[Great Tang] The First Female Official of Empress Wu

Jiang Wo sat in one of the palace gardens within the Taiji Palace.

When she woke one day, she discovered that she had become a low-ranking female official in the Tang dynasty during the Zhenguan era: a seventh-rank record keeper in the Palace Discipline Bureau, responsible for recording palace rules and punishments.

Her first assignment was to explain palace etiquette to the newly arrived consorts.

After she had finished reading through the regulations, one young woman stepped forward. “Could you wait a moment, Madam Official? There are still a few things about the rules I don’t quite understand.”

Jiang Wo looked up, her heart pounding. “To be honest, there are plenty of things I don’t understand either!”

The young woman introduced herself. “My surname is Wu. His Majesty bestowed the name Mei upon me, and, by his grace, I have been made a fifth-rank Lady of Talent.”

Jiang Wo: “Empress Wu!”

-

Many years later, on the eve of her accession, the female emperor changed her name to Wu Zhao: Zhao, the character with the sun and moon shining together.

The following year, she renamed the chancellor who had stood by her side through thick and thin for decades Jiang Wo, using the character for “grasp,” as in holding power in her grasp.

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Notes:

1. The heroine’s story is mostly about her career, with relatively little romance. She has a golden finger: the System functions as a knowledge base.

2. The heroine serves at court for her entire life and never enters the inner residence.

3. The timeline and characters have been altered. This is a fictional setting, so please don’t compare it to actual history.

4. The story spans a long period and features a lightly ensemble cast; some chapters are told from perspectives other than the heroine’s.

[My upcoming stories are divided into hard-working and lie-flat types. This is my third hard-working one, so next I’ll probably write a lie-flat, doing-nothing story~]

Theme: Friends stick together for life. If you find fortune, don’t forget those who stood by you.