Deng Sui 邓绥
The Scholar-Ruler
Give you paper and ink and you will run an empire.
- Studious
- Reforming
- Hard to dislodge
Deng Sui was reading histories at six and reciting the classics at twelve, studying at night after her mother told her to learn needlework instead. As empress of the Eastern Han she refused the provinces' tribute and foreign gifts, asked each year only for paper and ink — and took up Cai Lun's new paper for the business of government.
You believe knowledge is a tool. As regent for fifteen years she opened the granaries in famine, cut palace spending, lengthened the appeal period in capital cases, and made the historian Ban Zhao her teacher and adviser. Her one flaw was that she would not let go: the emperor she installed was twenty-eight when she died, and had never governed a day.
