Chapter 6 The emperor fell into the "gentle country"

Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty became emperor.Before he came to the throne, he was quite lustful, but now that he is the emperor, he is naturally even more unwilling to relax.At this time, he had two favorite beauties in the harem, one was his queen Xu, and the other was the famous talented woman Ban Jieyu. Empress Xu is the niece of Xu Pingjun, the empress of Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty. According to her seniority, she is also the cousin of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty, which can be regarded as a close relative.She is not only beautiful and intelligent, but also familiar with history books, quite talented.Liu Ao, who was still the prince, fell in love with her at first sight.Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty learned that his son and his daughter-in-law were in love with each other, so he happily asked his left and right to drink wine to congratulate him.After Emperor Cheng came to the throne, Xu was established as the empress. Emperor Cheng doted on her very much, so the concubines in the harem were rarely favored.The emperor and the queen have a good relationship, so naturally the relatives of the queen's family will flourish.In the eyes of Wang Shi, the relative of Emperor Cheng's mother Wang Zhengjun, Xu's nobility is undoubtedly a challenge to their status.Just at this time, there was a solar eclipse in the sky. According to the saying of "heaven and man induction", this shows that the emperor has made a mistake and the sky warns.Therefore, Emperor Cheng hurriedly issued an imperial edict to review.The Wang family's party members used the excuse that the solar eclipse was caused by Empress Xu's "immorality", and asked the emperor to reduce her expenses to attack the power of Xu's relatives.

Empress Xu was labeled as "immoral" for no reason, so she was naturally very unconvinced. She was talented, so she wrote a memorial to protest with sincerity and reason.Emperor Cheng read it, but couldn't find anything to refute, so he asked the great Confucian Liu Xiang to ghostwrite, put on the majesty of the emperor, and pulled out the banner of a saint to suppress Empress Xu.After this incident, although Emperor Cheng still loved Empress Xu, he always felt that he couldn't even refute her, which was really embarrassing.In addition, as Empress Xu got older and her appearance was no longer as gorgeous as before, it became a matter of course for Emperor Han Cheng, a lustful man, to "fade in color and love galloping", and Empress Xu gradually became indifferent.

Another beauty that Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty favored was Ban Jieyu.She is the daughter of Ban Kuang, the captain of the Yueqi School, and the aunt of Ban Gu, the author of "Hanshu" and Ban Chao, the famous general who was sent to the Western Regions. She is a very famous talented woman.When she became emperor, she was selected into the palace and established as Jieyu.Jieyu was the title of a concubine in the palace at that time, and she was second only to Zhaoyi under the empress, which shows that her status is relatively high.Ban Jieyu is very beautiful, and she is also very intelligent, knowledgeable and polite, with a high temperament.At the beginning, the emperor favored her very much. Not only did he promote her from a low-ranking envoy to Jieyu, but he also expanded the palace for her.However, this Ban Jieyu is not only beautiful, but also has "women's morality". I am afraid this is also the origin of their family's family education. Later, her grand-niece Ban Zhao wrote a book specifically teaching women how to behave. Women's Commandment".She does not compete for favor, does not interfere in political affairs, abides by etiquette, behaves properly, and everything is in line with etiquette. There is a famous story of "Ban Ji's resignation from the chariot", which can be seen.

Once Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty was visiting the harem and wanted to ride in a car with Ban Jieyu, but she sternly refused.She said: "Looking at the pictures left in ancient times, the sages and sages are all accompanied by famous officials. Only Xia Jie, Shang Zhou, and Zhou You, the last lords of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, would have their favorite concubines present, so in the end If the concubine goes in and out with His Majesty in the same car, she will be similar to those last lords who have lost their country. I really dare not obey orders." After hearing this "upright" lesson, the emperor could only nod his head and say yes, no Ask to ride with her again.When the empress dowager heard about this incident, she also praised her very much. Comparing her with Fan Ji, the virtuous woman who assisted the king of Chu Zhuang to dominate, Ban Jieyu's virtue can be seen from this.But just as Confucius lamented: "I have never seen anyone who loves virtue as much as she loves sex."Neither Empress Xu nor Ban Jieyu probably understood that to Emperor Han Cheng, a woman's talent and virtue were not the most important thing, what he valued was still her beauty.For a "virtue" like Ban Jieyu, while he has to praise him, he will definitely feel "respectful and far away" in his heart.Therefore, once he meets a beauty who suits him better, he forgets about Empress Xu and Ban Jieyu, whom he once loved.

The beauty who moved Emperor Cheng's heart was the famous Zhao Feiyan. Zhao Feiyan's real name was not Feiyan.She is a dancer from Princess Yang'a's family, and her life experience is quite bizarre, and she is actually related to Emperor Cheng by twists and turns.Her biological mother is said to be the princess of Gusu, the granddaughter of King Jiangdu, who had an affair with her slave Feng Wanjin and gave birth to her and her younger sister.Because they were illegitimate children, they abandoned the pair of twin sisters to the wilderness.But he didn't expect that he was still alive three days later. Feng Wanjin felt that it was unusual, so he took the pair of sisters back, and named the elder sister Yizhu and the younger sister Hede.When they grew up, Feng Wanjin died, and the two sisters were lonely and living in Chang'an. They worshiped Zhao Lin, the housekeeper of Princess Yang'a, as their adoptive father and became a dancer for Princess Yang'a's house.

The Zhao sisters were born beautiful and danced gracefully, and soon stood out among the dancers in Princess Yang'a's house.Among them, Zhao Yizhu's dancing posture is particularly outstanding. She has a slender figure and moves gracefully like flying, graceful and light like a flying swallow, so she is called "Zhao Feiyan".The so-called "Yan thin ring fat", and later Yang Yuhuan became synonymous with beauty.In the third year of Hongjia (18 years ago), Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty went privately in micro-clothes, passed by Princess Yang'a's house, and took a rest at the entrance.When the emperor arrived, Princess Yang'a naturally didn't dare to neglect, so she called out all the singers and dancers in the mansion to entertain the emperor with wine.Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty, a licentious person, took a fancy to the distinctive Zhao Feiyan at a glance. After the banquet, he couldn't wait to bring her back to the palace, and because of this "great luck", within a few days, he promoted her to be the Marquis of Jubilee. Jieyu is so in love.Let her move to the luxurious Yuantiao Pavilion, and give her a lot of rare treasures, such as purple antler cloud tent, Wenyu table, red gold nine-story Boshanyuan box and so on.And Zhao Feiyan is not only beautiful, but also very smart.She knew that her status was low, and being so favored would arouse the jealousy of the palace people, so she pretended to be humble, and used the property bestowed on her by Emperor Cheng to spend a lot of money in the harem, and deliberately made friends with Fen Dai in the palace in a low voice, and gradually relaxed The hostility of the harem beauties towards her.But passive defense alone was not enough, she had to take a more active approach to keep Emperor Cheng firmly under her side, so she introduced her younger sister Zhao Hede to the palace.

Zhao Hede is also an alluring beauty, and even more scheming than his sister.She knew that her sister had already been favored by her appearance and dance, and she was going to find some new tricks, so she resorted to the means of welcoming but rejecting.Emperor Cheng sent someone to announce her into the palace, but she refused to die on the pretext that she did not have her sister's call.Seeing that such a small servant dared to resist his orders, Emperor Cheng was really whetted.He solemnly sent someone to go again with Zhao Feiyan's token, Zhao Hede agreed to enter the palace, dressed up carefully, bathed with "nine times of aloes", and painted a novel "Yuanshan Dai" , "Lao Lai Zhuang", the emperor was fascinated immediately, and wished he could be dragged into the tent immediately to accomplish his good deed.But Zhao Hede still had to make some decisions, and refused calmly: "The emperor is my brother-in-law now, and my sister has a serious personality. Without her permission, I would never dare to serve the emperor." The emperor's appetite This time the hanging was even higher, so she had the cheek to go to Zhao Feiyan and ask her to persuade her sister to enter the emperor's bedroom.After repeating this several times, Zhao Hede finally agreed.The emperor got his wish and was overjoyed. He called Zhao Hede's body "Gentle Township", and declared: "I am always a hometown, and I can't follow the example of Emperor Wu to ask for Baiyun Township." So he immediately named her Jieyu, and her sister Dote on the Sixth Palace together.

The Zhao sisters were greatly favored, and their ambitions also increased accordingly. They were no longer satisfied with the status of just the favorite concubine, and set their eyes on the throne of the queen.At this time, Empress Xu of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty had been out of favor for many years and was full of resentment. Together with her sister Xu Ye, she asked Wu Zhu to set up an altar to pray for the emperor's change of heart.The Zhao sisters had been paying attention to the Queen's every move. Knowing this, of course they refused to let it go, so they falsely accused Queen Xu of plotting to use "witchcraft" to harm the Emperor in front of the Emperor and the Queen Mother. "Witch Gu" is a serious crime in the court. In the past, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty killed tens of thousands of people including the empress and prince.Empress Xu was charged with this crime, so naturally she would not end well. She was deposed soon, and later committed suicide and died.The Zhao sisters also wanted to involve Ban Jieyu.But Ban Jieyu was a well-known virtuous and talented woman, and Emperor Han Cheng didn't believe that she would participate in such a lowly thing, so he went to interrogate her in person.Ban Jieyu replied calmly: "My concubine heard that life and death are determined by fate, wealth and honor are in heaven, if you do good deeds in a proper manner, God may not necessarily bless you. Is it true that if you ask God to help you do bad things, will God obey you? If God doesn't It would be futile to obey. Such a thing, my concubine not only dares not do it, but also disdains it." Emperor Cheng was also very moved when he heard her confession, not only did not punish her for her crime, but also gave her a hundred catties of gold.But Ban Jieyu had already seen that Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty was hopeless, so she took the initiative to ask to serve the Queen Mother in Changxin Palace, stay away from the place of right and wrong, in order to avoid disaster, and write poems and poems in her spare time to mourn herself and pass the time . "Newly cracked Qi Wansu, fresh and clean as frost and snow, cut into acacia fans, round and round like the bright moon. Going in and out of the king's sleeves, shaking the breeze. I often fear that the autumn festival will come, and the cold will take away the heat. In the box of donations, in the grace Daoist." She compared herself with the round fan, feeling the ruthlessness and injustice of Emperor Han Cheng.Since then, "Tuan Fan Sad Autumn" has become an allusion of women in the harem falling out of favor, and has been repeatedly used in poems.After Ban Jieyu moved to Changxin Palace, she never saw Emperor Han Cheng again. It was not until Emperor Han Cheng died that she went to guard the mausoleum as the former emperor's concubine, and died in depression five years later.

In this way, in this battle for favor, the Zhao sisters won a complete victory. The elder sister Zhao Feiyan was named the queen, and the younger sister Zhao Hede was named Zhaoyi after the queen.Since then, the harem of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty has become the world of the Zhao sisters.