Empress Lü Zhi and the Human Swine
She had spent years watching a younger rival try to steal her son's throne. When her husband the emperor died, there was no one left to protect that rival.
The Wrong
Empress Lü Zhi was the wife of Emperor Gaozu, founder of the Han dynasty, and had stood by him through the brutal wars that built his empire. In his later years Gaozu fell for a beautiful young concubine, Consort Qi, and openly favoured her. Worse, he repeatedly tried to replace Lü's son as crown prince with Qi's son. For years Lü had to fight, scheme, and call in powerful allies simply to keep her child's birthright. The humiliation festered.
The Reckoning
When Gaozu died in 195 BC, Lü's son took the throne and Lü became the true power as empress dowager. Consort Qi had no protector left. Lü first had Qi imprisoned, her head shaved, and put to hard labour. Then she had Qi's son — the rival heir — poisoned. Finally she turned on Qi herself with a cruelty that horrified even her own era: Qi's hands and feet were severed, her eyes gouged out, her ears burned deaf, and she was forced to drink a potion that destroyed her voice. Lü had her thrown into a latrine and called her a 'human swine.'
The Aftermath
In a final stroke, Lü summoned her own son, the young emperor, to come and admire what she had done. He was shown the maimed, voiceless thing that had been Consort Qi. When he learned who it was, he is said to have wept and fallen gravely ill, telling his mother that what she had done was not the act of a human being and that he could no longer rule the empire she had built on such things. He withdrew from governing, and Lü ruled in all but name for years.
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