The Controversial Life of Lady Zhao Mother of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang | Tea with Amy

What if you were destined for greatness, but you just wanted to live a normal life? Hi everyone and welcome to Tea with Amy. Today we are telling the story of Lady Zhao, a woman who was desired for her beauty and survived the chaos of the Warring States period. She was the mother of the first emperor of China and would be the first woman to be named Empress Dowager in Chinese history. But she did not ask for any of that. She did not dream of thrones or dynasties. But destiny and the men around her had very different plans. And if you have watched C-drama Qing Dynasty Epic, you might already have an image of her in your head. She is portrayed there as emotionally unstable, easily manipulated, and driven by a desperate need for affection and security. This characterization is actually close to how she is described in historical records. But she is also reimagined very differently as Li Haolan in the C-drama Legend of Haolan, where she is shown as a devoted mother who endures extreme hardship to protect her son, fighting to survive in a world that keeps trying to destroy her. Two very different versions of the same woman. Now, the story of Legend of Haolan is greatly dramatized. But maybe the characterization of Li Haolan gives us something to think about that is not shown in historical records. But before we step further into Lady Zhao's story, we should first take a look at the world she was born into. For over 200 years, the Warring States period had turned everyday life into a game of survival that nobody had asked to play. And for women, the rules of that game were especially unforgiving. Even princesses and daughters of noble families were treated as assets, treated between kingdoms as diplomatic tokens, married off to foreign courts to seal alliances. If that was the reality for the daughters of kings, you can imagine what it looked like for everyone else. Given the world she lived in, given the choices that were and were not available to her, was she really the person that history made her out to be? Today, modern historians debate whether the harsh judgment of her in historical records was really fair at all. History remembers her as scandalous. But let's decide for ourselves. Lady Zhao's real name is not recorded in historical records. Very little of her early life is recorded, and we don't know her exact year of birth. But historians estimate it to be around 280 BCE. In fact, even her family name was probably not Zhao at all. We refer to her as Lady Zhao today because all we really know of her origin is that she came from the kingdom of Zhao. The records of the grand historian describes her as from a prominent family from Handan, the capital city of the kingdom of Zhao. Not a noble family, but also not a poor family. Handan was the kind of city that made you feel like anything was possible. It was one of the great cities of the Warring States world. Wealthy merchants, traveling scholars, performers, diplomats, and fortune seekers from every corner of China passed through its gates. The markets were loud, and the wine houses were louder. It was a city that was known for its splendor and elegance. And from this city came the beautiful Lady Zhao. It is said that she was a At some point, probably when she was still quite young, she came into the household of a merchant named Lü Buwei as a concubine. Some say she was his favorite concubine. Her early relationship with Lü Buwei is unclear, but in the chaos of the Warring States period, any kind of stability was something to hold on to. Lü Buwei was wealthy, and his household was taken care of. She was taken care of. But Lü Buwei was not a man who was satisfied with just being wealthy. In theory, he had money to do anything that he wanted. The problem was that in the Warring States world, money was not enough, especially for a man like him. As a merchant, he would always be low on a social ladder. Any day, his money could be taken, his assets could be repurposed. A shift in the political wind could wipe out everything he had built. What he needed was something a merchant wasn't supposed to have. Power, real power, the kind that did not depend on anyone else's goodwill or the stability of a market. And then he found his opportunity, in the form of a forgotten Qing prince, living in hardship in Handan as a political hostage. His name was Ying Yiren, and he was the son of Ying Zhu, the crown prince of the Kingdom of Qing, born to a low-ranking concubine. He was sent to Zhao as part of a diplomatic exchange, and he had no allies, no prospects, and no real future that anyone could see. Lü Buwei saw something different. He looked at this forgotten prince and saw an undervalued asset. The crown prince Ying Zhu had not named an official heir yet, because Lady Huayang, the primary wife of Ying Zhu, had no son of her own. Was there something he could do here? To help the prince become the successor to the crown prince of Qing? To become the next, next king of Qing? Then he would be in the debt of a king. Imagine the power that he could wield then. And so, Lü Buwei befriended Ying Yiren, and they met constantly. Lü Buwei shared with Ying Yiren his own experience of the world, not the rituals and politics of the court, but something more practical, how the world actually worked, how leverage operated, how favor was built and spent, how a man with nothing could position himself as someone worth betting on. And one day, Ying Yiren came to Lü Buwei's household and saw her. He saw Lady Zhao. She was dancing, and she was beautiful. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He could not look away. He asked Lü Buwei who she was. Nobody important, Lü Buwei said. Just a woman in my household. And then Ying Yiren asked a question that would become a turning point in Chinese history. He asked if he could have her. Lü Buwei hesitated. Did he love her? We don't know about that. But she was his favorite concubine. But he was, above all else, a man who thought clearly about what things were worth and what they could buy. He thought about his life, about what he wanted. He thought about the prince sitting across from him, the prince who was supposed to become his path to power. And he thought about the fact that in this world, a beautiful woman in a wealthy man's household was never truly safe. Another man with more power could always take her anyway. And if he gave her to Ying Yiren willingly, at least he would have leverage. At least the debt would be his to collect. Ying Yiren promised that he would treat her well and that he would forever be in Lü Buwei's debt. So, Lü Buwei let her go. He sent Lady Zhao to Ying Yiren's household, and she became his wife. Lady Zhao did not have a say in the matter. In those times, a woman was rarely consulted about where she would go or who she would belong to. She was a woman in a man's household, and she went where she was sent. One day she was Lü Buwei's concubine, and the next she was with a Maybe she would find love with Ying Yiren. But did that even matter? It's not like love can shelter you from the elements or be eaten as sustenance. But maybe just being desired was enough. At least she still had somewhere to be. What we do know is that Ying Yiren favored her greatly, and she soon gave birth to a son. But then her story gets murky. Some interpretations of the records of the grand historian argue that Lady Zhao was already pregnant before she was given to Ying Yiren. Other later rumors even claim that the crown prince Dan of the Kingdom of Yed was close friends to Lü Buwei and Ying Yiren, and visited Lady Zhao frequently. These are claims that leave us with a question still debated even today. Who was this son's real father? But for every reason that mattered to the men involved, the child had to be Ying Yiren's son. And so, in 259 BCE, he was born. Ying Zheng, son of Ying Yiren, prince of Qin. For a brief moment, things must have felt stable for Lady Zhao. She had a husband who favored her. She had a son. She had a place. But Handan was not a safe place to be a Qin prince and his family. Just a few years before Ying Zheng was born, the Qin general Bai Qi had crushed the Zhao army at the Battle of Changping. 400,000 Zhao soldiers had surrendered, and then been buried alive. There was not a family in the city that had not lost someone. There was not a street that did not carry that grief quietly beneath its surface. And now, the Qin army was coming back. In 257 BCE, when Ying Zheng was just two years old, the Qin army besieged Handan directly. The people of Zhao wanted Ying Yiren dead. Lyu Buwei, who had too much invested to let his asset be destroyed, moved quickly. He bribed a city guard with 600 gold pieces and got Ying Yiren out of the city under cover of darkness. He left without his wife. He left without his son. Lady Zhao was able to hide because her family still had enough standing in Handan to provide cover. It was years of struggle to survive. Not bravery, not luck. Just the fact that she had been born in the city and her family still had enough connections to keep officials and soldiers from looking too closely at one particular household. But hiding is not the same as safe. Hiding with a small child in a city full of people who had every reason to hate everything her son represented was dangerous. What to say? Where to go? How to move through the streets without drawing the wrong kind of attention from the wrong people? How to keep a young child quiet when quiet was the only thing standing between them and someone deciding to report them? This was an exhausting time for her. How exhausting it was to be alone. How frightening it was to be alone. What could she tell her son about why they were hiding? What could she say when he asked where his father was or why the other children would not play with him? This was not how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to marry into a man's household and that man would take care of everything. She wanted to belong somewhere. She wanted someone to stay for her. Whatever Lady Zhao felt about that, she did not have the luxury of dwelling on it. She had a child to keep alive. And that was what she did. Day after day, in whatever safe space her family could provide. Lady Zhao and her son kept their heads down, but their neighbors and their children knew that he was half Qing. They might not have known exactly who he was, but they knew that he was the enemy. By the time Ying Zheng was four or five years old, he was already learning things that most children never have to learn. And he learned a very different lesson from his mother. He was old enough to go outside, old enough to understand the expression on people's faces, even when he did not understand the words. He learned that you do not show hurt, because hurt invites more of it. That you watch people's faces carefully before you decide how to respond to them. One day, he was safe. The next day, the army was at the gates. One day, his father was there. The next day, he was gone. The streets he walked down safely yesterday might not be safe today. The only way to never feel that helpless again was to be the one in control. That was the world that Ying Zheng grew up in. It was a world that taught him that the world was dangerous, not only because people were cruel, but because there was chaos. There was chaos because there were too many opinions, too many people who wanted different things, too many kingdoms. There needed to be rules. There needed to be order. And if nobody else was willing to create order, then one day, he would. And if anyone tried to stop him, he would kill them. Lady Zhao didn't know how Ying Zheng was changing inside. She was just trying to keep him fed and hidden and alive. And through all of it, it was just the two of them. And this was how it would be for the next few years. The years passed, and then, finally, things changed. In 251 BCE, the long-ringing King Zhaoxiang of Qin died. The crown prince, Ying Zhu, was going to be the new king of Qin, and Lü Buwei's years of careful maneuvering was about to pay off. Ying Yiren was formally adopted by the crown princess, Lady Huayang, and he was going to be the new crown prince of Qin. His position as the designated heir to the Qin throne was secured. The tension between Qin and Zhao had eased enough for diplomacy to resume, and the Kingdom of Zhao, in a gesture of goodwill, arranged for Lady Zhao and her son to be escorted back to Qin. They were going somewhere that was supposed to be safe. Lady Zhao had never been to Qin. She had no idea what was waiting for her there. But after everything, she and her son had survived together in a hostile city. Perhaps anywhere was better than where they were. So, she took his hand, and they left Handan behind. The capital city of the Kingdom of Qin was Xianyang, and Xianyang was nothing like Handan. Where Handan had been loud and alive, and chaotic in a way that felt almost warm, Xianyang was almost the exact opposite. The Kingdom of Qin had spent years transforming itself through sweeping legal reforms, and that transformation had worked its way into everything. The way the streets were laid out, the way officials moved through the palace corridors, the way people held their faces in public. Qin valued discipline and military achievement above almost everything else. It was not a place that made room easily for outsiders, and Lady Zhao was an outsider in every possible way. Her accent marked her the moment she opened her mouth. Her clothing was the wrong style. The elaborate rituals that governed the life at the Qin court, how you greeted a superior, how you would dress a peer, how the vessels were arranged at a formal dinner. She had not grown up with any of it, and it showed. She was the wife of the man who was about to become king, technically one of the most important women in the kingdom, and she was navigating the most basic social interactions like someone who had wandered into the wrong room and was trying very hard not to show it. The other women at court noticed. The servants noticed. The officials noticed. In a court where bloodline and faction and law-established alliance meant everything, Lady Zhao arrived with none of those things. She came from an enemy kingdom. Her background was uncertain, and her son, the boy who had grown up in the backstreets of Handan, had none of the polish of a prince raised in a proper court. And then there was the matter of the other woman. While Lady Zhao and Ying Zheng had been hiding in Handan, Ying Yiren had not remained alone. He had taken another consort, whose name is unknown. This was not unusual, but it did put Lady Zhao in a tricky situation. Because this consort gave Ying Yiren another son. This son was named Ying Chenjiao, and he had grown up as a proper prince. At the center of court life, he was surrounded by servants. He was well-fed, well-loved, and completely at home in the world that Ying Zheng was only now seeing for the first time. When Lady Zhao and her son arrived in 251 BCE, it was the first time the two half-brothers had ever met. For Ying Chenjiao's entire life so far, he might as well have been Ying Yiren's only son. And all of a sudden, he wasn't. The situation was a little messy, but it wasn't anything that Lady Zhao and her son couldn't handle. Lady Zhao was still Ying Yiren's primary wife, and she immediately took back the favor and attention that Ying Chenjiao's mother had been enjoying. Some say it was because of Ying Yiren's guilt for leaving her behind in Handan. Some say that it was because Ying Yiren really did love her. Whatever the reason, she wasn't cast aside. She got the favor and respect that she deserved as Lady Zhao had been through much worse than court politics, and with Lü Buwei's help, quickly found her footing in this new world. She watched. She learned the rituals she had missed. She figured out who mattered and how they needed to be addressed. She adapted the way she had always adapted, because adapting was what had kept her and her son alive. And her now eight-year-old son had been fighting to survive his entire life. Ying Zhen may not have had the bearing and manners of a proper prince, but he wasn't going to let a spoiled younger half-brother push him around. And then things moved very fast, in the way that things in this period always seem to. The crown prince Ying Zhu took the throne and died just three days later. Lady Huayang became queen, and then queen dowager. Ying Yiren became the new king and would be known as King Zhuangxiang. Lü Buwei finally got what he wanted and was named chancellor of the Qin court. And Lady Zhao became the new queen of Qin, with her son as the new crown prince. For a moment, it must have felt like everything Lady Zhao had endured had finally added up to something real. It would be a few years of stability for her. She was the queen now, but she was still new to the court of Qin, with no friends, no enemies, and no real power. At least she was safe now, she was taken care of, and who doesn't like being queen? But unfortunately, it would not last. Her husband, King Zhuangxiang, reigned for only three years, and would suddenly pass away in 247 BCE. And Lady Zhao, who had barely finished learning how to be a queen, was now a widow. In 246 BCE, the now 13-year-old Ying Zheng became king of Qin, and Lady Zhao became the queen dowager. Ying Zheng was too young to rule by himself, so queen dowager Zhao was expected to help by presiding over court affairs, with guidance from the chancellor Lü Buwei. The beautiful dancer from Handan was now one of the most powerful women in the most powerful kingdom in China. She was at the very top of the world. But was this really what she wanted? She was queen dowager, but she wasn't a princess from an imperial family. She wasn't even from a noble family. It was nice to be queen, but what does she know about governing a kingdom, let alone the most powerful kingdom of the warring states? When she was a young woman in Handan, she probably did not dream of thrones and regency councils. She probably dreamed of simpler things, a husband who came home to her, children she could raise without fear, a household that was hers, stable and warm, where she belonged not because she was useful, but because she was loved. Instead, she had a crown, a court full of strangers, a son who was growing up faster than she could follow, and an empty room at the end of the day. Everything she had actually wanted had just fallen apart, and she was lonely. The man who stepped into the space left by Ying Yiren's death was the same man who had been there from the very beginning. Lü Buwei had been rewarded generously for his investment. King Zhuangxiang had named him chancellor and given him the title Lord Wenxin. When Ying Zheng became king at 13, Lü Buwei's position grew even larger. He was given the honorific Zhongfu title, a special godfather title that placed him above almost everyone else in the kingdom. Lü Buwei finally had the power he always wanted, but he wasn't fully in charge. Queen Dowager Huayang, the powerful woman who adopted Ying Yiren, was still there. And Queen Dowager Xia, Ying Yiren's birth mother, was still there. But as far as the day-to-day operations of the court went, Lü Buwei was the person governing Qin while the young king grew into the role. The politics of the Qin court were complicated. But Queen Dowager Zhao wasn't really involved in any of that. She didn't really care about it anyway. And she trusted Lü Buwei to take care of things. He was the one person in Xianyang who had known her before any of this, before the title, before the palace, before the years of hiding and surviving and adapting. He had known her in Handan when she was his concubine. And then Queen Dowager Zhao resumed an intimate relationship with Lü Buwei. Maybe it was because she was lonely. Or maybe because in a complicated court of factions and alliances, he was the one person who felt familiar. She was lonely and he was familiar. In the loneliness of that enormous palace, familiar could have felt very close to safe. Was it love? Probably not. At least not in the way she wanted it to be. But it was good enough. For Lü Buwei, maybe it was because he wanted to strengthen his position at court. Lü Buwei was always a man of calculation. He had built his entire career on knowing the value of things and the right moment to act on that value. But this affair had a problem. And that problem was that the boy on the throne was growing up. Ying Zheng was 13 when he became king, then 14, then 15. He had come to Xianyang carrying everything he had learned in Handan. How to watch without being watched. How to read a room and how to wait. He watched the partnership between his mother and Lü Buwei. He watched the way the chancellor spoke to his mother and the way she looked at him. Why was she supporting Lü Buwei? To go so far as to literally be in bed together. He was the king. Wasn't his mother supposed to be supporting him? He didn't understand. But his anger grew. And his frustration grew. And he stored everything away, the way he had always stored things away in Handan. And he waited. Queen Dowager Zhao didn't understand either. She thought she was helping. Lü Buwei kept the court running smoothly after all. It's not like Lü Buwei was going to be king. Did it really matter who was running the court? Of course her son was the king. But she didn't know how to help the king. So let Lü Buwei do it. But Lü Buwei understood. He saw what was building within a young king. He was a man who had built his fortune on reading situations before they became crisis. And the situation he was reading now was a young king who was getting sharper and more dangerous every year, who was storing away observations that would one day become accusations. The relationship that had provided some comfort in the early years of the regency had become a liability. He needed to find a way out. He was settled into his role as chancellor now. And he didn't need to maintain his intimate relationship with Queen Dowager Zhao anymore. But Queen Dowager Zhao wouldn't let him go. Her loneliness had turned into something that was better described as lust. She kept asking for him more and more. And then Lü Buwei heard about a man who was said to be greatly endowed. This was a handsome young man named Lao Ai, who possessed charm and remarkable physical attributes. It was said that he could turn a wheel with how big and firm he was. And they weren't talking about his arms or legs. Lü Buwei spread stories of this man in the palace. He wanted to make sure that Queen Dowager Zhao heard of him. And just as Lü Buwei had planned, Queen Dowager Zhao heard of this and wished to have him for her private use. Through bribed officials, Lao Ai was disguised as a eunuch. It introduced into Queen Dowager Zhao's household as a palace servant. And Queen Dowager Zhao fell for Lao Ai. She fell for him completely. He whispered sweet things into her ear. He asked about her feelings. He helped her with things around her palace. Little things. Important things. He brought her gifts. He remembered what she liked. Did he mean any of it? It didn't matter. His performance was everything that she had always wanted. And she loved him greatly. She gave him titles. She gave him wealth. She gave him authority over her household. So much so that matters large and small were decided by him. She even arranged for him to be named as Lord Changxin, with real lands and real power. And when she discovered she was pregnant, she made a decision that would change everything. She relocated from Xianyang to the old capital city of Yong to the west. She claimed that she wasn't comfortable in the palace and wanted a change of scenery. And she brought Lao Ai with her. And then, in Yong, away from the cold eyes of the Xianyang court, Queen Dowager Zhao built a new life. A secret life. She had her household. She had Lao Ai. And she had two sons with the man she loved. For the first time, her life belonged to her. But Queen Dowager Zhao's good times could not last. Back in Xianyang, King Ying Zheng was not a boy anymore. By 238 BCE, he was 21 years old. He had spent years watching Yu Buwei run the kingdom in his name. He had watched officials look past him to the chancellor. He had watched power move through channels that did not always run through him. He had stored all of it away, patient and quiet. The way he had learned to store things away in Handan. And then, he heard about Yong. And he heard about Lao Ai. In the ninth year of the first emperor, someone reported that Lao Ai was not actually a eunuch. That he frequently engaged in private illicit relationships with the Queen Dowager. And that they had two sons whom they kept hidden. That he had plotted with the Queen Dowager, saying, if the king should die, we shall set up our son as his successor. Queen Dowager Zhao didn't mean that she was going to kill the king. Ying Zheng was her son too, after all. She just meant that in case of an accident. But how was Ying Zheng supposed to take it? He heard about the titles, and wealth, and authority that had been handed to a man who had entered the palace through fraud. He heard about how Lao Ai was involving himself in state affairs for his own benefit. And then, he heard about what Lao Ai had been saying about himself in moments of drunken arrogance. That he had been bragging that he was the king's foster father. Ying Zheng was enraged. But it was almost time for his coming-of-age ceremony. He was about to formally take over the full powers of king. This little problem of Lao Ai could wait. The coming-of-age ceremonies of the Qing royal family was to take place in the city of Yong. It was where their ancestral temples were. And coincidentally, it was where Lao Ai was. He could take care of both things at once. But Lao Ai had heard. He knew that Ying Zheng knew. And he knew that the king would charge him with the highest possible crime. He was definitely going to die. He was told to run. But where could he go? And so, he made a dangerous decision. He had to get rid of the king, before the king could get rid of him. He forged the Queen Dowager's seal to mobilize soldiers and launched an armed coup attacking the palace where the king was staying. But King Ying Zheng was prepared. His own forces were already in place, and Lao Ai's rebellion was quickly suppressed. Lao Ai was captured and executed by che lian, pulled apart by five horses. His entire family and clan were exterminated, and his supporters were sent into exile. And the two small boys, the sons that Queen Dowager Zhao had built her secret life in Yong around, were killed. Then Ying Zheng turned to his mother. The betrayal that he felt at that moment was personal. She was the one person that he thought was on his side. The one person that he thought he could trust. He was already bitter that she didn't help him to consolidate power. He was already embarrassed by her disgraceful scandal. But now, she was involved in a conspiracy to kill him? If even his own mother was trying to kill him, who else could he trust in this world? Queen Dowager Zhao was removed from power and confined to her palace. The King of Qin ordered that anyone who dared to speak on behalf of the Queen Dowager would be executed, and that their bodies would be piled up at the palace gates as a warning. But to imprison your own mother was extremely inappropriate. It was both unfilial and politically disastrous. Many officials urged him to bring her back. Twenty-seven officials died before they stopped trying. And King Ying Zheng wasn't done. He went after Lü Buwei next. He was angry that Lü Buwei had allowed this terrible scandal to happen. And he criticized the power that Lü Buwei held. What merit have you shown Qin that Qin has granted you a noble title with a hundred thousand households? What kinship do you have with Qin that you are called godfather? Lü Buwei was stripped of his titles the following year and sent into exile. Lü Buwei understood his end. He drank poison and ended himself. We can only imagine how Queen Dowager Zhao must have felt. Lü Buwei had treated her as a commodity with a certain value. Ying Yiren had treated her well enough, but she didn't get the love that she desired from him. And Lao Ai, the man she had loved most, definitely only used her for power and left her holding every consequence of his failure. They were all gone now. And her two small boys were gone. The life she had built in Yong, the closest thing to ordinary happiness she had ever known, was gone. Were her two young sons wrong? Maybe not directly, but Lao Ai tried to use them to replace the king. Was she wrong? Her affair was shameful, but what was she supposed to do? She just wanted to be in a loving relationship. She never asked to be Queen Dowager. And now, in her confinement, Queen Dowager Zhao was alone again. King Yingzhen was furious at his mother, and he had every reason to be. But about a year after Queen Dowager's confinement, in 237 BCE, a brave official decided to try again. The official Mao Jiao came to King Yingzhen and said what 27 men had already died for saying. Qin is currently engaged in the conquest of the world. Yet, your majesty has gained a reputation for exiling the Queen Mother. I fear that when the feudal lords hear of this, they will turn against Qin. And this time, the king listened. Maybe it was because he had calmed down. Maybe it was because he had time to think about his relationship with his mother. She was the Queen Dowager who had not supported him when he was a young king. She was the mother who brought shame to him through her scandal when he was trying to consolidate power. She was the traitor who had plotted with another to replace him after his death. But she was also the woman who had crouched with him in a hiding place in Handan, who had kept him warm when there was nothing to keep them warm with. She had held on to him and kept them alive, year after year. Yingzhen personally led a convoy to bring his mother back to Xianyang. He restored Queen Dowager Zhao to the Ganquan Palace. Her confinement was over, but she was back in a different kind of prison. She was still alone, and she would be alone for many more years. In the meantime, King Yingzhen was building an empire. He took out his frustration, the anger, the helplessness, and the oppression that he had felt his entire life on the kingdoms around him. One by one, the kingdoms were conquered. And when his armies marched on the kingdom of Zhao in 228 BCE, Yingzhen went with them. He walked back into Handan, the city where he had been born. The city where he had spent his earliest years hiding in the shadows with his mother, learning how to survive in a world that did not want them there. And it is said that all those who had feud with his mother's family during his time living in Zhao were buried alive. He remembered after everything. He walked back into the city where she had kept him alive, and he settled every score from all those years ago, in her name. He was telling his mother how much she meant to him, in the only way he knew how to. Maybe it wasn't exactly what she would have wanted, but it was a certain kind of closure. Later that year, Queen Dowager Zhao passed away. She was buried together with her husband, Ying Yiren, the King Zhuangxiang. Maybe she could find the companionship that she desperately wanted in life, finally in death. Seven years later, in 221 BCE, King Yingzhen completed his unification of China and declared himself Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor. His mother didn't see it happen. It probably wouldn't have mattered to her all that much. But it couldn't have happened without her. And then, Qin Shi Huang posthumously named his mother Di Taihou, Empress Dowager, making her the first woman in Chinese history to hold that title, even if only at death. There is a version of Lady Zhao's story that history has been telling for 2,000 years. In that version, she is a cautionary tale, a woman of uncertain origins who rose through luck and beauty, who was remembered for shameful scandal and moral failure, and who brought chaos to the greatest kingdom of her time. The historians who wrote that version of her story used words like lust, immoral, and depravity. They used her life as an example of what happened when a woman steps outside the boundaries her world has drawn for her. Maybe she was lustful. Maybe she was immoral. Maybe she was depraved. But also maybe she was just lashing out at the rules of the world that were forced upon her. Some modern historians even think that the affair with Lao Ai was heavily exaggerated, or maybe partly made up. Today, there is another version of the story, and I think this version is closer to the truth. What if she was just a normal woman who got caught up in the political games of others? She was born in a wrong time, in a wrong place, and she met the wrong men. If her life had been quieter, if she had met someone with no ambition and no agenda, someone who simply loved her back and needed nothing from her except her company, I think she would have been perfectly content. A small life, a real love. That was probably all she ever actually wanted. But in the end, she had no control over any important moment of her life. And every decision she did try to make was met with criticism and despair. Maybe she wasn't the best mother, and maybe she wasn't the mother that Yin Zheng wanted. But she probably did the best that she could. I mean, her son did become the first emperor of China after all. We do not know her real name, but we know her story. What do you think about the life of Lady Zhao? Let me know in the comments. If you enjoyed today's topic, don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you in the next one!