During the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, the Tang Dynasty could be said to be a political and harmonious person. In terms of foreign wars, the Western Turks, Baekje, and Goguryeo were destroyed successively, and the Tang Dynasty during the reign was the largest. The storm after the change of Emperor Gaozong in the early tang dynasty, involving the past events of Empress Wang, Concubine Xiao Shufei and Wu Zetian, is actually directly related to the above-mentioned great deeds.
According to historical records, in the early days of Emperor Gaozong's reign, Empress Wang did not know how to flatter the emperor, and had no sons, and was not liked by Li Zhi; Concubine Xiao Shufei was favored by Li Zhi because she was young and beautiful, and gave birth to a son and two daughters; and Wu Zetian, that is, Wu Meiniang at that time, in the late reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, as a talented person, already had an affair with Li Zhi, who was then the crown prince.
However, after Li Shimin's death, he became a nun at The Ganye Temple because he had no children, and it seemed that he had to spend his whole life in the green lantern ancient Buddha. However, Empress Wang, in order to compete with Concubine Xiao Shufei for favors, put Wu Zetian into the palace, and after a series of court battles, Empress Wang and Concubine Xiao Shufei were deposed on the charge of "conspiracy to poison" and the whole family was exiled to Lingnan. Not long after, in order to prevent Li Zhi from repeating his old feelings, the two were ordered by Wu Zetian to hang them.
It looks like an ordinary palace fight plot, and the palace fight process written by one of the most dishes of female frequency authors is more exciting than this. But is it really that simple?
Empress Wang's childlessness fell out of favor, more because she came from a family. The Wang clan was of noble origin, born in the Taiyuan Wang clan, one of the "five surnames and seven hopes" of the prominent generations at that time, and his grandfather Wang Sizheng was a Western Wei heavy minister, and his parents were also in-laws of the Tang Dynasty royal family, belonging to the Guanlong aristocratic military clique.
When she married Li Zhi, Li Zhi was still only the King of Jin. Until the crown prince Li Chengqian was deposed and Li Zhi was made crown prince, Wang Shi was made a princess. When Li Zhi ascended the throne, Wang shi was naturally made empress. For such a long time, Xiao Shufei had given birth to three children, but the Wang family did not move at all.
I remember that there is a sentence in the "Afang Palace Endowment" that mentions the "concubine concubine" who marries the emperor, and the "concubine" type is the sister of the concubine as a dowry to consolidate the grace of the emperor. When the concubine was childless, the children born to her sisters were counted as hers.
If Li Zhi really favored Empress Wang and the political forces behind her, as a mature emperor, even if he hated her, he would choose to be close to her, rather than the other way around. The comparison between Empress Wang and Empress Changsun, the biological mother of Li Zhi, is more illustrative, and the Changsun clan and the Guanlong clique they represent have changed from the help of imperial power to the constraint of imperial power.
Empress Eldest Sun was the empress dowager of Emperor Taizong of Tang, and the two had been married since childhood, loving and supporting each other, as evidenced by their numerous children. In addition to private feelings, how much is considering wooing the eldest son and letting her wholeheartedly assist herself, and how much is considering the influence of the Guanlong clique represented behind the empress dowager?
However, Li Shimin's favor for the eldest grandson's family and his dependence on the Guanlong clique caused Li Zhi to face a situation in which the lord was weak and strong when he ascended the throne: the family forces headed by his uncle controlled the situation, and Li Zhi could not really control the power.
If Li Zhi was consciously alienating the Wang clan in order to consolidate the monarchy and break the constraints of the clan on the imperial power, it was quite possible.
The Shu forces represented by Wu Zetian were the objects that Li Zhi needed to win over to consolidate his imperial power. Her father was only a timber merchant who had been granted the title of Duke of Guo because he had funded Li Yuan, and did not have much power. After Wu Zetian became empress, because of his political ambitions, he was bound to make more use of the power of the Shu clan and fight with the clan for your life.
During her time as empress and empress, she re-examined and used a series of policies to be cool officials, all for the same purpose. And the weakness of Wu Zetian's own family foundation makes it impossible for people from the Wu family to inherit the throne even if she becomes a female empress, because this is the reason why Wu Zetian became an empress.
While she achieved the feats of an individual who had never been seen before or since, she also cleared the obstacles for the Li Tang Dynasty. Politically, Li Zhi and Wu Zetian are mutually successful.
Because Consort Xiao was not an empress, her son could not become the heir to the throne and was able to give birth to an heir. Therefore, her act of competing with empress Wang for favors and wanting to become an empress can be described as self-destruction.
Li Zhi is a king with long-term plans and strong execution ability, he himself is far-sighted, not a weak son of heaven as shown in many film and television works.
When several older brothers could not compete for the position of prince with all their efforts, Li Zhi accurately spied through his father Li Shimin's concern about the influence of his "killing his brother and imprisoning his father" to his descendants, and unmistakably showed his tendency and ability to eliminate this influence to his father, which made Li Shimin feel that in the case of being old and could die at any time, he would establish a fifteen-year-old son who was likely to succeed to the throne at a young age and then be taken of the sheji as the prince.
Li Zhi ascended the throne at the age of twenty-two, and at the age of twenty-six, he quickly swept away various royal families that might threaten the stability of his throne through the "Fang Yi Ai Conspiracy Case". This may be the credit of Li Shimin's assistant chancellor, but it also shows his ruthless wrist as a politician. When Li Zhi reached the age of twenty-eight, he took the opportunity of "deposing the king and establishing the martial arts" to achieve his own more personal goals on the one hand, and on the other hand, to attack the family clan and support the cold gate of the Shu clan in order to consolidate the stability of the imperial power.
When Li Zhi was thirty-six years old, he was already unable to handle the government because of a wind disease, and Wu Zetian handled the government with the dignity of an empress, and gradually became weak, and Li Zhi only casually beat Wu Zetian with the proposal of "abolishing the queen", which made Wu Zetian frightened and restrained a lot, and these examples invariably showed that Li Zhi was a feudal emperor with great political skills.
History is always repeating itself, and political figures like Li Zhi and Wu Zetian are very one-sided to interpret it with their love brains alone. There is undoubtedly an emotional basis between Li and Wu, but more of their thoughts and actions are more political considerations.
The mature political skills and administrative policies of the two have brought about the little-known "rule of Yonghui" and laid the foundation for the "Kaiyuan Prosperous Era".
Why did Wu Zetian, who had no power and no power, overthrow Empress Wang and Concubine Xiao Shufei?
In the battle of Emperor Gaozong of Tang's harem, compared with Empress Xiao Shufei, where did Wu Zetian win?