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41. 太平公主 Princess Taiping (a lewd and ambitious woman)
Princess Taiping (670—713 AD) was the daughter of Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu the Great. She was pretty and ambitious like her mother. Her real name was Li Lingyue and Taiping was her Taoist name. Once the king of Tibet wanted to marry her and sent a messenger to the capital. The emperor and empress would not let her marry so far, and so let her become a female Taoist, but only in name, because a female Taoist could not marry so that she could refuse the king of Tibet without offending him. Hence, historians call her Princess Taiping (literally meaning peace). Instead, Princess Wencheng married the king of Tibet (see above).
In 681 AD when the princess was sixteen, she married her husband, the nephew of Emperor Gaozong. This was her first marriage, which ended in 688 AD, because the brother of her husband joined in a rebellion and was executed. Her husband, though innocent, was put in jail and starved there.
Her second husband was the nephew of Empress Wu. The couple lived for twenty-two years and the husband died one year before her. During her second marriage, she often had adultery with whomever she liked, sometimes a courtier, and sometimes a monk, who was stout and could have longer action than others. Her husband did not dare to say anything as she was the favorite princess. Empress Wu liked her this daughter better than her other children, because she was more like her mother in appearance and character. To please her mother, she sometimes brought strong men into the palace to entertain her mother. The monk was one of them. When the monk became the favorite of empress Wu, he turned to be arrogant and did a lot of things against the law. The monk was later killed because of his misbehavior.
When Empress Wu grew old, she made her son Li Xuan the crown prince. In 705 AD, Premier Zhang Janzhi (625—706 AD) had coup d'état and forced Empress Wu to retire and give the throne to the crown prince, who was Emperor Zhongzong (11/26/656—07/03/710 AD). His wife was Empress Wei. She had a daughter, Princess Anle (?--710 AD), who yearned for power, too, and even asked the emperor to make her crown princess so that she could be the successor to the throne. At the same time, Princess Taiping became more powerful as she had supported the emperor to get his throne.
Empress Wei did not love the emperor. She was also an ambitious woman, and wanted to be the empress sovereign like Empress Wu, who was them dead. So she conspired with her daughter to poison the emperor, her husband. After the death of Emperor Zhongzong, her brother, Princess Taiping and Shangguan WanEr (see next) drafted the will of the diseased emperor to make Prince Wen the crown prince. Empress Wei was the regent and supplanted members of Li family and supported members of her Wei family. So the two family members fought each other. At last, Li family gained the day and killed empress Wei and her family members. In this event, Princess Taiping had a finger and she supported Li Dan (662—716 AD), another son of Empress Wu, also her brother, to be the emperor, who was Emperor Ruizong.
In the seventh moon of 712 AD, Emperor Ruizong retired and gave the throne to his son, who became Emperor Xuanzong (09/08685—05/03/762 AD), who was the husband of the famous Imperial Concubine Yang, the fourth beauty of the four beauties in the history. Princess Taiping vied with Emperor Xuanzong for power, but she failed at length, and was forced to hang herself at home. |
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