Making Fun of a Woman’s Age Can be a Costly Mistake
China’s Jin Dynasty Emperor Xiaowu (362 – 396) ascended the throne when he was ten-years-old. For the first few years of his reign, the realm was governed by regents. When he was thirteen, he wed a sixteen-year-old, who was either a lush or became one after the wedding, and drank heavily until her death five years later. Xiaowu himself was no stranger to the bottle. He partied and boozed it up, and left governance to his advisers. Xiaowu did not remarry after he became a widower, but he did have numerous concubines. Of those, his favorite was the Honored Lady Zhang. One time while drunk at a party, he joked about the then-thirty-year-old Zhang’s years: “Based on your age, you should yield your position. I want someone younger“. It proved a costly joke.
Lady Zhang did not think it was funny. Her status and power depended on her relationship to the emperor, and she would lose it all if he ditched her. She also seethed at the public humiliation. She kept her cool at the party, and got her revenge later that night. When Xiaowu passed out drunk as he often did, Lady Zhang escorted him to his chambers. She bribed the emperor’s guards to look the other way, then had her maids suffocate and strangle him to death. Lady Zhang claimed that the emperor had died in his sleep, but the truth came out soon enough. Luckily for her, few cared. Xiaowu had been dissolute, and caused his courtiers more trouble than he was worth. They swiftly appointed a child emperor in his place, and ruled as regents.
