IN THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS, when paragon King Wu of Zhou reputedly claimed, “I have ten capable ministers,” he included in their number his mother Taisi, the spouse of King Wen, a woman known also as Wenmu 文母, Mother Wen.1 As attested to by Tang and Song sources, Mother Wen was a “living name” (sheng hao 生號) and not a posthumous designation.2 Not only did Mother Wen capably assist both husband and son, but she also birthed, raised, and conscientiously educated ten sons and one daughter, earning a lofty historical reputation as one of the “three mothers of the house of Zhou” (Zhou shi sanmu 周室三母).3
Taijiang and Tairen, the other two “mothers of Zhou,” married eminent predynastic leaders of the Ji clan that founded the dynasty. Taijiang, a woman of the Lü clan, helped Tanfu fix the foundations of early settlements for the clan on the plains of Zhou while rearing her sons. Tairen of the Zhiren clan aided husband Wang Ji, son of Taijiang and Tanfu. During Tairen’s pregnancy with King Wen, to assure her child proper moral influence in utero, this paragon of rectitude “beheld nothing evil with her eyes, heard no lascivious sounds with her ears, and did not let a single haughty word pass from her lips.” While both Taijiang and Tairen were set high on pedestals, Taisi, according to Biographies of Exemplary Women, was the “most capable and virtuous” (zui xian 最賢) of the three mothers of Zhou.4
This chapter traces the cultic development of Taisi, the spouse of dynastic founder King Wen of Zhou and the mother of King Wu, and examines how her growing presence generated an exalted stature and political legitimacy for Wu Zhao.
MOTHER WEN: A CONFUCIAN PARAGON OF WOMANHOOD WITH A POLITICAL VOICE
Mother Wen appears several times in the Book of Songs, one of the earliest canonical classics, a work that, according to Michael Nylan, sought to “recapture the anterior halcyon days in song” by offering “unstinting praise for unimpeachable exemplars of long ago.”5 The Book of Songs waxes rhapsodic about the illustrious foundation of the Western Zhou dynasty under the capable rule of King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou. These sovereigns and their spouses are artfully depicted as paragons, setting a benchmark of perfect governance to which subsequent rulers aspired. In the ode “Thoughtful and Reverent” (siqi 思齊), Taisi was cast as one of the virtuous founding mothers of the Zhou dynasty:
Great dignity had Tairen,
Mother of King Wen.
Well loved by Lady Jiang of Zhou,
Bride of the noble house.
Taisi carried on the fine name.
Hence, the multitude of sons.6
It is noteworthy that Taisi, Mother Wen, is revered not for the wise advice she dispensed to her husband and son, but for her fecundity, her “multitude of sons.”
In the “Family Genealogies” (shijia 世家) of Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, it is recorded that Taisi, “primary consort” (zheng fei 正妃) of King Wen, birthed King Wu second among her ten sons.7 The “Three Mothers of Zhou” entry in the opening chapter of Liu Xiang’s Biographies of Exemplary Women includes an account of Mother Wen:
Taisi was the mother of King Wu and a daughter of the Si clan, a descendant of the great Yu and a native of the kingdom of Shen. She was compassionate and understood what was right. King Wen was pleased with her and went in person to welcome her at the River Wei, where he built a bridge of boats [to lead her across]. . . . From early dawn until late at night she toiled diligently and thus fulfilled her role as wife. Taisi was given the honorary title of Mother Wen. King Wen governed external affairs while Mother Wen ruled inside the palace. Taisi gave birth to ten sons. . . . Taisi diligently instructed her sons so that from the time they were small until they grew up, they never looked on harmful or mean things. . . . The Superior Man says: Taisi was benevolent, intelligent, and possessed virtues. . . . In final appraisal: the three mothers of Zhou were Taijiang, Tairen, and Taisi. The rise of Wen and Wu began with them. Being the most capable and virtuous, Taisi was given the title “Mother Wen.”8
Taisi’s inclusion in the opening chapter of Biographies fortified her stature as a Confucian paragon of maternal virtue. She was depicted as an ideal mother, a conscientious moral instructress who protected, cultivated, and educated her huge brood of sons. As a wife, she was a peerless inner helper, scrupulously overseeing her prescribed domestic sphere. Noble by birth, she was a descendant of culture hero Yu the Great, founder of the Xia dynasty. Furthermore, she was a woman of immaculate character, guided by a moral rectitude tempered by compassion and blessed with a discerning intellect. Hence, endowed by nature, noble blood, and individual disposition, Mother Wen emerged as a nonpareil in the Han, a worthy female complement to the great King Wen.
One of the earliest self-conscious articulations of a lineage of female Confucian ancestors by a woman appears in the Western Han. In Lady of Handsome Fairness Ban’s (48–6 B.C.) “Rhapsody of Self-Commiseration” (Zidao fu 自悼賦), the onetime favorite of Emperor Cheng (r. 37–7 B.C.) writes:
I spread out paintings of women to serve as my guiding mirrors;
consulting the lady scribe, I asked about the Odes.
Saddened by the augury of the hen that crows,
I lamented the transgressions of Bao and Yan.
I praised [E]Huang and [Nü]Ying, wives of the Lord of Yu,
extolled [Tai]Ren and [Tai]Si, mothers of Zhou.
Although stupid and uncouth and unable to emulate them,
dare I still my thoughts and forget them?9
Cognizant of her responsibility as a consort of the emperor to act as a role model, Ban sought to pattern her demeanor upon the conduct of the women in this celebrated lineage. The mothers of Zhou continued to serve as models of maternal excellence.
Mother Wen’s legacy endured. In 235, Cao Rui, Wei emperor Wendi, recalling his late mother Empress Zhen, related,
The two daughters were consorts of Yu 虞,10
and his imperial way was thereby established;
The three mothers married Zhou rulers,
and their sage goodness attained full brightness.
Since these rulers received so much good fortune,
they enjoyed the prolongation of their kingdoms.11
One of the “three mothers,” Mother Wen helped inaugurate the ideal Zhou polity, matching King Wen as the pale light of the moon complemented the brilliant radiance of the sun. By situating his deceased mother in the company of illustrious women who had helped found ancient dynasties, Cao Rui implicitly lauded her pivotal role in establishing the Wei.
At the beginning of “Biographies of Empresses and Consorts” in Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, annalist Chen Shou set the stage for examining the royal wives of the Wei era by determining their importance within the longer lineage of Confucian female political ancestors:
In the Book of Changes it is written, “The proper place for the male is the outside; the proper place for the female is inside. When man and woman adhere to propriety, there is harmonious equanimity between heaven and earth.” Of the wise former kings in antiquity, none failed to realize the important place of empresses and consorts, apprehending that their respective roles accorded with the virtues of heaven and earth. Formerly when he wed the two consorts of Gui, the path of Yu 虞 triumphed and prospered. When [Tai]Ren and [Tai]Si married into the Ji clan, the house of Zhou flourished. On this point, the fall or rise, the demise or survival, of dynastic houses has always hinged.12
Chen Shou underscored the importance of the female role by emphasizing the codependent and complementary nature of male and female, of inner and outer; success or failure of dynastic houses hinged as much upon the character of an imperial consort as upon the emperor himself. As part of a celebrated line of ideal Confucian wives, Mother Wen (Si in the above passage) was honored for the perfect comportment and unerring propriety that could enable a husband to found an enduring dynasty.
Mother Wen was thus created in the same rigid Confucian mold as her predecessors and fellow “models of maternal rectitude,” the Woman of Tushan and Jiang Yuan. As we have seen, they often appeared in conjunction. Indeed, in a late third-century eulogy, as noted earlier, the recently deceased Empress Yang traced her descent through the same exalted lineage:
In edification, she excelled Tairen and Taisi
As a paragon, she matched stride with Jiang Yuan.13
Taisi’s role within this Confucian pedigree of paragons endured as a benchmark to adjudge subsequent excellence. In the lines cited above, Empress Yang is lauded for exceeding Mother Wen’s capacity to instruct her sons.
More pertinent to Wu Zhao’s ambitions, a tradition developed associating these illustrious female paragons with living empresses. To mark the regency of dowager empress Chu Suanzi (324–384) over young Jin emperor Mudi, courtier-official Cai Mo addressed her:
Your Majesty, in following the proper principles of feminine deportment, has learned from the prosperous course of Mother Wen. In antiquity, the Woman of Tushan lent her radiance to the Xia dynasty and Jiandi14 helped the house of Yin flourish. Truly, due to their manifest wisdom they helped bring about prosperity and good fortune.15
The former empress became a grand dowager–regent, and went on to dominate the Jin court for two decades.
Early in the fifth century, Liu Song Emperor Wu (r. 420–422) paid homage to his deceased mother by claiming that she was
Just as admirable as Jiang Yuan,
of a class equal to Tairen and Taisi.16
In an analogous capacity, Mother Wen appeared in a poem written during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Southern Qi (483–494) to honor his deceased Gracious Consort Pei (Pei huifei 裴惠妃):
Taisi became a wife of Zhou;
Tushan was paired with Yu.
My empress has inherited their queenly raiment,
Reaffirming rules and reasserting propriety.17
Being placed in the worthy company of Mother Wen suggested that Empress Mu had also helped establish the Southern Qi through her unswerving rectitude and punctilious observation of Confucian propriety; an empress possessing the character of a latter-day Mother Wen might directly influence both the founding and the preservation of the state. In essence, the good reputation of Mother Wen was linked to the very pinnacle of Confucian womanhood, to perfected wifely virtues and motherhood of the highest order.
That Mother Wen, the dynastic mother heralding from the Zhou of antiquity, was a personification of fully realized Confucian womanhood was not sufficient for Wu Zhao. Fortunately for Wu Zhao, a serendipitous precedent from the dawn of the Tang dynasty recast Mother Wen not as an ideal mother but as a woman who had played a constructive role in affairs of state. When Tang founder Gaozu’s favorite daughter, the Pingyang Princess (Pingyang gongzhu 平陽公主, 598–623), a stalwart young woman who had helped her sire seize and occupy the Sui capital Daxing and found the Tang, passed away, her imperial father fondly remarked, “Wenmu is counted among the ten great ministers of Zhou. The princess’s contribution in assisting to gain the mandate likewise marks her as an extraordinary woman.”18 Clearly, given her martial role in helping Gaozu establish the Tang, the Pingyang Princess was unlike the empresses and dowagers of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. By the early Tang, being associated with Mother Wen was no longer simply tantamount to being labeled an ideal Confucian wife and mother. The Pingyang Princess was declared an “extraordinary woman” (feichang furen 非常婦人) due to her active engagement as a field commander in the male sphere of military affairs. Drawing inspiration from this precedent, Wu Zhao seized upon the idea that Mother Wen’s culturally recognized greatness resided not only in her Confucian helper role as a spouse managing the inner domestic sphere, but in her capacity as a female minister capable of extraordinary contributions in the public, political sphere.
SITUATING WU ZHAO AS THE AVATAR OF MOTHER WEN
In 666, Gaozong and Wu Zhao performed the sacrosanct feng and shan sacrifices on Mount Tai—rites performed only seven times in Chinese history. In these grand rites, the ruler (or, in this unique instance, rulers), assumed a posture of obeisance before heaven and earth, offering sacrifices to acknowledge the celestial blessings and terrestrial bounty. The stylized modesty belied the grand scope of the ceremonies, which served to confirm, before court, country, and foreign dignitaries, that the rulers possessed heaven’s mandate. This was the only time emperor and empress concelebrated these rites.19 Veteran general and senior statesman Li Ji 李勣 (594–669) sent the Two Sages—as corulers Gaozong and Wu Zhao were known at the time—a memorial urging the emperor to make his deceased forebears Gaozu and Taizong coadjutor spirits (pei 配) when performing the feng sacrifice to heaven. Li Ji not only praised the great achievements of the first two Tang emperors, but he also lauded their respective consorts, Empresses Dou and Zhangsun. The former, Li Ji claimed, “followed in the footsteps of Mother Wen” and “propagated the beautiful accomplishments of [Jiang] Yuan of Zhou”; he styled the latter, Empress Zhangsun, “equal to the ten ministers in her merit,” a latter-day Mother Wen who had helped fix the dynastic foundations of the Tang. Thereafter, Li Ji logically concluded that “since the two emperors [Gaozu and Taizong] will be coadjutor spirits for the feng rites to heaven, it is appropriate that the two empresses [Dou and Zhangsun] serve as coadjutor spirits in the shan rites to earth.”20
Though not known as a propagandist, Li Ji was a long-standing political ally of Wu Zhao. In 655, when Gaozong and Wu Zhao desperately solicited support from the “old guard” of court ministers in their effort to depose Empress Wang and elevate Wu Zhao in her stead, they were initially stonewalled. The emperor and his lover only dared to take this critical, brazen step once Li Ji tacitly condoned the move with his remark, “This is a family matter for Your Majesty to deal with. Why ask outsiders?”21 At a pivotal juncture, the renowned statesman-general, who had capably and loyally served Taizong, helped validate Wu Zhao’s rise to empress.22 In 664, Gaozong named him grand commissioner of the Feng and Shan sacrifices.23 Li Ji continued to serve both as a chief minister and a general until his death in 669.
Initially, when Gaozong’s court deliberated, they agreed to follow Li Ji’s recommendation to honor the deceased empresses, but planned to have ministers make offerings to these ancestresses.24 However, Wu Zhao intervened, petitioning her husband en route to Mount Tai:
Heaven and earth have fixed positions. The virtues of obdurance and pliancy are distinct. Both classics and commentaries contain examples of how, in performing rites and ceremonies, these differences are well heeded. To present secondary offerings at the jade altar tallies with the square orientation of the earth; to offer fragrant foods in jade pedestal bowls is in truth a duty for the inner apartments. Moreover, in extending honors to former empresses, how can we use ministers and officials of the outer court to perform the rites?25
Persuasively, she argued—in the name of Confucian propriety—that noblewomen rather than ministers should perform the secondary and tertiary shan rites at Sheshou to honor the earth goddess and the deceased early Tang empresses.26
Ostensibly, Li Ji evoked Mother Wen in his commemoration in order to exalt the two deceased empresses of the early Tang. Rites to honor the dead, however, are often staged for the benefit of the living, and the feng and shan sacrifices of 666 were no exception. Li Ji’s meticulously crafted peroration echoed the names of Mother Wen and Jiang Yuan and embraced the two recent empresses. Yet it was oriented toward glorifying Wu Zhao in the present, paving the way for her subsequent petition to involve herself (and a wider circle of women) in the feng and shan rites. Honoring these recently deceased women was an important gesture of stylized humility on Wu Zhao’s part, one that veiled a rite of tremendous self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. Empresses Dou and Zhangsun were but placeholders, pale incarnations of Mother Wen, set up to project the accumulated charisma and political luster of the Zhou dynastic mother onto her contemporary avatar, Wu Zhao.
MOTHER WEN AND MOTHER WU
When Wu Zhao became Gaozong’s empress in 655, Mother Wen had an established Confucian cult. Widely accepted as a remarkable woman whose strong moral presence was linked closely to the founding of the glorious Zhou of antiquity, Mother Wen was the perfect inner helper: a conscientious wife, a wise mother, and a diligent household manager. She was a “minister” of the inner, domestic sphere. But as the example of the Pingyang Princess shows, in the open and cosmopolitan early Tang, when women were not strictly circumscribed by Confucian gender roles, the moral authority of Mother Wen began to extend into the “outer” administrative, political, and military realms formerly accorded to men. For Wu Zhao, this extension made Mother Wen a much more compelling, efficacious, and timely political forebear.
From the very beginning, when King Wu included his mother among his “ten ministers,” ambiguity had shrouded Mother Wen’s role. There was always an intimation that Mother Wen was more than an inner helper confined to the familial, domestic realm; after all, she had played an active, open role in the establishment of the original Zhou dynasty. Though Mother Wen’s political involvement was hitherto obscure, Wu Zhao, always eminently capable of modifying rhetoric to her ends, naturally sought to exploit this ambiguity.
In 684, when Wu Zhao became grand dowager, propagandist Chen Zi’ang referred to her as a latter-day Mother Wen, endeavoring to persuade her to remain in Luoyang and govern. Shortly after Wu Zhao deposed her son Zhongzong and replaced him with tractable Ruizong, the imperial funerary cortege planned to bear Gaozong’s corpse westward, to a tomb site in the mountains northwest of Chang’an, where the first two Tang sovereigns, Gaozu and Taizong, were buried. Initially, Wu Zhao planned to accompany the procession; on the eve of the journey, however, Chen Zi’ang petitioned her to remain in Luoyang and bury Gaozong in the vicinity. To secure this objective, he lavishly praised her for the stability she had lent the imperial house:
When the redoubtable emperor departed this world and left behind us officials, the ten thousand nations were shaken and alarmed, the common folk rent asunder with grief. Because Your Majesty is a quick-apprehending sage, you have undertaken the burden of the ancestral temples, conforming to the wishes of the empire. None but hope to receive your sagely transformations. . . . Moreover, Your Majesty, the august grand dowager, with the virtue of Mother Wen, has assisted in glorifying the dynasty, in both military affairs and great matters of state making decisions and promulgating edicts so that the country now flourishes as it did in the time of Yao and Shun.27
Chen Zi’ang’s “Mother Wen” was not simply an inner helper who, through subtle behind-the-scenes remonstrance, served as a moral compass to guide her husband in the outer realm of politics and statecraft. To tally with Wu Zhao’s preeminent role in court, his rendition of Mother Wen capably superintended “great matters of state,” wisely charting the country’s political and military course. Ultimately, Wu Zhao remained in Luoyang to preside over the court while puppet Ruizong accompanied his father’s funerary procession.28
Another source also indicates that during Wu Zhao’s first years as grand dowager, Mother Wen was on her mind. In the Analects, Confucius qualified his remark, “King Wu said, ‘I have ten capable ministers,’” with the disparaging opinion that “with a woman amongst them there were, in fact, only nine.”29 In contrast, Wu Zhao publicly recognized Mother Wen’s constructive political contribution. First promulgated in 685, her political treatise Regulations for Ministers advocated total and unswerving loyalty of minister to ruler.30 In the preface, she explained the structure of the text: “To commemorate the ten great ministers of the Zhou dynasty, I have written ten fascicles.”31 In Confucian scholar Zheng Xuan’s Eastern Han commentary on the Analects, Mother Wen’s name was placed first among the ten ministers.32 For Wu Zhao, too, there was no doubt about Mother Wen’s importance: Taisi was one of her son’s ten ministers, a full-fledged member of their learned company.
Later in Wu Zhao’s tenure as grand dowager, Cui Rong presented a petition on behalf of a general to persuade her to hold a ceremonial banquet, in which she was once more compared with Mother Wen:
Helping in the rise of the Yin, Youshen33 irradiated the dynastic enterprise,
Supporting the ascendancy of the Ji clan, Taisi aided their meritorious success.34
In 688, Cui Rong again used the name and aura of Mother Wen in a memorial to persuade Wu Zhao to take the title Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign:
Taisi had a spotless reputation,
And alone took it upon herself to mother the exalted Zhou.35
Portending Wu Zhao’s own rise as emperor, he mentions dynastic mother Taisi immediately following Nüwa. In each of these appearances of Mother Wen from Wu Zhao’s time as dowager-regent, the original mother of Zhou is presented as playing an important part in the founding of the ancient dynasty. In 690, with a bit of further assistance from Mother Wen, Wu Zhao would inaugurate a new Zhou dynasty.
MOTHER WEN AS BLOOD ANCESTOR
Previous chapters have remarked upon Wu Zhao’s effort—first as grand dowager and then as emperor—to invoke through names, titles, ceremonies, and monuments, the return of a golden age. To conjure a neoclassical air of majesty, she selected “Zhou” for her dynastic epithet. Like many newly risen dynasts of humble origins before and after her, she concocted a genealogy moored in antiquity.36 As noted in the previous chapter, Wu Zhao selected the youngest son of King Ping (eighth century B.C.) for one of her early ancestors. The princeling was given the new surname, Wu, to match the extraordinary “Wu” 武 birthmark on his hand.37 This served two purposes: First, it enwrapped the first Wu with a miraculous aura. Second, it grafted Wu Zhao’s clan to a branch of the grand Ji clan, founders of the glorious Zhou of yore. Her kinship line became even more venerable than that of the house of Tang, which only traced its descent back to the Daoist sage Laozi in the sixth century B.C. Through the Wu princeling, Wu Zhao traced her ancestry back to dynastic founder King Wen of the Ji clan and his eminently capable spouse, Mother Wen. Not only did Wu Zhao claim political affinity to this paragon from the remote past, but she also declared her consanguinity to Mother Wen.
When Wu Zhao established her new Zhou dynasty, to broadcast these ties with her Zhou kinsmen, she not only elevated recently deceased family members but also bestowed grand titles upon Mother Wen and her distant ancestors from the Zhou of antiquity. In the ninth month of 690, just four days after Wu Zhao inaugurated her Zhou dynasty, she established seven temples for her natal Wu clan—the number appropriate to a ruling dynastic family. At the first ancestral temple, the female emperor honored King Wen of Zhou, designating him Emperor Wen and First Ancestor (Shizu 始祖); his spouse, Mother Wen, was named Empress of Decorated Resolve (Wending huanghou 文定皇后). Thus, in the foremost ancestral temple of Wu Zhao’s Zhou dynasty, Mother Wen and King Wen, founders of the original Zhou, were jointly presented sacrifices.
In the next ancestral temple, offerings were made to King Wu—not the celebrated martial conqueror who had defeated the Shang, but the Wu princeling with his curious birthmark, reportedly Wu Zhao’s fortieth-generation ancestor, who had branched off the Ji clan to found a new family.38 He was named Emperor Kang (Kang huangdi 康皇帝), the Perspicacious Ancestor (Ruizu 睿祖), while his spouse was designated Empress of Salubrious Kindness (Kanghui huanghou 康惠皇后).39 Early in 691, to correspond with their new elevated titles as First Ancestors of the new Zhou, the tomb (mu 墓) of King Wen and Mother Wen was redesignated an imperial mausoleum (ling 陵).40
Wu Zhao’s reinvented origin was confirmed in the Coiling Dragon Terrace stele inscription, composed in 699 by Li Qiao at Wu Zhao’s behest to honor her parents. In this elegant exercise in mythmaking, the aesthetic master relates the marvelous birth of Wu Zhao’s father: Wu Shiyue emerged from the womb surrounded by five-colored mists; on the skin of his back were moles arrayed in the pattern of the Big Dipper.41 This curious constellation of moles recalls the 72 moles on the thigh of Han founder Gaozu (r. 206–195 B.C.), mystic nevi that signaled his future ascendancy.42 The inscription then relates the story of the “Wu” marking the hand of the prodigal youngest son of King Ping.43
Once again, this connection was not only political, but familial. Wu Zhao situated herself as Taisi’s heir, at once a blood descendant and a wise mother of state in Mother Wen’s image. This connection to the golden age of the original Zhou helped cloak her inventive political authority in the guise of tradition. When Wu Zhao established her Zhou dynasty and honored Mother Wen as First Ancestress, she herself became, in effect, the “mother of Zhou” for the new era she inaugurated in 690.
FOR MOTHER AND DAUGHTER: MOTHER WEN IN THE STELE INSCRIPTION OF WU SANSI
Wu Zhao’s nephew Wu Sansi composed a commemorative inscription in 702 for Madame Yang, the female emperor’s mother. The inscription situated Mother Wen within the familiar political lineage of women who had helped found and govern dynasties:
Your humble subject has heard that the two principles [yin and yang] have complementary virtues. . . . The two glorious orbs are equally brilliant, the Jade Hare [moon] matching the Golden Crow [sun]. In the celestial orbit, the Widow Star is in ascendancy. . . . Guishui harmonized with the virtue of Ehuang. Then there is the example of Xiling exalting the reputation of her [affinal] clan, [two characters omitted] the palace of the Yellow Emperor. The splendid match with Southland elevated the tents of Xia. Thereafter, the uprightness and consistency of Tairen helped fix the foundation of King Wen. The diligence and assiduousness of Taisi secured the smooth transition of authority to King Wu.44
Wu Sansi placed his great aunt, Madame Yang, and by extension ruling emperor Wu Zhao herself, within this wider assemblage of female political ancestors. Women were often identified by their place of origin. Ehuang, a consort of Emperor Shun, was associated with Guishui. Xiling is a reference to silk goddess Leizu, spouse of the Yellow Emperor. Southland (Nantu 南土) is likely the homeland of the Tushan Girl, consort of Yu the Great, founder of the Xia. Mother Wen, Taisi, was the final and pivotal link between Wu Zhao and this glorious classical lineage of female paragons. Wu Sansi’s rhetoric not only affirms the great contributions of these women in establishing past dynasties, but values them as “equally brilliant” compared with their celebrated male counterparts—Shun, Yu, and King Wen.
CONCLUSION
Mother Wen developed into a significant figure. In calculated synchronicity with her own rise, Wu Zhao and her propagandists reinvented Mother Wen in a process tailored to link and exalt these two mothers: the sagacious dynastic mother of a halcyon golden age to the wise parent of the newly inaugurated Zhou dynasty. Their affiliation meant different things at different stations of Wu Zhao’s political career. At times, the relationship suggested that Wu Zhao, like Mother Wen, possessed attributes of an ideal Confucian wife and mother—virtue, intelligence, and diligence. Mother Wen’s role as one of King Wen’s “ten ministers” helped justify Wu Zhao’s burgeoning participation in government as empress and grand dowager.
When Li Ji linked the empresses of Gaozu and Taizong to Mother Wen on the eve of the feng and shan sacrifices, it enabled Wu Zhao’s participation in these ceremonies. When Wu Zhao was grand dowager, Chen Zi’ang styled her a second coming of Mother Wen, intimating that she was not merely a “minister” but a dynastic mother capable of managing affairs of state. Most importantly, when Wu Zhao established herself as a female sovereign, Mother Wen—as her blood ancestor and political forebear—played a central role in her wider political strategy to fashion a neoclassical legitimacy by connecting both her person and the state she ruled to the Zhou dynasty of old.
