Let’s turn our attention back to the Earthlings. The next Tang emperor was Li Zhi. He fell in love with a woman from his father’s harem. How do you get your father’s woman? You send her to a nunnery, and then you bring her back. Woman laundering.
That woman was Wu Zetian. After entering the palace, she first pretended to befriend Regina George. Then they worked together to get rid of the other women around Li Zhi. After alienating Regina from everyone, Wu Zetian schemed to bring her down, too. After that, she became the empress herself. That was so fetch.
Li Zhi was a sickly man. So whenever he fell ill, he asked Wu Zetian to handle state matters for him. She turned out to be surprisingly capable, and Li Zhi found his wife more useful than his ministers. They became co-rulers. After Li Zhi died, Wu Zetian continued to rule as the empress dowager. Then, she declared herself emperor. The only female emperor in Chinese history.
The fact that nobody resisted, and everyone was like I’m with Her, meant she had spent a lot of time, uhh, “planning”. She built her own KGB, set up Orwellian complaint boxes everywhere, and encouraged people to rat each other out. Then on her deathbed, she told everyone to pretend her reign had never happened. She restored the Tang dynasty name, restored herself as the empress, and was buried together with her husband.
But Wu Zetian’s reign set a dangerous precedent. Now, all the royal women wanted to be the next Wu Zetian. Empress Wei was the first to try. The problem was that, other than both being women, they had little in common. See, you cannot assume that getting bitten by a spider will also turn you into Spider-Man. Anyway, Empress Wei poisoned her husband. But she didn’t even plan for step two. Then Princess Taiping and her nephew, Li Longji, stormed the palace and killed her. The princess also wanted to be Wu Zetian. So Li Longji started another coup and forced the princess to commit suicide.
Li Longji became the next emperor. In his early years, he was just as good as Li Shimin before him. If he had died in his fifties, I’d be in big trouble because I would have had to scour the history books to justify a second alien. Fortunately, he lived. He fell in love with his son’s wife. How do you get your son’s woman? Also woman laundering. Li Longji then brought her into the palace and forgot all about being a good emperor.
During his early reign, he recovered the territories lost during Wu Zetian’s era. (Wu Zetian knew how to win internal power struggles, but not how to win wars.) At this point, the Tang empire’s territory had become too large to govern. If the western border were under attack, it would take about 200 Pheidippides running a relay-die-relay marathon to carry the message to the capital and back. It would take about a month.
So Li Longji solved the problem the same way the British Empire did: colonies. The border colonies managed their own military and finances. You can think of them basically as independent states. This meant that if you lived there, you’d only be loyal to the governor, and not to the emperor.
Due to some issues with HR, An Lushan became the governor of three colonies. At the same time. For 14 years. In those 14 years, he amassed nearly a third of the Tang empire’s military force. Meanwhile, the central government’s army had grown weak after years of relying on the colonial army to protect their borders.
The prime minister was sure that An Lushan would rebel. He kept warning Li Longji, but the emperor ignored him. To prove his point, the prime minister swatted An Lushan’s house. An Lushan couldn’t take it anymore and rebelled for real. He then fought all the way to the capital without much resistance.
Li Longji fled the capital. But soon, his men refused to escort him any further. They organized a mutiny and killed the prime minister. Then they told Li Longji, your woman is the root of all evil. So Li Longji was forced to kill her. A few years later, he died alone.