Mistresses: Wu Zhao | 97

A quick warning before we get started, this episode will have adult content throughout,

including intense backstabbing and some pretty frightening mother-son relationships.

There is also a high chance that we will say the odd swear word here and there,

so please watch out for that.

And then teach those words to your children.

From the bedrooms of powerful men,

we're bringing you the secret histories of their mistresses,

concubines and court sounds.

I'm Jimmy Ligemail, I'm an actor, a writer and a broadcaster.

And I'm Dr. Kate Lister, a historian with a punch on for scandalous tales from centuries past.

This is mistresses, an audible original.

It's the summer of 649 and we are in China.

On the outskirts of its former capital city, Chung An.

Emperor Taizong, the second emperor in the Tong Dynasty,

has just died. His palace is now going through the usual upheaval with a change over taking place as his son takes the throne.

As his customary, Emperor Taizong consults concubines and his selected ladies,

and the second emperor in the Tong Dynasty has just died.

His palace is now going through the usual upheaval with a change over taking place as his son takes the throne.

As his customary, Emperor Taizong consults concubines and his selected ladies,

have been sent away from the palace to a Buddhist temple.

They have taken Tonsha, which means they've shaved off their hair and they are in the process of becoming nuns.

In the eyes of the deeply patriarchal Confucianist system in which they all exist,

these women have fulfilled their life's purpose, they've served the Emperor.

And now he's dead, the temple is the only place for them.

It's here that they will spend the rest of their lives.

Well, all except for one.

Because amongst this group of women is one truly extraordinary individual.

A woman who will leave this temple, head back to the palace, break free from patriarchy's chains,

and change the history of China forever.

Fuck me, I cannot wait for this story.

I know I said that really well, didn't I?

So the woman we're looking at is Wujao.

She first entered the royal court as a member of an Emperor's Haram.

But over the course of her life, she ascended the social ranks,

eventually becoming Emperor herself, the first and only woman to ever hold that position.

Yes, so we're going to be looking at that journey in this episode.

But even that is not entirely straightforward,

because almost everything we know about Wujao is disputed.

Even her name.

Yes, so Wu is a family name because in China, your family name comes first, right?

But the records don't tell us her personal name.

There's no trace of her birth name in any historical records,

for the simple reason that she's a woman.

Even though in this case, Wujao goes on to become Emperor.

She's most commonly referred to as Wu Zetian,

but that's the name that was given to her after she died.

So why have we opted for Wujao?

Because that's the name that she chose for herself.

When she became the ruler, she invented a whole bunch of new characters within the Chinese language,

including the Jiao character, which means illumination.

And so she adopted it as her name Wu Jiao.

I'm very glad considering everything she achieved

that we're able to use the name that she actually chose for herself

and give this woman back at rightful autonomy.

It's one of the few things that we can do, actually,

to give Wu Jiao any agency of her own story.

Because most of what we know about this woman was written by male historians

who didn't like her hundreds of years after she died.

And they've got their own agenda to try and discredit Wu Jiao

because they didn't like the fact that a woman Emperor did so well.

They had to demonize her to stop any woman from ever trying such a thing ever again.

Yeah, and make an example out of her.

I mean, she sounds like my cup of tea, big time.

But before we get to it, can I please issue another warning for our listeners

a warning that my pronunciations in this episode

are going to be pretty shocking.

My tones will be all over the place.

So please, please don't write me angry letters.

I will also be the same, but you can write me angry letters.

I love them.

Right, let's crack on.

So before we really get into it,

we're going to hand things over to Katie Kennedy for a moment.

So she's going to take us back to early seventh century China

to tell us a bit about what was happening when Wu Jiao was born.

Hey, yeah, you're right. It's Katie.

So let's start in 6.04,

when a guy called Emperor Yang comes to the throne.

And to be honest, it's sort of a shichou from day one.

Many because he wages all of these unsuccessful walls.

And then he raises taxes to pay for them.

So he sounds a bit of a wanker to be honest.

In 6.18, Emperor Yang's popularity is at an all-time low.

So one evening, he decides to make himself feel better by running a cheeky bubble bath.

But he then proceeds to get strangled in the bath by his own army general,

which doesn't really make him feel a lot better because he dies.

With Emperor Yang gone, chaos breaks out.

Everyone in the man starts trying to claim the throne in a get really messy.

After a lot of fighting and bloodshed, one guy comes out on top,

a general called Li Yuan.

He establishes the tongue dynasty and makes himself Emperor Gaozu.

So yeah, that's the political situation Wu Zhao was born into.

Pretty complicated.

So let me hand you back to Jimmy Lair and Kate.

So there's a lot of upheaval going on in China at the time Wu Zhao was born.

Yes, there is.

But there isn't a lot that we can say about her birth,

as well as not knowing her name.

But we also don't know exactly when or where she was born,

just that it was some time around 624 AD.

Over the years, loads of myths and legends have been told about Wu Zhao's birth.

Yeah, my favorite one is about the dragon.

According to this particular myth,

Wu Zhao's mum is floating down a river when a dragon emerges from water.

And then the dragon and Wu Zhao's mum get it on apparently,

and boom, Wu Zhao is born.

What an origin story.

I don't think it gets more creative than that.

I have no idea where this one came from,

but it is possible that Wu Zhao actually instructed for this to be written or told,

as dragons are held in huge reverence in Chinese culture.

I mean, the emperor's throne is known as the dragon throne.

So it may have been a very clever PR move on her part,

and she was an excellent PR strategist.

So do we know anything about her family at all?

Her real dad probably wasn't a dragon.

He was probably a lumber merchant, which isn't anywhere near as exciting.

He bought and sold wood apparently, but he was really good at it,

and he made a lot of money doing it.

So he's quite connected, and he's quite well off.

So she's born into a reasonable dragon-free family.

Her father is an early supporter of the Li Yuan rebellion,

which Katie was just talking about,

and Li Yuan goes on to become the emperor Gao Zhu.

And under him, Wu Zhao's father is appointed as governor general

of a couple of prefectures, which are sort of like counties.

So basically, you could argue that strategizing is genuinely in Wu Zhao's blood,

because her dads are an opportunity for a better life and grabbed it.

I think so, and she would have grown up around people

that were always looking for opportunities and were quite ruthless,

because she didn't come from a super aristocratic background.

She came from people that were opportunists.

So records about Wu Zhao's life really begin when she enters the royal harem,

which she does when she's 14, 14.

This grim, isn't it? It really is.

By this point, Emperor Taizong is on the throne,

and he's the son of Gao Zhu, the guy who gave Wu Zhao's dad a job.

And Wu Zhao is one of 122 women selected to join Emperor Taizong's harem.

She's a concubine.

Okay, tell me more.

So a concubine is it's somebody who's sexually available to the Emperor.

They're not quite servants.

They've got quite a lot of standing within the Imperial Palace.

So if you're looking at royal mistresses,

it's all kind of the same thing,

but a mistress has got that kind of like girlfriend vibe,

and it's more like it's a romantic relationship.

And there was romance within the harem,

but there's 122 of them at the same time.

What is going on with people sex drives in this era?

It's impressive, isn't it?

The 122 is mad.

There is a reason perhaps why he has so many of them.

And it goes back to a really ancient Chinese philosophy,

that he might have heard of.

And one of the principles of this is energy,

is personal energy.

And there is a belief that men can harvest women's energy through sex.

It has been known as sexual vampirism.

And they do this by not ejaculating.

So for men ejaculates, he loses his precious energy.

The idea was you'd have loads of sex

with as many different people as you could,

hence 122, but you never come.

That sounds like just torture.

They thought it could lead to a mortal lives.

They thought it was terribly good for your health.

I can see how it would be good for making forceful decisions afterwards,

because the blue bulls is going to send your testosterone through the fuck your roof.

Yeah.

The 122 women within the harem are organised into specific ranks.

The whole thing is meticulously organised.

In Emperor Taizong's harem, there are roughly eight ranks,

ranging from the concerts at the top, followed by concubines,

followed by secondary concubines,

and at the bottom there are selected ladies.

And most of them are given titles,

or I guess it's more categories, really,

like the third rank concubines are also known as

ladies of handsome fairness.

Then you've got your ladies of beauty,

ladies of talent, and the ladies of precious bevy.

They're my personal favourites.

What does that mean?

That sounds like something from...

I don't know, Bristol.

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

They're all there with a pint.

So when Woojao arrives at Emperor Taizong's palace,

she's placed in the fifth rank.

She is a lady of talent,

and she's going to stay there being a lady of talent for ten years.

What's her talent?

It's believed that she was a great conversationalist,

which is something that a lot of the mistresses

that we're looking at in this series all have in common,

is it's not just about looks,

it's about being funny and witty and entertaining the Emperor.

And apparently she could crack out a tune as well,

she was good at musical instruments.

Okay, so then what happens?

So in 649, the Emperor Taizong dies.

He died because he was full of jizz.

He died of blue balls, terminal blue balls.

Yeah, they exploded, actually, I heard.

And then he died.

Two pups are all around the palace.

So once that's happened,

Woojao and all of the other concubines are taken away,

and they are going to be sent to a Buddhist temple

on the edge of the capital city.

I'm so desperately curious about how the mistresses

or concubines or whoever always get sent to some sort of nunnery.

It's a theme.

It's really fascinating.

It's almost as if the men feel as though they have,

in some way, muddied them, you know.

Yeah.

And now they are cleansing them by giving them a chance

to get to heaven by repenting and cleaning themself.

Do you know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean.

There's something very sanitising about it.

Get to a nunnery.

It's a weird system where a nunnery ends up being a retirement home for hose, essentially.

Everyone thinks that nunnery is a full of really well-behaved women,

but it's not.

It's not a woman who's been sent that to think about what they did.

So, Jamila, as you know,

Woodjow doesn't stay in the temple.

As it turns out, she has been planning ahead

as all good strategists do.

Woodjow has recognised that he's on his way out.

The Emperor is dying, so she has been cosying up to his son.

She wasn't going to spend the rest of her life hanging around in a nunnery.

She is going to get herself back into the heart of the action

and she's going to do this by possibly shagging the sun at this time.

This is very the graduate, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I rate it.

And it's a good tactic to do it, as well.

So, as the Emperor has been dying of blue balls,

she has been focusing her attention on the sun

and she manages to get him to be really attracted to her really fancier.

So, she is able to basically hustle her way into his haring.

So, then Woodjow's back in the palace.

She joins the haram of the sun and he is Emperor Gaozong.

And by this time, she's not in the fifth rank.

She's moved up to the second rank.

Yep.

Promotion.

Big deal.

But she's not at the top of the pile just yet.

There are still a few women who are ranked more highly than her

and two, in particular, who hold a lot of power.

Those two women, a consort Shiow, who's known as the pure consort

and Gaozong's wife, Empress Wang.

Right.

And from what I've read, there's tension between those two, right?

Well, the Empress basically hates the consort Shiow

because she is her husband's favorite woman in the whole of the harine.

Okay.

Most likely, because consort Shiow has given him sons,

something that Shi, as the Empress, has not been able to do.

Right.

It's getting messy.

Yeah.

Incredibly messy.

Yeah.

I love this.

Empress Wang is willing to go to any lengths to pull her husband away

from the consort Shiow, so much so that when she learned

about her husband's affection for Wujao,

she actively encourages him to bring Wujao back from the temple

into his harine, because she has this plan in her head,

thinking that she can use Wujao to distract her husband away

from consort Shiow.

Right, right, right, right.

So I'm imagining the plan ends up backfiring.

It's not a great plan, and she's seriously underestimating

the ambition of Wujao.

So three years past, Wujao gives birth to a son,

which is a major win, incurring favor with the Emperor,

Harara, well done.

She also gives birth to a baby girl, which is, oh, well done.

Maybe I'll be a boy next time.

The baby dies.

I know.

I know.

Well, this part is incredibly complicated.

There are so many versions of events here, including one

that says Wujao actually murdered the baby in order to pin it

on Empress Wang and bring her down.

No, I don't want to hear this.

I don't want a reason not to like her. I'm so on her side.

But you don't have to believe any of this, because it's probably

just propaganda by male historians, because it's a really

common thing for them to do is to say that a woman murders babies

if they want to discredit her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, saying a woman killed her baby or saying she's a bit up

herself for the two main ways to get people to fully turn

against her.

Exactly.

That is the most extreme version, and it is also the most

unlikely.

There's another version that says that the baby dies,

and Wujao being the strategist that she is, uses this

tragic event to her own advantage, pinning it on the Empress

Wang.

Wow.

That's possible.

But here's the thing, no formal charges were ever brought

against Empress Wang.

All we know is that there was a baby, and that baby died,

and that around the same time Empress Wang is falling out

of favour while Wujao's star is definitely on the rise.

So, people have filled in the blanks themselves.

Right, of course.

I mean, these two women must have been murdering babies

and backstabbing one another.

But really, that just ignores the fact that Wujao is making

some seriously impressive political moves at this point to

consolidate her power.

She's doing really smart, sneaky things, like building up

armies of spies amongst the other concubines and amongst

the servants.

And she begins to form alliances with quite low level statesmen,

which is a good tactic if you want to secure power, because

if you start befriending people who don't have a lot of influence,

they would be eternally grateful if you boost them up the scale.

She's got an amazing long game.

Doesn't she just?

So, the court becomes very divided now into pro Wujao supporters

and anti-wujao supporters, and it's becoming increasingly hostile

this environment.

And this is the time when some new convenient rumours begin to

spread about Empress Wang.

Yes.

Empress Wang is accused of plotting to poison the Emperor.

And according to the rumours in her desperation,

she's even roped in her old rival consortiau to help.

That's an unbeatable rumour.

And despite huge opposition from within the court,

the Emperor actually demotes the Empress.

Empress Wang gets stripped of her titles and her privilege

and her position and he throws her in jail.

I know, and he sends consortiau to join her,

which is incomplete.

That's the two rivals.

Yeah, checkmate.

Checkmate, two birds, one stone, two birds, one throne.

And so then what does that mean for Wujao?

That means that Wujao is now installed as the Empress consort.

She is now Empress Wu.

She would win every single reality TV show in the world.

She would be awesome on the traitors.

Yeah, 100% everything the apprentice should be president of the world.

I mean, that is some serious scheming that she's done there.

She managed to maneuver to get those two rivals out of the way

at the same time.

Yeah, to break hierarchy like that takes so much concert 24 hours a day

of strategising and manipulating all these different things.

I think she's so scary and impressive.

It's about to get even scarier.

And I don't know, more impressive or less impressive,

depending on how you view these things.

So Empress Wu, thank you very much,

waste no time in wreaking revenge on her enemies,

including her two former rivals.

So we're going to turn to Katie,

our historian slash gossip correspondent for all of the details.

But I am going to warn you again, listeners.

It's grim.

So as we've heard,

Wujao is dead and either Empress Wang in consortiau

of previously had their pasties smashed by a man.

So she's already gotten them thrown in jail,

a measured response if you ask me.

But Ruma has it, she's ready to take it up a notch.

And of course, the natural next step

would be to have them tortured, obviously.

So during this torture, apparently consortiau

lets lift something unexpected, shall we say.

She vows to return to the palace in another life as a cat

and says Wujao will be a mouse.

So Wu Jiao's response, immediate, decisive.

She's every single cat in that palace removed.

And it's a level of commitment rarely seen outside

of petty dictators when people arguing

in the Facebook comment sections.

But the newly appointed Empress, she is not done.

Torture, not enough.

She wants these two dead.

And how would you do that, you may ask?

A straightforward twatten of the head?

Too predictable.

Instead, she opts for something a bit more jinnisikwa.

So legend has it that she chops off her arms and legs

and then drops them into a huge bat of wine.

And then as the women sing to the Pino Grigio,

Wujao allegedly yells,

let the two hives get drunk to the bones.

Which I think sounds class.

I'll wait, except for the legs thing,

because yeah, I won't really want my arms and legs chopped off.

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There's just no way that that's real.

That is written by a fantasist who's never had a conversation

with a woman.

That's exactly what that is.

Goodness sake.

Yeah.

I mean, she probably really just like banging on about the crazy.

Anytime she does something that's strategically brilliant.

And again, I'm not on her side and I think it's horrendous

that if she did have these two women killed who are already in jail.

She should be satisfied with that.

It's not like they're coming out and, you know, being reinstated.

But it's just so bizarre how every time she succeeds,

the rumours just get madder and madder.

There's just no need to kill somebody

by lopping their arms and legs off and drowning them in wine.

There are much more efficient ways of doing it.

She probably did have them killed,

but that doesn't make her any more different from the other.

Well, that makes her sound like a man.

That's the sort of thing that a male emperor would do,

which is like make sure to wipe them out,

that are open their mouths.

And as long as they're alive, they are a threat to her

because they were above her at one point.

Totally, totally.

And they know too much.

So I can't understand, well, I don't love it,

that she would have them killed just like any man would do.

But again, it always has to be overkill.

Yeah.

That almost certainly didn't happen.

It's another one of these crazy rumours

that's all about demonizing her,

which you don't really need to do because she's ruthless enough.

It feels like a 14-year-old game of Thrones fan.

Roast her life.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

But her vengeance doesn't stop there.

Empress Wang and Consort,

she out, aren't the only people she exacts revenge on, right?

No, but they are just the beginning.

Once she is bagged herself the role of Empress,

quite frankly, she's on a roll by this point.

And it's addictive, isn't it?

It is.

I mean, once you realise that anyone who's vaguely pissed you off,

you can just chuck them in a dungeon.

Yeah.

You get rid of them.

And that's exactly what she does.

Anyone who opposes her or tries to suggest she shouldn't be in this role,

finds themselves demoted or dead or sometimes both.

Mm-hmm.

She certainly had a hit list of people she was going to get.

It's like the Emperor's uncle and chief minister.

He had very vocally opposed her.

And he finds himself exiled and eventually he dies by suicide.

Then there are two other ministers who are banished

to then re-cold and investigate it on trumped up charges of treason

and on the way back to their palace they happen to be killed on the road.

Christ, yeah.

I'm going to find yourself on Wooja's bad side.

Mm-hmm.

No, and it's a bad place to be.

Now, I know that over the next few years,

she makes the most of her new position as Empress

and her power just continues to grow and grow.

She even establishes a second capital city, right?

Yes, because she was getting bad vibes from their old palace.

Because she killed so many people there.

Yeah, it's a cemetery.

I think there's so many ghosts there are around there.

Just armless ghost stinking of wine, hunting you down.

So that brings us up to the year 660

and there is another big power shift.

Mm-hmm.

Because Emperor Gaozong suffers a stroke

which leaves him almost incapacitated

and this means he begins to rely more and more on his wife

for help with court matters.

Oh, would you look at that?

Mm-hmm. Very convenient.

So they effectively begin to rule as equals

which goes completely against the Confucianist principles.

Now, you mentioned a patriarchal Confucianism

right at the top of the episode very, very briefly.

Can you expand a bit more on what that is?

Yes, absolutely.

Confucianism is an ancient philosophical school of thought.

And at this point in Chinese history,

it is very integral in their culture.

It's very ordered and logical.

They have a very succinct way of looking at the world.

Everything has a place and everything in its place.

And they do it with gender, very strict gender roles.

In fact, one of the sayings was that a woman should worship three men

within her life, her father, her husband, and then her son.

So when somebody like Wujao turns up

and is co-running this culture with her husband,

that is a real threat to Confucianist ideals.

Right.

And throughout her time as Empress,

Wujao is continually chipping away

at what is considered the natural order of things.

She's doing everything she can subtly

and very unsuttly promote women's place and society.

She does.

And it's really clever what she's doing

because on one hand it's like, yay, woohoo, go feminism.

But also she's doing it because if she can do work

to raise women's position in society more widely,

that helps give her credibility for what she's doing.

I'm fine with that because she's doing stuff like

that she changes the titles of the concubines

within the palace so they don't sound so daft basically.

And they sound more like proper jobs.

So a lady of beauty becomes a recipient of edicts.

Okay.

And a lady of talent becomes a guardian immortal.

Oh, she's giving them very dignified roles.

Badass roles.

Yeah, like it.

A much prefer that.

I prefer that too.

And it's all about her promoting the role of women

so it doesn't seem quite as odd that one of them

is basically running China now.

And she inserts herself into government affairs.

She takes part in traditional ceremonies

that she shouldn't have been doing as a woman.

They were only supposed to be carried out by men.

And in 674, it's announced that she and the Emperor Gaozong

will be taking on new titles.

Heavenly Emperor and Heavenly Empress.

So funny.

Isn't that nice?

So good.

It's a dramatic.

So then in 675,

the Emperor Gaozong's illness gets even worse.

And it's becoming very apparent to everybody

that he is not long for this Earth, especially to Wu Zhao,

I would imagine.

And at any point of they gone,

I just don't think this 122 women thing is working.

Like another man's bolux by the dust.

It's not in the records if they did.

Because it feels like these men are dying quite young.

He probably died of a stroke.

Yeah, quite a little.

Yeah.

Ah!

Ah!

Yeah.

Ah, right.

Okay.

This is what he came as he went.

Oh, right.

He's not doing very well.

He's on his last leg.

Yeah.

This means that Wu Zhao is going to have to do some serious maneuvering.

And she does have sons that can inherit the title.

She's made sure that her son has been named as the heir apparent.

Even though he's not technically the Emperor's firstborn son,

he had other children with other concubines and consorts.

But her son dies in 675, right?

The same year that Emperor Gaozon's health takes turn.

Yeah, which must have put a spanner in the works to say the least.

And is there any implication that Wu Zhao had something to do with it?

That depends which historian you want to believe.

Some of them have suggested it was just a complete random accident.

Others say that she poisoned this son

because she didn't like how close he was to his half-sisters,

who at the children of the other concubines and consorts,

like consort Shiyou, people that she's had killed.

Yes, exactly.

But she has a second son who steps in as the heir.

Yes, but almost immediately he poses a big problem for Wu Zhao.

Why?

Well, for one thing, there are never-ending rumors that he wasn't actually Wu Zhao's son,

that he was the son of her elder sister,

who was a member of Emperor Gaozon's hiring.

The scandals.

Never end.

I know.

Okay, so this must have been just perfect ammunition for her detractors.

Absolutely.

And the other issue is that this son has made it clear to Wu Zhao

from the outset that he does not plan to live in her shadow.

He's not going to be a puppet emperor.

I mean, that to me sounds like he is her son, then.

He's got the spirit of her.

Do you know what I mean?

I mean, it would be really weird if she gave birth to some pushover with no spine.

This is, that is her son.

He's certainly learnt from his mother, I think.

Yeah, it is a bloodline.

So in six, seven, six, Wu Zhao orders his home to be raided.

But why she did?

What else would a mother be doing?

And the investigators allegedly find several hundred suits of armor in his stables,

which they say is evidence of an uprising.

Right.

It's got off again, hasn't it?

Yeah.

So now, son number two is gone.

Is she running more sons?

She does have other sons, which is fortunate.

But I'm just going to pause here a moment for a quick side note,

because it's around this time that a former minister,

who Wu Zhao had demoted due to his lack of loyalty,

he writes an essay attacking her,

which is a bolsie slash stupid thing to have done.

But you have an excerpt of that in front of you.

Could you just read it out for me?

Absolutely.

It says,

Miss Wu, who has falsely usurped authority to run the court,

is by nature, cold and unyielding,

always with the cold,

by birth, lowly and obscure.

God, this method of bitch.

In Atley jealous, her moth-like eyebrows allow other women no-quarter.

All embroidered sleeves and artful slander

have vulpine glamour beguiled the ruler.

The ruler he's referring to there is the Emperor Gao Zhong,

Wu Zhao's husband.

And what does he mean by moth-like eyebrows?

Believe it or not, that's actually a kind of compliment.

Right.

Somewhere, moth-tails look really long,

at least some moths have really long tails,

and that was considered very fashionable.

Oh, great.

I'm sort of come to TikTok any day now.

Okay, so let me continue.

Beneath Wu Zhao's pheasant plumage,

the former Empress Wang was trampled.

This musky doe once plunged my true sovereign

into a rutting frenzy,

vying with his own father.

Is he mad?

Is he mad publishing this?

When he knows what she's like?

Ballsy, isn't it?

There's one final line.

Okay.

Her heart is half viper and half chameleon.

Her disposition is that of a ravenous jackal or wolf.

She is hated by men and spirits like

neither heaven nor earth can stand her.

He's just determined to dehumanize her

with these images of vicious, ferocious animals.

So classic, which is something that powerful women

have had to deal with throughout time.

People always have to strip them of their humanity.

Yeah.

But it does, I don't know if backfired is the word,

because one of the best things about this story

is that this essay was read out in front of Wu Zhao.

And her reaction to it apparently

she just fell about laughing.

She thought it was absolutely hilarious

and she turns to a court of officials

and she says, Ministers, this is your fault.

How is it that a man this talented has been cast out

and isn't serving in office?

Oh, I love her.

I love her.

I love that she's impressed by his pen.

It's more that she's using the situation to her advantage.

She refuses to be embarrassed by what he's written

and instead she uses this to signal her own strength to the court.

I actually have that as a strategy

when I do something embarrassing.

I pretend to be really proud of it

so that no one can tease me about it.

Nice.

It's really fun.

It's really effective, too, if you own the thing

that people are trying to shame you for.

Yeah.

Don't you fancy?

Love it.

Did it on purpose?

Yeah.

Did it on purpose?

Love it.

Can't stop telling everyone, showing everyone.

A good strategy.

Right.

Let's get back to the more succession style stuff.

So two of Woojiao's sons have now been stripped of their

heir apparent titles conveniently got out the way.

So when Emperor Gaozong finally kicks the bucket in 683,

it's her third son who has sensed throne.

That must have been utterly terrifying for him

by watching what happened to his brother.

Right.

He is now called Emperor Jong-Zong

and Woojiao is the Empress Dowager,

which means she is the mother of the Emperor.

But very quickly, Woojiao starts to find that this son

is a pain in the ass as well.

The problem with this son is that his wife

is getting a bit big for her boot,

she's getting a bit bulsier,

and she's trying to establish herself

as an authority in court as the Emperor's wife.

But you can imagine Woojiao's reaction to this

young ambitious woman.

This is due, as I say, not as I do situation.

And so she, being a patient's and kind woman,

she waits all of six weeks.

Six weeks while her son and his wife came to court

and then the third son is deposed on the basis,

and listen to this, his wife is becoming too powerful.

Well, the irony, the hypocrisy.

I know.

But Clever.

Very Clever.

So now Woojiao has one son left,

just the one.

And Christ, she had so many boys.

She had some backups.

Because she's just plucking them off one by one.

I know.

And they're all disappointing to her.

He ascends the throne as Emperor Wooazong.

But there's no question that this son

is 100% under the control of his mother.

So she's placed her son there as the face of it all,

but she's really putting all the strength.

She's the puppeteer.

She is just the out and out puppet master of almost everything

that's happening within the royal court.

She's placed all the ministers who favor her in the best positions.

She's either banished or killed the people who said anything bad

or tried to oppose her.

She's upended the Confucianist ideals about womanhood,

and she's placed herself there as an all-powerful woman.

And she's been chipping away at this idea

that women can't rule and can't have any kind of political life

for a long time now.

50 years at this point, she's been working inside the palace,

working her way up the ranks, scheming, plotting,

and biding her time.

The next bit is now pretty easy.

On October the 16th, 690,

she swept her son aside and just ascended the throne herself.

She decided to do away entirely with the puppet thing

and just run the show herself.

She declares herself as Emperor.

I do think this woman might be my hero.

She's been calling the shots all this time anyway.

And so, you know, there is something...

It's tricky to say inspiring when she's just murdered

and drowned a bunch of people and maybe killed a baby,

her own baby, but there is something quite magnificent

about her own self-determination

from such a young age that has been maintained

throughout so many trials and tribulations.

Like so many people coming for her neck and trying to take her down

and she's just got extraordinary resolve from resilience.

Exactly.

And she doesn't even use the title Empress.

She uses the word for Emperor.

Ministers refer to her as Your Majesty.

And she refers to herself as Zen,

which means either one man.

Amazing.

Down with Empress.

In with Emperor.

We love testing her.

So now she's finally sitting on the dragon throne.

What happens next?

Well, she continues the work that she was doing all the way back

when she started off as a lowly entry level concubine.

She's manipulating and she's strategizing

and she's keeping a very firm grip over court activities.

Some historians say that her early years in power

were this kind of reign of terror

where she had her own secret police

and people would disappear in left, right, and center.

But they would say that because they didn't like her.

I don't know.

While I get it,

the amount of things that she's managed to overcome,

I'm starting to believe that some of this might be true.

The secret police in particular feels real.

I think what we've got to remember about it

is even if this is all true

and that she was this ruthless dictator.

No man would be demonised.

There we go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she's not behaving any differently

than other male leaders and emperors have done in the past.

She's just doing it with better eyebrows.

So are we essentially trying to reframe this as girl-bossing?

Girl-bossing-ish.

I don't think any of them should be doing any of this.

But I do appreciate her tenacity.

We can appreciate that with...

If there could have been less murdering, that would have been great.

Yeah, yeah.

But she wouldn't have got where she was

if it was not for the murdering.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, it's complex.

That's what historians say when they don't really know.

But she did some really good stuff, too.

Things that has often left out.

So she continues to elevate roles of women within society.

Largely as a means of legitimising her own position.

But she's still doing it all the same.

She finds positions for women within her government.

She had a woman prime minister.

She had women in chief advising roles.

And she instructs that biographies of famous women

are to be written.

They'd never been written before.

Mm-hmm.

And she decrees that the mourning period for mothers

should be extended to that of the fathers,

so that they're equal.

She also begins to promote Buddhism

as a means of eclipsing or at least competing with

Confucianist belief that upheld the patriarchy.

There's also stuff about her being anti-Nepo baby.

For example, she revolutionises the civil service

and military exams that they weren't just automatically awarded

to people from important families.

Yeah, she's helping ensure that people get good positions

because of their merit instead of their birth.

Yeah, I'm back on her side.

Again, this is probably all part of a wider political strategy

because if anybody knew anything about somebody getting a job

but because of their skills and their wits

rather than their connections, it's her.

But she's doing a lot of good in the world as well.

Mm-hmm.

Wear out rules as emperor for 15 years

and considering the fact that she has disrupted

the cosmological order of things to get here,

the empire actually enjoys relative peace

and prosperity under her rule.

But the number one rule in politics is what goes up.

Must come down.

So how do the last few years of her rulership go?

Well, throughout her time as emperor,

Wujao has been following it in the ground tradition laid down

by thousands of years of Chinese rulers before her

and surrounding herself with young lovers

a stable fleet of young men to satisfy her every need.

122, I'm hoping.

We don't know the exact number.

It would be great if it wasn't me, so iconic.

Would you want an insist song coming

with every single one of them?

I imagine that people were far more scandalized by this

than, let's say, an emperor having her as a 14-year-old concubine.

Of course, of course they are.

And when these Confucianist historians get going

long after she died, sex is one of the things

that they use to attack and to discredit her.

In fact, Wujao often appeared in pornographic pamphlets

and magazines and books years after she died,

all as a way of trying to make it appear

like this giant money-tongued slag.

Yeah, there's a democracy, it's slush aiming.

Which Confucianism isn't it?

There's one particularly famous pornographic story

about Wujao, which tells of how the man

who had the biggest penis in the world

couldn't have sex with anyone

because it was so unbelievably enormous.

But Wujao had a vagina big enough to accommodate him.

Well, so the baggy fanny accusation was going on back then.

Back then?

Amazing.

And apparently she summoned this man

in his massive torture to the palace

and demanded that he pleasure her regularly.

Right.

All nonsense.

It's just pornographic propaganda.

Well, they just want to whack in wizard's sleeve

to add to taking down her reputation.

Why not?

Right, absolutely.

She's just wanton, craven,

enormously vaginid, terrible woman.

Yeah.

But what we do know, or at least what the historians

are writing about, is that sometime round about 690,

Wujao meets two brothers, the Jung brothers.

These two brothers are very important.

In fact, they are going to change the course of Wujao's life

forever.

So let me hand back over to Katie Kennedy,

who is going to give us a bit of gossip about them.

As a girl boss, Emperor,

we wanted to do all of the things men could do too.

If Leo can do it, why can't I?

That was her mother word for word.

In thus, she surrounded herself with pretty young men at court.

Her favourites were the Jung brothers,

introduced to her in 697.

So there's two of them.

Jung-chung-song and Jung-e-jue.

And while historical opinion is pretty divided

on whether these brothers are sweet innocent play things for Emperor

or ruthless opportunistic social climbers,

there is one thing that everyone can agree on.

It's that the Jung brothers are fit.

Jung-chung-song meets Emperor Wujae first.

He immediately catches her eye

because of the aforementioned fitness.

And he plays the flute too, so it's an added bonus.

Pretty soon, he introduces Emperor Wujae's brother, Jung-e-jue,

who has a lovely singing voice.

They love belting out a duet together.

In fact, they're the kind of lads

who bring a flute to the party

and insist you listen to their cover of Wonderwall.

Over the next couple of years,

the Jung brothers become Emperor Wujae's closest confidants.

She loves them.

She also thinks they are dead smart and cultured as well.

So she names them as directors of an Institute of Scholars.

Alongside writing books and banging out at tune,

the Jung brothers also love to party.

They throw these massive sessions all the time

where they dress up and do little performances

and Emperor Wujae laps it up.

She absolutely loves it.

But with all the parties and the promotions,

the Jung brothers eventually start a ruffle

a little bit of feathers at court.

All the ministers see them as frivolous pretty boys

and are seriously worried about the amount of power they have.

So that leaves the Jung brothers up shit-creak.

In the end, after everything,

it was Wujae's relationship

with the Jung brothers that would lead to her downfall.

She is at this time in her late 70s.

And it's becoming more and more crucial

that she names an heir.

But considering the fact that she's a woman

that's already leapfrogged her way

over four of her own sons to get this gig,

succession isn't as straightforward

as everybody might hope that it would be.

And people are getting tense.

They are getting very, very antsy about this.

On one side, you have the court officials

who are campaigning for the former Emperor Jong-Zong

to come back to the throne.

Do you remember him?

Yes, he was her third son.

The one whose wife was going to be a bit too big for her boots.

That's the one.

On the other side of this divide,

you have got the Wu clan,

led by the Empress's nephews.

Wu Chun-sir and Wu San-Si.

They believe that one of them should be in line for the throne.

It's kind of amazing that Wu Zhao is held on to this much power

still even into her seventies.

I've got no hopes to still have ambition at that age.

Just, yeah, I'd give me some crafts.

Yeah, nice garden.

This is the type of person who needs to do this job.

I think so.

This is what you should be made of in order to do this,

where it's just an obsession.

Yes, beyond a passion.

She's not going to go a compulsive obsession.

By 698,

Wu Zhao has finally realised that she does actually need to do something

about this whole succession thing.

Her own mortality must have been playing on her mind.

And she decides to formally name her son,

the former Emperor Jong-Zong, as her heir apparent.

But the court officials are worried,

because they've noticed that the Jong brothers

have a significant influence on Wu Zhao

and are showing loyalty towards her nephew Wu San-Si.

Okay, so Wu Zhao is saying one thing,

but her actions are then saying another.

That's how they see it, yes.

Okay.

In 705, the angsty court officials

decide they aren't going to wait around

for the Jong brothers to screw them over.

They decide that it's time to act right now

and get rid of the Jong brothers

and force Emperor Wu to abdicate.

They approach Wu Zhao's third son,

the former Emperor Jong-Zong.

He's resistant to do anything at first,

but eventually gives them his blessing for their coup.

And on February the 20th, 705,

they all rally together,

500 palace guards turn up,

and they force their way into the palace court yard,

and then they find the Jong brothers

and decapitate them.

So they're not fucking around for this.

God!

At this point, as her young lovers are lying

with their heads rolling around on the floor,

Wu Zhao makes an appearance.

And there is a passage in the Cambridge history of China

that does an excellent job of summing up what happened.

Chirila, would you please read it?

Yes, indeed.

So it says,

but before the rebels could enter the palace,

it's shoveled and wrathful Wu Zhao blocked their way,

rapidly comprehending the situation.

She addressed her trembling son

and the other plotters in terms of contempt.

Then, her half a century of power at an end,

she returned to bed.

So that's it!

It's all over for Wu Zhao.

Regular order, or at least the masculine order of things,

was restored,

and there is a bloke on the throne once more.

And that's the way it's been ever since.

There has never ever been another female emperor in China,

she's the only one who ever did it.

How did she spend her final years?

She doesn't have very many of them to be completely honest.

She seems to have been still held in high esteem

and respected by the court and by the general public,

even after she's forced to abdicate.

She's given a palace to live in

and her son, Emperor Zhang Zhong, visits her regularly.

Probably with that as wife.

Yeah, keep them apart.

She finally dies in December 705,

and that's only 10 months after she's forced to abdicate.

I know, it does feel like it's her one life's purpose

was to upend the patriarchy once it was gone.

There wasn't much point of hanging around.

That was her lifeblood.

It carried her on from the age of 14 or 15.

In a weird way, I'm quite pleased for her

that she only lasted 10 months after that.

Same.

The idea that she would have lived another 10 years

like this, I think that would have been...

No, no, it was on purpose.

I'm glad that she left.

Blaze a glory time.

There is one final thing that I'd like to tell you.

About this woman.

When she dies, she's buried next to her husband,

the former Emperor, Gao Zhong.

Gao Zhong's tomb, as is customary for really important people

in China, is inscribed with all sorts of information

about how amazing he was, how badass he was,

and what his main achievements were.

But, Wu Zhao's tomb is left entirely blank.

Of course it was.

Of course it was.

You know why?

No one even had the words to describe a woman like that.

Obviously that's not really why, really what it is,

is to try and erase all of her accomplishments

and achievements from history in case some other young women

go and visit it and get too many ideas

or too much inspiration.

But I like to think that they could never even have imagined

one human being achieve all of this,

and so they didn't know where to even begin

with describing her.

That's how I read it, actually.

I'm not sure if it was done as a slight,

but I think it's powerful in its own way,

that, as you said, there weren't words to some of this person.

Yeah, you can't summarize a woman like this.

No, the human like this.

She'd literally left the world speechless.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Mistresses.

Next episode we are looking at Marita Lorenz,

a complicated woman who got drawn into a world of espionage

from a young age when she was recruited

to assassinate her boyfriend, Fidel Castro.