In recent years, in the costume film and television dramas, the story related to the emperor's love feud has been depicted many times, and there must be an emotional line between the emperor and the empress, and the emperor and the queen may be in love with each other, or they may be separated, but no matter what the feelings between the emperor and the empress, the emperor and the empress are always relatively matched with each other in terms of age or family lineage, at least "the door is right". But today's protagonist, not only became an empress at a young age, and the age gap between himself and his "husband", but also married his own biological uncle, which is the most tragic maiden queen in history--- Zhang Yan.
Zhang Yan (張嫣), a native of Danyang of the Chu state, whose characters Meng Yue (孟媖) and Shujun (淑君) were the daughters of Princess Lu Yuan, the sister of Emperor Hui of Han, and Zhang Ao, the Marquis of Xuanping. After Liu Bang's death, the situation was unstable, and the young emperor Liu Ying, who was just sixteen years old at the time, could not deter the situation and was always facing the possibility of being seized of power, so Lü Yan wanted to use the power of foreign relatives to control the government and consolidate the monopoly of power, so he forced his son Liu Ying to marry Zhang Yan, the daughter of his sister Princess Lu Yuan, so that the power was in his own hands. But this behavior was really too absurd, at that time Liu Ying opposed this matter because Zhang Yan was too young, but Lü Hou said that Zhang Yan would grow up sooner or later, so he rejected Liu Ying and insisted that he marry Zhang Yan as his queen. Liu Ying, forced by Lü Yan's power, had to agree. So three years later, nineteen-year-old Liu Ying married her ten-year-old niece Zhang Yan.
After Zhang Yan became empress, Lü Yan forced Liu Ying to have a room with Zhang Yan, but Liu Ying still had etiquette in her heart, how could she be married to a ten-year-old child. Liu Ying always had only pity and concern for his niece, and this political marriage made him disgusted, so he hated Lü Yan's decision and sympathized with his niece, but because of his own cowardly personality, he was just a puppet of Lü Yan, so the only thing he could do was not to touch Zhang Yan.
Lü Hou hoped that Zhang Yan would be able to give birth to a child, but Zhang Yan was too young to get pregnant by all means. Lü Hou then designed for Zhang Yan to pretend to be pregnant, and then lied to Liu Gong, the son of Emperor Hui of Han and the palace maid, as Zhang Yan's child, and designed to kill Liu Gong's birth mother, and then make Liu Gong crown prince.
In the seventh year of Emperor Hui of Han (188 BC), Emperor Hui of Han died at the age of twenty-three. On the fifth day of September of the same year, he was buried in Anling. After the death of Emperor Hui of Han, Lü Hou made Zhang Yan's "son" Liu Gong emperor, and history called him the former Shao Emperor. However, because Liu Gong was still young, Empress Lü came to the imperial court to exercise imperial power, and still called herself empress dowager; Zhang Yan, on the other hand, was not called empress, but only empress.
Four years after Lü (184 BC), Liu Gong had gradually grown up, knowing that his birth mother had been killed, and he was not Zhang Yan's biological son, so he declared that he would take revenge when he grew up, and Lü Hou was very worried after he knew it, fearing that Liu Gong would rebel and take revenge on himself to regain power. Therefore, liu Gong was imprisoned in Yongxiang in the palace, and the emperor was said to be ill and would no longer summon anyone, which was actually liu gong under house arrest. In order to have no worries, Lü Hou soon deposed Liu Gong and secretly killed him. On May 11 of the same year, Lü Hou made Liu Yi, another son of Emperor Hui of Han, emperor and renamed Liu Yi liu Hong, the later Emperor of Hou. Lü Hou continued to rule the dynasty and control the court.
On July 30, the eighth year of Lü Hou (180 BC), the powerful empress dowager Lü Yan died, and soon after, the ministers jointly eliminated Zhu Lü (Lü Hou's Lü family) and deposed Liu Hong, and established Liu Heng, the fourth brother of Emperor Hui of Han, as emperor, known as Emperor Wen of Han. All the officials in the government and the public knew that Zhang Yan had nothing to do with Zhu Lü's chaotic government, so the young empress Dowager Zhang Yan was spared death, but because she was a member of the Lü family, she was always a tool for Lü Yan to control the court and grasp power, so she was still implicated and deposed.
Zhang Yan's ending was not as tragic as Liu Ying and Liu Gong's, but from then on she lived silently in an extremely quiet courtyard behind Weiyang Palace, the North Palace, and Zhang Yan was like a dead leaf that no one cared about, and after a short period of tender green, she could only quietly float to the ground, and no one cared about it for seventeen years.
In March of the first year of Emperor Wen of Han (163 BC), Zhang Yan died of illness at the age of forty, and was buried with Emperor Hui of Han in Anling, with the posthumous title of Empress Xiaohui. At this point, Zhang Yan's tragic life has finally come to an end. "Spring Colors of the Han Palace" once commented on Zhang Yan: "There are many concubines after the Fugu Saint Queen, and both Rong Rong and Virtue are extremely beautiful and ruined, but Empress Zhang of Han is the only one." But endowed with soft wishes, only slightly shorter ears. Yu Drama! Kun Dao takes stillness as the body, and virtue and no talent as the right, why is it the supreme virtue after that? ”
But how can an empress be considered by later generations to be a mortal flower god? It turned out that when Zhang Yan was about to be buried after her death, after the palace ladies washed her body, they were surprised to find that Zhang Yan still retained her virgin body until her death, and she was ice clean and clean all her life. Later, the news did not go away, and when the people heard the news, they thought that Zhang Yan was the legendary flower god, and people all missed and pitied her. Therefore, the people set up temples for her, and they sacrificed her from time to time, honoring her as the god of flowers, and the temple built for her was also called the flower temple.