Chapter 45 The Passionate Emperor's Favorite
Li Yu is good at writing lyrics, and is also obsessed with singing and dancing. He once claimed to be "a master who pours lightly and sings in a low voice, leans on the red and leans on the green, and the master of the mandarin duck temple", which shows his romanticism.He also had many concubines.There is a Baoyi Huang family who manages books and documents for him. Wu Meicun, a great poet in the Qing Dynasty, even wrote a legend for her.However, the person he loves the most is his own Queen Zhou sisters.
Li Yu's appearance is extraordinary. According to records, he has "wide forehead, full cheeks, parallel teeth, and double pupils".This "double pupil" means that one eye has two pupils, so his word is called "heavy light".In history, there is also Da Shun who is also famous for having double pupils. Therefore, Li Yu, the "face of the emperor", was once very suspicious by his brother.Coincidentally, Shun married a pair of sisters, Ehuang and Nvying, and Li Yu's two queens, Empress Xiao Zhou, were also sisters.The nickname of Empress Da Zhou is Ehuang.
The Empress of the Great Zhou Dynasty was the daughter of Zhou Zong, a great hero of the Southern Tang Dynasty, who married Li Yu when he was eighteen years old.She is a beauty, and several Southern Tang history books say that she has "national beauty", and Li Yu also said that she is "slender and straight, graceful and open" in his later articles mourning her.But she is not satisfied with her natural beauty, and she also created original makeup looks such as "high bun and slender clothes" and "hair on the temples", showing her peerless beauty and graceful figure.In addition, she is versatile, and she is proficient in all leisure and elegant crafts.Also "general book history, good temperament, especially the pipa".She once played the pipa at the birthday banquet of the master Li Jing. Li Jing praised her skills very much and presented her with a precious "burning tank" pipa.After the Great Zhou Dynasty, Li Yu and Li Yu are both talented and beautiful, and they share the same interests. They spend their days together feasting and singing together.At a winter banquet, when the wine was half drunk, Li Yu toasted and invited Li Yu to dance. Li Yu joked that she had to compose a new song for herself first.After the big week, he did not refuse, and immediately became "Inviting Drunk Dance to Break" and "Hate Comes Late".Such an impromptu composition is difficult to achieve if one does not have a profound knowledge of rhythm and musical talent.After the Great Zhou Dynasty, the famous "Neon Clothes and Feather Clothes Song" was restored. "Neon Clothes and Feather Clothes Song" was originally a Faqu introduced from Xiliang. After Tang Xuanzong Li Longji polished it, it became a large-scale and magnificent large-scale dance music.After the Anshi Rebellion, "Neon Clothes and Feather Clothes Song" was lost, and only incomplete scores were preserved in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.After Li Yu got the remnants of the scores, he worked with him after the Great Zhou Dynasty to "change the errors, remove the complexity and fix the deficiency", so that the old songs were revived, and "the complex and new sounds are clearer and more audible".Li Yu also has many words to describe the gentle and tender love life of the two, such as "One Dendrobium Pearl":
This shows how lively and charming Li Yu is after Da Zhou, and Li Yu's affectionate appreciation.
There is also a song "Hua Pozi in the Backyard":
"Tianjiao grows young", Li Yu sincerely hopes that he and the Empress Da Zhou can grow old together and live happily ever after.However, as the ancient poem said, "Every good thing is not firm, and the colorful clouds are easy to scatter and the glass is brittle." The days when he was the same as the gods and relatives after the Great Zhou Dynasty were only ten short years.
This seems to be a sign. When the song of "Neon Clothes and Feather Dress Dance" was revised after the Great Zhou Dynasty, some people said that the end of the song should be slow, but this song has been changed to a rush. I am afraid it is not a good omen.Sure enough, he fell seriously ill shortly after Da Zhou.At this time, she and Li Yu's favorite youngest son, four-year-old Zhongxuan, also died of a sudden illness.After Da Zhou learned the news, she was very sad and became even more ill.Li Yu was with him day and night, and he had to personally take care of all the meals, and he had to taste the soup and medicine himself before feeding it to his wife.In the cold winter nights, he guarded his wife night after night, and when he was extremely tired, he just lay down with his clothes on, not taking off his clothes.But none of this could save the life after the big week.After the Great Zhou Dynasty, he left the burning trough pipa and the jade ring he had been wearing on his arm to Li Yu as a souvenir, and wrote a suicide note asking for a thin burial.He died in December of the second year of Qiande at the age of 29. He was posthumously named "Zhaohui" and buried in Yiling.
"Pearls shattered in front of the eyes, flowers withered in the world and spring out. Unlocked the hatred in my heart, and lost my body in the palm of my hand." Li Yu lost his beloved son and his wife, and he was deeply saddened.At the funeral after the big week, he had become so bony that he could only walk on crutches.He wrote a long euphemism for the Empress of the Great Zhou Dynasty, with sad and moving words, and signed it as "Widower Yu" at the end.Even after many years, he can't forget her, and he often writes poems and lyrics to miss her:
However, there is also a discordant tone between Li Yu and the perfect relationship between Da Zhouhou.
When she was seriously ill after Da Zhou, her younger sister went to the palace to visit.Like her elder sister, she is also a beauty. She is in her cardamom age at this time, and she is charming and charming.When Li Yu saw it, he couldn't help being moved, so the two fell in love.In order to avoid irritating the sick Zhou Hou, they could only meet secretly. Li Yu once had the word "Bodhisattva Man", which described the situation of meeting:
But there is no impenetrable wall in the world, and I still found out about it after the Great Zhou Dynasty.My younger sister went to visit her, and she casually asked how long she had been here. The naive younger sister said that she had been here for several days, and she understood everything immediately after the big week. It is said that she immediately turned over and stopped talking. Did not turn around again.So Li Yu's excessive sadness at the queen's funeral was interpreted as a hypocritical performance deliberately covering up his infidelity to his wife.However, things may not be so simple. Li Yu is a passionate person, and he should love the Empress Da Zhou and her sister equally deeply.Maybe he is a bit like Duan Zhengchun in Jin Yong's works, he loves one when he sees one, but when he is alone with one of them, he will give his wholehearted love to the other without reservation.As for the fact that he was afraid that others would laugh at him for being unfaithful to his wife, so he purposely presented himself as haggard to see everyone, it would be too inconceivable.A monarch who is too obsessed with his wife has always been regarded as a manifestation of a "faint monarch".
After the death of Empress Da Zhou, Li Yu planned to make her sister the empress of the country.But his mother, Empress Dowager Zhong, passed away not long ago. According to etiquette, he should have kept his filial piety for three years, so the grand empress ceremony had to be postponed to the second year of Kaibao (968). This was the first and last time since the founding of the Southern Tang Dynasty. The ceremony after the reigning monarch was married.This unique status makes this ceremony extremely important.Li Yu ordered Chen Zhiyong, a doctor of Taichang, to research the history of weddings in ancient and modern times, and to formulate regulations. He also ordered Xu Xuan, a bachelor, and Pan You, a historian, to participate in the decision. It must be grand and warm.On the day of the personal welcome, drums and music blare the sky, and thousands of people in Jinling City emptied the alleys, competing to watch. Some even climbed onto the roof and fell off in order to grab a favorable position.The grand occasion was unprecedented, and it was truly lively.The younger sister of Empress Da Zhou became Li Yu's second queen. She was called Empress Xiao Zhou in history. She was nineteen years old, the age when her sister married Li Yu.
On the second day of the wedding, Li Yu gave a banquet to all the ministers.According to the usual practice, all the ministers attending the banquet, from Han Xizai on down, would write poems to congratulate them.However, everyone knows that since the death of Empress Da Zhou, the Empress of the New Kingdom has lived in the palace for a long time now. The grand wedding yesterday was actually just a formality. The new couple are old friends.As a result, the congratulatory poems written by everyone were strange, and they were not so much congratulations as irony.Regarding the attitude of the officials, Li Yu was not angry, and laughed it off.
After marriage, Li Yu loved Empress Xiao Zhou even more.The history of this little Zhou Empress is "quiet, intelligent, and calm", which shows that she is not inferior to her sister in terms of talent and appearance.Li Yu once built a pavilion among the flowers, using red Luo as the curtain, fastened with tortoiseshell sticks, exquisitely carved, very gorgeous, but very small, only able to accommodate two people.He drank and had fun with Xiao Zhouhou inside, enjoying their two-person world, having fun.Empress Xiao Zhou liked blue and blue clothes, but she thought the blue color dyed outside was not pure, so she ordered the maids of the palace to dye the silk by herself.Once, the silk was left to dry in the garden, but I forgot to collect it at night, and it was wet by dew.When I saw it the next day, the color was very bright. Li Yu and Xiao Zhou both felt very good when they met.Since then, concubines and court ladies all wear dew-dyed blue as their clothes, and they are named "Tianshuibi".After Xiao Zhou still likes to play chess, Li Yu often played chess with her, and was persuaded by the minister for this, but his attitude was still not angry, he was grinning and grinning, and finally the minister had no choice but to lose his temper.
However, Li Yu might not have thought that the sweet life between him and Xiao Zhou would last for a shorter period of time.Later generations saw the ominous omen from the "Tian Shui Bi" that Xiao Zhou liked to wear: "Tian Shui" is the county magistrate surnamed Zhao, and the homonym of "Bi" and "Bi" means persecution.Zhao Song, who has always been eyeing the Southern Tang Dynasty, will not let Li Yu enjoy his comfortable life for a long time.
