out-of-favor empress, leaving a bad reputation in the future generations.
Resources:
《Taihang Road》
History of the Ming Dynasty