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

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]What if you were destined for greatness,  but you just wanted to live a normal life?

[00:00:05]Hey everyone, and welcome to Tea with Amy.  Today we are telling the story of Lady Zhào, 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.

[00:00:35]If you have watched the cdrama Qin 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 closer to how she is described in historical records. But she is also reimagined very differently as Lǐ Hàolán in the cdrama 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.

[00:01:11]Two very different versions of the same woman. Now, the story of Legend of Haolan is greatly dramatized, but maybe the characterization  of Lǐ Hàolán gives us something to think about that is not shown in historical records. But before we step further into Lady Zhào’s story, we should first take a look at  the world she was born into.

[00:01:32]For over two hundred 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, traded 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.

[00:02:04]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.

[00:02:20]History remembers her as scandalous.  But let’s decide for ourselves.

[00:02:29]Lady Zhào’s real name is not  recorded in historical records.

[00:02:33]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.

[00:02:42]In fact, even her family name was probably not  Zhào at all. We refer to her as Lady Zhào today because all we really know of her origin  is that she came from the kingdom of Zhào.

[00:02:54]The Records of the Grand Historian describes her  as being from a prominent family from Hándān, the capital city of the kingdom of Zhào. Not  a noble family. But also not a poor family.

[00:03:07]Hándān 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 Zhào. It is said that she was  a talented and captivating dancer.

[00:03:41]At some point, probably when she was still  quite young, she came into the household of a merchant named Lǚ Bùwéi as a concubine.  Some say she was his favorite concubine.

[00:03:52]Her early relationship with Lǚ Bùwéi is unclear,  but in the chaos of the Warring States Period, any kind of stability was something  to hold onto. Lǚ Bùwéi was wealthy, and his household was taken care of. She was taken care of.

[00:04:07]But Lǚ Bùwéi was not a man who was satisfied with  just being wealthy. In theory, he had the 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 the social ladder. Any day, his money could be taken. His assets could  be repurposed. A shift in the political winds could wipe out everything he had built. What he  needed was something a merchant wasn’t supposed to have: power. Real power.

[00:04:42]The kind that did not depend on anyone  else's goodwill or the stability of a market.

[00:04:48]And then he found his opportunity, in the  form of a forgotten Qín prince living in hardship in Hándān as a political hostage. His name was Yíng Yìrén, and he was a son of Yíng Zhù, the Crown Prince of the kingdom  of Qín, born to a low-ranking concubine. He was sent to Zhào as a part of a diplomatic  exchange and he had no allies, no prospects, and no real future that anyone could see. Lǚ Bùwéi saw something different.

[00:05:19]He looked at this forgotten prince and saw an  undervalued asset. The Crown Prince Yíng Zhù had not named an official heir yet. Because Lady  Huáyáng, the primary wife of Yíng Zhù, had no son of her own. Was there something he could do here?  To help this Prince become the successor to the Crown Prince of Qín? To become the next next King  of Qín? Then he would be in the debt of a King!

[00:05:47]Imagine the power that he could wield then. And so Lǚ Bùwéi befriended Yíng Yìrén, and they met constantly. Lǚ Bùwéi shared with Yíng Yìrén 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, Yíng Yìrén came to Lǚ Bùwéi's household and saw her. He saw Lady Zhào.

[00:06:22]She was dancing, and she was beautiful.  The most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

[00:06:28]He could not look away. He asked Lǚ Bùwéi who she was.

[00:06:32]Nobody important, Lǚ Bùwéi said.  Just a woman in my household.

[00:06:37]And then Yíng Yìrén asked a question that would  become a turning point in Chinese history.

[00:06:42]He asked if he could have her. Lǚ Bùwéi 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 Yíng Yìrén willingly, at least he would have leverage. At  least the debt would be his to collect.

[00:07:30]Yíng Yìrén promised that he would treat  her well, and that he would forever be in Lǚ Bùwéi’s debt. So Lǚ Bùwéi let her go.

[00:07:39]He sent Lady Zhào to Yíng Yìrén’s  household, and she became his wife.

[00:07:44]Lady Zhào 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 Lǚ Bùwéi's concubine, and the next she was with a prince from another kingdom. Maybe she would find love with Yíng Yìrén? 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.

[00:08:19]What we do know is that Yíng Yìrén favored  her greatly, and she soon gave birth to a son.

[00:08:25]But then, her story gets murky. Some interpretations of the Records of the Grand Historian argue that Lady Zhào  was already pregnant before she was given to Yíng Yìrén. Other later rumors even claim that  the Crown Prince Dān of the Kingdom of Yan was close friends with Lǚ Bùwéi and Yíng Yìrén, and  visited Lady Zhào frequently. These are claims that leave us with a question still debated  even today: who was this son's real father?

[00:08:55]But for every reason that mattered to the men  involved, the child had to be Yíng Yìrén’s son.

[00:09:01]And so, in 259 BCE, he was born: Yíng  Zhèng, son of Yíng Yìrén, Prince of Qín.

[00:09:13]For a brief moment, things must  have felt stable for Lady Zhào.

[00:09:17]She had a husband who favored her.  She had a son. She had a place.

[00:09:22]But Hándān was not a safe place to be  a Qín prince and his family. Just a few years before Yíng Zhèng was born, the Qín  general Bái Qǐ had crushed the Zhào army at the Battle of Chángpíng. Four hundred  thousand Zhào soldiers had surrendered.

[00:09:39]And then been buried alive. There was not a  family in the city that had not lost someone.

[00:09:45]There was not a street that did not carry  that grief quietly underneath its surface.

[00:09:51]And now the Qín army was coming back. In 257 BCE, when Yíng Zhèng was just two years old, the Qín army besieged Hándān directly. The  people of Zhào wanted Yíng Yìrén dead. Lǚ Bùwéi, who had too much invested to let his asset be  destroyed, moved quickly. He bribed the city guards with six hundred gold pieces and got Yíng  Yìrén out of the city under cover of darkness.

[00:10:19]He left without his wife. He left without his son. Lady Zhào was able to hide because her family still had enough standing in Hándān to provide  cover. It was years of struggle to survive. Not bravery, not luck. Just the fact that she had been  born in this city and her family still had enough connections to keep officials and soldiers from  looking too closely at one particular household.

[00:10:46]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.

[00:11:24]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?

[00:11:34]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 Zhào 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.

[00:12:02]Lady Zhào and her son kept their heads down, but  their neighbors and their children knew that he was half Qín. They might not have known exactly  who he was, but they knew that he was the enemy.

[00:12:15]By the time Yíng Zhèng 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.

[00:12:26]He was old enough to go outside. Old enough  to understand the expressions 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 Yíng Zhèng grew up in.

[00:13:08]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.

[00:13:28]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 Zhào didn’t know how Yíng Zhèng was changing inside. She was just  trying to keep him fed and hidden and alive.

[00:13:47]And through all of it, it  was just the two of them.

[00:13:50]And this was how it would  be for the next few years.

[00:13:54]The years passed. And then, finally, things changed.

[00:13:58]In 251 BCE, the long-reigning  King Zhāoxiāng of Qín died.

[00:14:04]The Crown Prince Yíng Zhù was  going to be the new King of Qín.

[00:14:08]And Lǚ Bùwéi’s years of careful  maneuvering was about to pay off.

[00:14:13]Yíng Yìrén was formally adopted by the Crown  Princess Lady Huáyáng, and he was going to the new Crown Prince of Qín. His position as the  designated heir to the Qín throne was secured.

[00:14:26]The tension between Qín and Zhào had eased enough  for diplomacy to resume. And the kingdom of Zhào, in a gesture of goodwill, arranged for Lady  Zhào and her son to be escorted back to Qín.

[00:14:39]They were going somewhere  that was supposed to be safe.

[00:14:43]Lady Zhào had never been to Qín. 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 Hándān behind.

[00:15:06]The capital city of the kingdom of Qín was  Xiányáng. And Xiányáng was nothing like Hándān.

[00:15:12]Where Hándān had been loud and alive and chaotic  in a way that felt almost warm, Xiányáng was almost the exact opposite. The kingdom of Qín 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. Qín valued discipline and military  achievement above almost everything else. It was not a place that made room easily for outsiders. And Lady Zhào 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 life at the Qín court, how you greeted a superior, how you  addressed 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 long-established alliance meant everything,  Lady Zhào arrived with none of those things.

[00:16:45]She came from an enemy kingdom. Her background was  uncertain. And her son, the boy who had grown up in the backstreets of Hándān, had none of the  polish of a prince raised in a proper court.

[00:16:57]And then there was the matter of the other woman. While Lady Zhào and Yíng Zhèng had been hiding in Hándān, Yíng Yìrén had not remained  alone. He had taken another consort, whose name is unknown. This was not unusual,  but it did put Lady Zhào in a tricky situation.

[00:17:16]Because this consort gave Yíng Yìrén another son. This son was named Yíng Chéngjiāo, and he had grown up as a proper prince, at the center  of court life. He was surrounded by servants.

[00:17:29]He was well-fed, well-loved, and  completely at home in the world that Yíng Zhèng was only now seeing for the first time. When Lady Zhào and her son arrived in 251 BCE, it was the first time the two half-brothers had  ever met. For Yíng Chéngjiāo’s entire life so far, he might as well have been Yíng Yìrén’s  only son. And all of a sudden, he wasn’t.

[00:17:54]The situation was a little  messy, but it wasn’t anything that Lady Zhào and her son couldn’t handle. Lady Zhào was still Yíng Yìrén’s primary wife, and she immediately took back the favor and attention  that Yíng Chéngjiāo’s mother had been enjoying.

[00:18:10]Some say it was because of Yíng Yìrén’s guilt for  leaving her behind in Hándān. Some say that it was because Yíng Yìrén really did love her. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t cast aside.

[00:18:22]She got the favor and respect that  she deserved as Yíng Yìrén’s wife.

[00:18:27]Lady Zhào had been through much worse than  court politics, and with Lǚ Bùwéi’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.

[00:18:52]And her now eight year old son had been fighting  to survive his entire life. Yíng Zhèng 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 seemed to. The Crown Prince Yíng Zhù took the throne and died just three days later. Lady Huáyáng became Queen,  and then Queen Dowager. Yíng Yìrén became the new King and would be known as King Zhuāngxiāng. Lǚ Bùwéi finally got what he wanted, and was named Chancellor of the Qín court. And Lady Zhào became the new Queen of Qín, with her son as the new Crown Prince. For a moment, it must have felt like everything Lady Zhào had endured had  finally added up to something real.

[00:19:47]It would be a few years of stability  for her. She was the Queen now, but she was still new to the court of Qín.  With no friends, no enemies, and no real power.

[00:19:59]At least she was safe now. She was taken  care of. And who doesn’t like being Queen?

[00:20:06]But unfortunately, it would not last. Her husband King Zhuāngxiāng reigned for only three years, and would  suddenly pass away in 247 BCE.

[00:20:18]And Lady Zhào, who had barely finished  learning how to be a Queen, was now a widow.

[00:20:24]In 246 BCE, the now thirteen-year-old  Yíng Zhèng, became King of Qín.

[00:20:29]And Lady Zhào became the Queen Dowager. Yíng Zhèng was too young to rule by himself, so Queen Dowager Zhào was expected to  help by presiding over court affairs, with guidance from the Chancellor Lǚ Bùwéi. The beautiful dancer from Hándān was now one of the most powerful women in the  most powerful kingdom in China.

[00:20:51]She was at the very top of the world. But was this really what she wanted?

[00:20:58]She was Queen Dowager, but she wasn’t  a princess from an imperial family.

[00:21:03]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?

[00:21:14]When she was a young woman in Hándān, 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.

[00:21:59]The man who stepped into the space left  by Yíng Yìrén's death was the same man who had been there from the very beginning. Lǚ Bùwéi had been rewarded generously for his investment. King Zhuāngxiāng had named  him Chancellor and given him the title Lord Wénxìn. When Yíng Zhèng became king at  thirteen, Lǚ Bùwéi's position grew even larger.

[00:22:22]He was given the honorific Zhòngfù title,  a special “Godfather” title that placed him above almost everyone else in the kingdom. Lǚ Bùwéi finally had the power he always wanted, but he wasn’t fully in charge. Queen Dowager Huáyáng, the powerful woman who adopted Yíng Yìrén, was still there. And Queen  Dowager Xià, Yíng Yìrén’s birth mother, was still there. But as far as the day to day operations of  the court went, Lǚ Bùwéi was the person governing Qín while the young king grew into the role. The politics of the Qín court were complicated, but Queen Dowager Zhào wasn’t really  involved in any of that. She didn’t really care about it anyway, and she  trusted Lǚ Bùwéi to take care of things.

[00:23:10]He was the one person in Xiányáng 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 Hándān, when she was his concubine. And then, Queen Dowager Zhào resumed an intimate relationship with Lǚ Bùwéi. Maybe it was because she was lonely.

[00:23:35]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.

[00:23:46]In the loneliness of that enormous palace,  familiar could have felt very close to safe.

[00:23:54]Was it love? Probably not, at least not in the  way she wanted it to be. But it was good enough.

[00:24:02]For Lǚ Bùwéi, maybe it was because he wanted  to strengthen his position at court. Lǚ Bùwéi 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.

[00:24:20]And that problem was that the  boy on the throne was growing up.

[00:24:25]Yíng Zhèng was thirteen when he became  king. Then fourteen. Then fifteen. He had come to Xiányáng carrying everything he had  learned in Hándān. How to watch without being watched. How to read a room. And how to wait. He watched the partnership between his mother and Lǚ Bùwéi. He watched the way the Chancellor spoke  to his mother, and the way she looked at him.

[00:24:49]Why was she supporting Lǚ Bùwéi? To go so  far as to literally be in bed together?

[00:24:56]He was the King. Wasn’t his mother  supposed to be supporting him?

[00:25:00]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 Hándān.

[00:25:12]And he waited. Queen Dowager Zhào didn’t understand either. She thought she was helping.  Lǚ Bùwéi kept the court running smoothly after all. It’s not like Lǚ Bùwéi was going to be King.  Did it really matter who was running the court?

[00:25:27]Of course her son was the King. But she didn’t  know how to help the King. So let Lǚ Bùwéi do it!

[00:25:35]But Lǚ Bùwéi understood. He saw what  was building within the young King.

[00:25:40]He was a man who had built his fortune on  reading situations before they became crises.

[00:25:46]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.

[00:25:58]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 Zhào anymore. But Queen Dowager Zhào wouldn’t let him go.

[00:26:20]Her loneliness had turned into something  that was better described as lust.

[00:26:26]She kept asking for him more and more. And then Lǚ Bùwéi he heard about a man who was said to be greatly endowed. This  was a handsome young man named Lào Ǎi, 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 were not talking about his arms or legs.

[00:26:50]Lǚ Bùwéi spread stories of this man in  the palace. He wanted to make sure that Queen Dowager Zhào heard of him. And just as Lǚ Bùwéi had planned: "Queen Dowager Zhào heard of this and  wished to have him for her private use."

[00:27:07]Through bribed officials, Lào Ǎi was disguised  as a eunuch and introduced into Queen Dowager Zhào's household as a palace servant. And Queen Dowager Zhào fell for Lào Ǎi.

[00:27:18]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.

[00:27:28]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.

[00:27:44]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 Chángxìn, with real lands and real power. And when she discovered she was pregnant, she made a decision that would change  everything. She relocated from Xiányáng to the old capital city of Yōng to the west. She  claimed that she wasn’t comfortable in the palace, and wanted a change of scenery. And she brought Lào Ǎi with her.

[00:28:20]And then, in Yōng, away from the  cold eyes of the Xiányáng court, Queen Dowager Zhào built a new life. A secret  life. She had her household. She had Lào Ǎi.

[00:28:33]And she had two sons with the man she loved. For the first time, her life belonged to her.

[00:28:45]But Queen Dowager Zhào’s  good times could not last.

[00:28:49]Back in Xiányáng, King Yíng  Zhèng was not a boy anymore.

[00:28:54]By 238 BCE, he was twenty-one years old. He had  spent years watching Lǚ Bùwéi 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 Hándān.

[00:29:20]And then he heard about Yōng. And he heard about Lào Ǎi: "In the ninth year of the First Emperor, someone reported that Lào  Ǎi was not actually a eunuch, that he frequently engaged in private illicit relations 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 Zhào didn’t mean that she was going to kill the King. Yíng Zhèng was her son too after  all! She just meant that in case of an accident!

[00:30:00]But how was Yíng Zhèng supposed to take it? He heard about the titles and the wealth and the authority that had been handed to a  man who had entered the palace through fraud.

[00:30:10]He heard about how Lào Ǎi was involving  himself in state affairs for his own benefit.

[00:30:16]And then he heard about what Lào Ǎi had been  saying about himself in moments of drunken arrogance. That he had been bragging  that he was the king's foster father.

[00:30:26]Yíng Zhèng 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 Lào Ǎi could wait. The coming of age ceremonies of the Qín royal family was to take place in the city of Yōng.  It was where their ancestral temples were.

[00:30:48]And coincidentally, it was where Lào Ǎi was. He could take care of both things at once.

[00:30:55]But Lào Ǎi had heard. He knew that Yíng  Zhèng knew. And he knew that the King would charge him with the highest possible  crime. He was definitely going to die.

[00:31:06]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.

[00:31:18]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 Yíng Zhèng was prepared.

[00:31:29]His own forces were already in place and  Lào Ǎi’s rebellion was quickly suppressed.

[00:31:34]Lào Ǎi was captured and executed by chēliè,  pulled apart by five horses. His entire family and clan were exterminated. And  his supporters were sent into exile.

[00:31:48]And the two small boys, the sons that  Queen Dowager Zhào had built her secret life in Yōng around, were killed. Then Yíng Zhèng turned to his mother.

[00:32:00]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 Zhào was removed from power and confined to her palace: "The King of  Qín 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.

[00:32:59]And King Yíng Zhèng wasn’t done. He went after Lǚ  Bùwéi next. He was angry that Lǚ Bùwéi had allowed this terrible scandal to happen. And he criticized  the power that Lǚ Bùwéi held: "What merit have you shown Qín, that Qín has granted you a noble title  with 100,000 households? What kinship do you have with Qín, that you are called 'Godfather'?" Lǚ Bùwéi was stripped of his titles the following year and sent into exile. Lǚ Bùwéi understood his end. He drank poison and ended it himself. We can only imagine how Queen Dowager Zhào must have felt. Lǚ Bùwéi had treated her as a commodity with a certain value. Yíng  Yìrén had treated her well enough, but she didn’t get the love that she desired from  him. And Lào Ǎi, the man she had loved the most, definitely only used her for power and left  her holding every consequence of his failure.

[00:33:59]They were all gone now. And her two small boys were gone. The life she had built in Yōng, the closest thing to  ordinary happiness she had ever known, was gone.

[00:34:12]Were her two young sons wrong? Maybe not directly.  But Lào Ǎi tried to use them to replace the King.

[00:34:20]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.

[00:34:32]And now, in her confinement, Queen  Dowager Zhào was alone again.

[00:34:42]King Yíng Zhèng was furious at his  mother. And he had every reason to be.

[00:34:48]But about a year after Queen Dowager  Zhào’s confinement, in 237 BCE, a brave official decided to try again. The official Máo Jiāo, came to King Yíng Zhèng, and said what twenty-seven men had  already died for saying: "Qín 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 Qín."

[00:35:19]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.

[00:35:30]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.

[00:35:46]But she was also the woman who had crouched  with him in a hiding place in Hándān, who had kept him warm when there was nothing to  keep them warm with. She had held on with him, and kept them alive, year after year. Yíng Zhèng personally led a convoy to bring his mother back to Xiányáng. He restored  Queen Dowager Zhào to the Gānquán Palace.

[00:36:10]Her confinement was over. But she was  back in a different kind of prison.

[00:36:15]She was still alone. And she would be alone for many more years.

[00:36:21]In the meantime, King Yíng  Zhèng was building an empire.

[00:36:25]He took out the 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.

[00:36:38]And when his armies marched on the kingdom of  Zhào in 228 BCE, Yíng Zhèng went with them.

[00:36:46]He walked back into Hándān. 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 feuds with his mother's family  during his time living in Zhào were buried alive."

[00:37:08]He remembered. After everything.

[00:37:12]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.

[00:37:21]He was telling his mother  how much she meant to him.

[00:37:25]In the only way that he knew how to. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what she would have wanted. But it was a certain kind of closure.

[00:37:35]Later that year, Queen Dowager Zhào passed away. She was buried together with her husband Yíng Yìrén, the King Zhuāngxiāng. Maybe she could find the companionship that she desperately wanted in life, finally in death. Seven years later, in 221 BCE, King Yíng Zhèng completed his unification of China and  declared himself Qín Shǐ Huáng, the First Emperor.

[00:38:02]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.

[00:38:11]And then Qín Shǐ Huáng posthumously named his  mother Dì Tàihòu, Empress Dowager. Making her the first woman in Chinese history to  hold that title, even if only in death.

[00:38:25]There is a version of Lady Zhào's story that  history has been telling for two thousand years.

[00:38:31]In that version she is a cautionary tale. A  woman of uncertain origins who rose through luck and beauty, who is 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 happens when a woman steps outside  the boundaries her world has drawn for her.

[00:39:02]Maybe she was lustful. Maybe she  was immoral. Maybe she was depraved.

[00:39:08]But also maybe, she was just lashing out at the  rules of the world that were forced upon her.

[00:39:14]Some modern historians even think  that the affair with Lào Ǎi was heavily exaggerated, or maybe partly made up. Today, there is another version of this story.

[00:39:25]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 the wrong time, in the 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.

[00:39:57]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 Yíng Zhèng wanted.  But she probably did the best that she could.

[00:40:21]I mean, her son did become the  First Emperor of China, after all.

[00:40:25]We do not know her real  name. But we know her story.

[00:40:29]What do you think about the life of Lady Zhào?

[00:40:32]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 will see you in the next one.