Secret History of Empress Wu
television series
Secret History of Empress Wu (武则天秘史) is a Chinese historical television series based on the life of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history. The series was directed by Cheng Feng and starred three actresses — Yin Tao, Liu Xiaoqing and Siqin Gaowa — as Wu Zetian, each portraying the emperor at a different stage in her life. It was first broadcast in mainland China on Hunan Satellite TV on 5 November 2011.
Synopsis
Wu Meiniang enters the palace at the age of 14 to be Emperor Taizong's concubine after her father courageously sacrificed his life to protect the emperor during war. Emperor Taizong is soon told that a woman surnamed Wu is destined to bring disaster to the Tang dynasty, so he refuses to let her enter his bedchamber. Wu Meiniang is neglected for 12 years. Emperor Taizong eventually falls sick and warns his son Li Zhi to secretly kill her. Wu Meiniang finds out and seduces Li Zhi in order to live. After Emperor Taizong's death, she is forced to be a Buddhist nun while most other concubines are killed and buried. She shaves her head and is ridiculed by the other nuns.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Secret History of Empress Wu” as television series. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as television series. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7444021. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Secret History of Empress Wu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.