The wordless stele
Two steles stand side by side before the Qianling Mausoleum: Gaozong’s "Stele Extolling the Sage" is covered in praise, while Wu Zetian’s stele bears not a single character. The reason for the blankness is nowhere recorded — did she think her merit too great for words? Her guilt too heavy to speak? Or did she leave it for posterity to judge? For thirteen hundred years travelers have answered for themselves before it. Only one thing is certain: a woman who held every step of her fate in her own hands designed even the final verdict as an open question.
Expanding the examinations, breaking the great clans
Wu Zetian’s legitimacy was inherently weak, and the last thing she could rely on was the Guanlong aristocracy and the old Li-Tang ministers, so she staked her bet on the examinations: personally testing the presented scholars (the palace exam began with her), creating the military exam, and widely opening special examinations, so that scholars of humble birth poured into the court. Purging the old nobility was for self-protection, but it objectively carried out a wholesale replacement of the ruling elite — the great Kaiyuan chancellors Yao Chong and Song Jing were men she had raised with her own hand.