Empress Lu Zhi

Empress Lü Zhi (241-180 BC) was the principal wife of the Han founder Liu Bang and, after his death, the effective ruler of the empire from 195 to 180 BC. The historian Sima Qian accorded her a basic-annals chapter in the Shiji, a format otherwise reserved for sovereigns, in implicit recognition that the government of those fifteen years was hers. She had married Liu Bang while he was still an obscure local officer, endured years of hardship during his rise, and was held hostage by his rival Xiang Yu during the Chu-Han war.

During Liu Bang's reign she played an active part in consolidating the dynasty, including a central role in the destruction of the general Han Xin and other potentially dangerous kings. She also defended the position of her son, the future Emperor Hui, against the emperor's inclination toward a son by his favorite, Lady Qi. After Liu Bang died in 195 BC, the fifteen-year-old Hui took the throne and Lü Zhi governed as empress dowager; when he died in 188 BC she ruled openly through two child emperors, issuing edicts in her own name.

Her posthumous reputation rests heavily on the Shiji's account of her vengeance on Lady Qi, who is said to have been mutilated and left in a privy, and on her poisoning of Lady Qi's son. These episodes, along with the general portrait of a murderous and usurping woman, were recorded by historians writing after her clan had been exterminated and under a line of emperors whose legitimacy depended on repudiating her. The cruelty attributed to her in palace politics may well reflect real events, but the tradition is openly partisan and cannot be checked against independent sources.

On the substance of government even the hostile record is favorable. Sima Qian himself noted that under her administration punishments were rarely used, the people were left to recover from the wars, and the empire was at peace. She maintained the accommodation with the Xiongnu, swallowing a famously insulting letter from the chanyu rather than risk war, and relaxed Qin-era prohibitions including the ban on private book ownership. Her promotion of her Lü relatives to kingdoms, in violation of Liu Bang's covenant, provoked the crisis that followed her death in 180 BC, when the ministers and Liu princes massacred the Lü clan and enthroned Liu Bang's son as Emperor Wen.