Today, the History Encyclopedia editor will bring you Li Longji and Princess Taiping, hoping to be helpful to everyone.
In ancient royal families, the popularity of princesses was significantly lower compared to emperors and princes, because most princesses, although not competing for the crown prince, would engage in marriage alliances after reaching adulthood.
And the marriage alliance is also determined by the emperor, and they have no choice. Faced with this situation, it can only be said that those born in the royal family have royal troubles. However, as I said, this is the fate of most princesses. Today, we will talk about the small part outside of this majority. They successfully escaped the fate of the marriage alliance and took control of their own destiny. Among them, Princess Taiping, the daughter of Wu Zetian in the Tang Dynasty, is a model.
Deeply favored by Empress Wu
We all know that Wu Zetian was very cruel to her own sons in order to compete for power, imprisoning and even framing them, with the aim of preventing them from becoming stumbling blocks for herself.
Compared to her son, her daughter did not have such troubles, so Wu Zetian treated her daughters very well. Among them, the most beloved was undoubtedly her and Li Zhi’s youngest daughter, Princess Taiping.
At that time, there were often marriages between Tibet and the Tang Dynasty. Although Princess Taiping was located in Chang’an, her name echoed throughout Tibet, which caught the attention of the Tibetan princes.
When Princess Taiping was able to get married, Tubo quickly sent envoys to the Tang Dynasty to request a marriage alliance. This time, it was different from the royal court. Usually, it was enough to arrange a princess, but this time it was named Princess Taiping.
When Wu Zetian learned of this news, she directly advised Li Zhi not to agree to the request of the Tibetan envoy. The reason was simple: if they went to Tibet this time, they would not know when the mother and daughter would meet again.
But Li Zhi was also in a difficult situation. If this incident caused discord between the two countries, it was obviously not good. So Wu Zetian came up with a solution, which completely silenced the Tibetan envoy.
In order to prevent her daughter and relatives from leaving Tibet, Wu Zetian specially ordered the construction of a Taoist temple to allow Princess Taiping to become a monk. This way, she could directly refuse the request of Tibet and allow Princess Taiping to return after they had forgotten about it.
This move indeed made Tubo give up their plan to marry Princess Taiping. From this, it can be seen that Wu Zetian still dotes on her little daughter and is willing to risk discord with Tubo for her.
Forcing Empress Wu to step down
What Wu Zetian never expected was that in the midst of the crowd forcing her to abdicate, she saw the figure of her most beloved Princess Taiping, which undoubtedly dealt a great blow to her. Little did she know that all of this was caused by her own actions.
After rejecting the marriage proposal from Tubo, Wu Zetian began to arrange the marriage of Princess Taiping. After all, Princess Taiping was already quite old and should have a suitable husband.
Under the observation of Li Zhi and Wu Zetian, Xue Shao was ultimately chosen as the son-in-law of Princess Taiping. Xue Shao was also brave and knowledgeable, and the two of them were a good match together.
But this marriage did not last long. Xue Shao’s elder brother participated in the rebellion against Wu Zetian. Although Xue Shao did not participate, he was punished and eventually starved to death by Wu Zetian in prison.
Although Empress Wu Zetian later extended her fiefdom to the highest level of a princess to comfort Princess Taiping, this estrangement persisted in her heart, as it was Wu Zetian’s instruction that led to Xue Shao’s tragic death.
In her later years, Wu Zetian was seriously ill and had no intention of managing the government. Therefore, she arranged for her two male pets, Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi, to manage the government, but these two were not good people.
Although Wu Zetian had been on the throne for many years at that time, most of the courtiers in the court were still dissatisfied with her. Now, with the outbreak of the Two Zhangs Rebellion, a group of ministers led by Zhang Jianzhi began to launch a coup.
The coup was called the ‘Divine Dragon Coup’, and afterwards Li appeared to be reinstated, while Princess Taiping, one of the heroes, was also given the title of Grand Princess of Zhenguo.
That’s right, Princess Taiping did participate in the coup against her own mother. Perhaps Wu Zetian couldn’t even figure out why her own daughter betrayed her.
Participate in the coup again
Due to being siblings and the fact that Princess Taiping did participate in the coup, Li Xian, who ascended the throne, highly valued his sister and allowed her to develop her own power.
With the sudden death of Li Xian, the court once again experienced chaos, which was caused by Li Xian’s empress Wei Hou. After witnessing the power of Wu Zetian, she also wanted to be the supreme empress.
So the court was roughly divided into two groups of forces, one led by Empress Wei and the other led by Princess Taiping. At this time, Princess Taiping was far from the weak woman who had no room for resistance when her husband was killed.
As Empress Wei’s power grew stronger, Princess Taiping did not sit idly by but quickly contacted Prime Minister Li Dan. In the end, the two reached an agreement and Princess Taiping enthroned Li Dan.
Under the planning of Princess Taiping and Li Longji, Princess Taiping launched another coup, and eventually all the remaining members of Empress Wei were eliminated, and Li Dan successfully ascended to the throne as emperor.
Power reaches its peak
After Li Dan ascended to the throne, Princess Taiping was rewarded here for her meritorious service. As mentioned earlier, there were two major forces in the court, Empress Wei and Princess Taiping, who were generally conferred titles. Now that Empress Wei has been removed, Princess Taiping naturally dominates the family.
At its peak, not to mention that all officials in the court were under the tutelage of Princess Taiping, at least half of them were from her side, indicating the height that Princess Taiping had reached at that time.
In the face of this situation, Li Dan is not worried, but rather shows more respect for Princess Taiping. Whenever he is asked to make a decision, Li Dan will inevitably invite Princess Taiping to analyze it together.
Attempting to eliminate the Crown Prince
It is not wrong to say that Princess Taiping at this time is below one person and above ten thousand people. Seeing that the throne was only one step away from her, Princess Taiping decided to seek a future for herself. If her mother could be an emperor, why couldn’t she be a daughter?
So Princess Taiping began to think about how to target Crown Prince Li Longji, because she had previously thought that Li Longji was just like that, but the more she interacted with him, the more she feared him. If Li Longji were to ascend to the throne, she would inevitably not succeed.
So Princess Taiping thought of using means to make Li Dan abolish Li Longji and replace him with a cowardly prince, so that Princess Taiping could realize her dream.
But Li Longji is not an ordinary person. Although Princess Taiping has eyeliner on Li Longji’s family, he can quickly report to Li Dan if he has any action, but Li Longji never makes any mistakes, which makes Princess Taiping worried.
For this reason, Princess Taiping had no choice but to resort to the tactic of finding someone to falsely accuse Li Longji. However, Li Dan did not accept this tactic and instead tried every means to balance the situation, attempting to make the two get along friendly.
But how can Princess Taiping maintain friendly relations? There are many places that should be targeted at Li Longji in daily life, and Li Longji is also cautious all day long. Although he is anxious inside, he still needs to pretend to be calm on the surface.
Crown Prince Chess High Move
In order to reverse this situation, Princess Taiping came up with a plan to have the officials responsible for surveying celestial phenomena fabricate celestial phenomena, which may lead to a change in the throne.
Originally, this was only used by Princess Taiping to frame Li Longji, but Li Dan never expected to directly state that since the will of heaven had already appeared, he could never disobey the will of heaven, so he passed the throne directly to Li Longji.
Now Princess Taiping was dumbfounded. This was called stealing chicken but not turning against rice, but she did not give up because Li Longji became emperor. Instead, she continued to plot rebellion.
The collision between the two began to intensify, and Princess Taiping completely occupied half of the court. At this point, Li Longji understood that if he didn’t get rid of Princess Taiping as soon as possible, he would inevitably be eliminated.
So even though the two still had a certain blood relationship, they had no kinship in the face of power. After obtaining evidence of Princess Taiping’s rebellion, Li Longji quickly intervened to suppress it.
Princess Taiping escaped to the Taoist temple and only then did she realize that everything she had worked hard to manage was gone, along with a piece of white silk from Li Longji.
A legendary princess hanged herself at home, and the forces that originally belonged to her either rebelled or were eradicated. All members of her family, except for her son Xue Chongjian, were killed or exiled.
From the results, it can be seen that Princess Taiping was indeed more miserable. In her later years, she was targeted by her own nephew. However, from a different perspective, if Princess Taiping really succeeded in squeezing out Li Longji, how much better would Li Longji’s fate be
