Sarah Brennan Funny & Fabulous Blog

The fascinating Chinese history behind The Tale of Sybil Snake!

In a recent post, I told you all about the famous Legend of Lady White Snake, in which a beautiful white snake transformed herself into a human being in order to marry the man she loved. When I first read about this legend, I spied a footnote at the bottom of the page which said that, in the past, many Chinese scholars believed that a famous Chinese Emperor called Wu Zetian was the reincarnation of Lady White Snake! So of course, I had to do some more research – and what I found out was fascinating! It also inspired some of the story in The Tale of Sybil Snake!

Wu Zetian was born into a minor noble family in 624AD, and was so renowned for her charm, beauty and intelligence that she became one of the concubines of the old Emperor, and after he died, the young Emperor Gao Zong. She gradually worked her way to the top, replacing even the young Emperor’s first wife. Then, when the Emperor suffered a stroke, she took over the administration of the court, removing anyone who opposed her. After the Emperor died, she refused to allow her two eldest sons to rule, moving her weakest third son into power so that she could control him. Finally, she forced him to resign, and declared herself Emperor of China – and if you called her Empress or anything other than Emperor, you were in big trouble!

In spite of her ruthless climb to power, she was an excellent ruler of China for forty years, replacing the military ruling class with scholars, elevating women in politics and society, lowering taxes on the peasants and improving public works. She also, famously, replaced the official state religion of Daoism with Buddhism (which regarded men and women as equal). But after she died, the Confucian scholars who had been sidelined by Wu Zetian returned to the court with a vengeance, and tarnished her record with tales of terrible cruelty…including, apparently, that she was the reincarnation of a Snake! Interestingly, the first story about Lady White Snake emerged in the Tang Dynasty, where the snake was described as an “evil demon”.

Whatever the truth of the matter, a woman who could rise to the very top of imperial China, at a time when women were universally regarded as inferior to men, must have been extraordinary!

And in The Tale of Sybil Snake, you will discover a mysterious woman who rules China long and well after her husband, the Emperor, and their little son disappears…I wonder whether she had anything to do with Sybil Snake? Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!