Wu Zetian is the only woman ever to rule China as emperor
Across more than two thousand years of Chinese emperors, only one woman took the supreme title huangdi in her own right. Wu Zhao began as a junior consort of one Tang emperor, became empress to the next, and in 690 set aside the Tang altogether to found her own Zhou dynasty.
Born in 624 to a clan from Shanxi, Wu entered the palace as a concubine of Emperor Taizong, who gave her a nickname meaning glamorous. After his death she married his son and successor Gaozong and became empress in 655. When Gaozong suffered a disabling stroke in 660, she effectively ran the empire for him until he died in 683. Rather than stepping back, she kept her own sons from real power as empress dowager, and in 690 proclaimed herself sovereign of a new dynasty. Her de facto rule spanned about 45 years.
Her record is double-edged. She built networks of informers, imposed harsh laws and purged members of the Tang royal family and veteran officials. She also widened the civil service examinations to reward merit, sponsored Buddhism, literature and the arts, and fought off Turkic and Tibetan incursions. Her reign fell within the High Tang, a peak of Chinese power and cultural reach. In old age her government grew more autocratic and lavish, and in 705 the Shenlong Coup forced her out and restored the Tang. She died months later.
Even naming her is complicated. Women's birth names were rarely written down, and after taking power she adopted Zhao, using a character she may have invented herself. Wu Zetian, the name most used today, is a posthumous title. English adds a further wrinkle: Classical Chinese titles such as huangdi carry no grammatical gender, whereas translators must choose between emperor and empress.
Her surname sounded like part of the Chinese word for parrot, and Gaozong's family name Li resembled a word for a kind of wild cat, so courtiers traded a story about a cat devouring a parrot. She and a Song dynasty empress dowager are said to be the only women to wear the yellow robe reserved for the emperor.
Source: Wu Zetian
