Wu Zetian

The only woman to rule China as emperor in her own name, Wu Zetian (624-705) rose from a mid-ranking concubine of Emperor Taizong's palace to found her own dynasty, the Zhou, which interrupted the Tang from 690 to 705. She was the daughter of Wu Shihuo, a timber merchant who had backed the Tang founding and been rewarded with office. After Taizong's death in 649 she left the palace, by custom, for a Buddhist convent, but Emperor Gaozong, Taizong's son, recalled her; in 655 he deposed Empress Wang and installed Wu in her place.

Gaozong's chronic illness from about 660 allowed Wu to take an expanding share of state business, and from 674 the pair were jointly styled the "Two Sages." When Gaozong died in 683 she ruled as empress dowager through two of her sons, deposing Emperor Zhongzong within weeks in 684 and keeping his brother Ruizong secluded. After suppressing a rebellion and purging the Tang imperial clan, she took the unprecedented step in 690 of declaring herself emperor of a new Zhou dynasty, with its capital at Luoyang.

Her government broadened the examination system and the recruitment of officials from outside the established aristocratic families, introduced the palace examination, and continued the management of a large empire facing Tibetan and Turkic pressure. The same decades saw the use of informants and prosecutors such as Lai Junchen against real and suspected opponents, though the most lurid material about her—including the accusation that she killed her own infant daughter to incriminate Empress Wang—comes from histories composed by Confucian officials for whom female rule was inherently illegitimate. These accounts preserve genuine evidence of ruthlessness but cannot be read as neutral, and the consistent competence of her administration is acknowledged even within the hostile tradition.

In February 705, aged eighty and in failing health, Wu was deposed in a palace coup led by the minister Zhang Jianzhi, which restored her son Zhongzong and the Tang dynasty. She died in December of that year and was buried beside Gaozong at the Qianling mausoleum, where her memorial stele was famously left blank. Her descendants ruled the restored Tang; Emperor Xuanzong, under whom the dynasty reached its cultural height, was her grandson.