In Chinese history heroes are always surrounded by myths, or at least by stories that may well be myths. True or false, they nonetheless reveal something of the subject’s character. The all conquering T’ai Tsung , the real founder of the T’ang Dynasty shown below in a larger than life portrait done a few centuries after his death in 649:
---For more than a century after his death, Tang China enjoyed peace and prosperity. During Taizong's reign, Tang was the largest and the strongest nation in the world. It covered most of the territory of present-day China, Vietnam, Mongolia and much of Central Asia as far as eastern Kazakhstan. It laid the foundation for Xuanzong's reign, which is considered Tang China's greatest era.--- Read More:http://www.ask.com/wiki/Emperor_Taizong_of_Tang
The Great Ancestor. The emperor’s domestic happiness was marred when his empress died and their son the crown prince turned against him. He tried to murder his father, and for this, he was banished into exile,where he soon died. His younger brother, Li Chih, became crown prince in his stead, but could be characterized as a person of physical and moral weakness. Nice guys finish last as they say. Especially in seventh-century China where pacification and conquest ruled the roost. The widower, however sorrowing he may have felt, did not give up women, even though he was not like his father, whose harem of over three thousand girls and servants had to be sent home after his abdication. In 638, hearing of a pretty Shansi girl named Wu Chao, Shih-min casually sent for her and added her to his collection. This thirteen year old was to make her mark on Chinese history.
---In the winter of 655-56, Empress Wang and Xiao Shufei were accused of plotting to poison Gaozong. The empress was deposed, Wu Zhao was named empress, and Wu’s son was named heir apparent. The former empress and Xiao Shufei were confined in miserable quarters. Gaozong visited them and pitied them, and Empress Wu in a rage ordered that their hands and feet be cut off and that they be thrown in a wine vat. “Let those witches get drunk to the bone!” They died after several days, and their corpses were decapitated. Or so the story went; but a somewhat similar story had been told of the savage vengeance of the Empress Lü, widow of Emperor Gao of the Han, on her late husband’s favorite concubine in 194 B.C.E.--- Read More:http://bhoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/hst261/14.empresswu.html
On his death in 649 he became T’ai Tsung, the Grand Ancestor. Miss Wu, moved from fifth grade concubine in the harem hierarchy, which was pretty decent. Only light housekeeping duties, and she ended up seducing Tsung’s son. That was disrupted on Tsung’s death where she had to shave her head and enter a convent to spend the rest of her life as a Buddhist nun. She was brought back by popular demand as they say, to counter the effect of the new emperor’s wife’s rival, The Pure Concubine, and in dozens of subtle ways she undermined the Empress Wang and the Pure Concubine, ending by locking both in a dungeon and she became Kao Tsung’s consort and empress. And yes, Wu Chao had the dungeon dwellers beaten, tortured and killed. …
Read More:http://teamasters.blogspot.com/2009/10/tang-dynasty-ware.html
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