Empress Xiao 萧皇后
The Survivor
Whatever happens, you will still be standing at the end of the story.
- Resilient
- Adaptable
- Clear-eyed
Born in a month the south considered unlucky, she was given away as a baby and raised by relatives. She became empress of the Sui, and when her husband Emperor Yang was strangled by his own guards in 618, she passed through the hands of a mutineer, a warlord and the Eastern Turkic khaganate.
You adapt without losing yourself. While her husband was ruining the empire she wrote him a formal remonstrance in verse, the Rhapsody on Curbing Extravagance. After about a decade on the steppe she came home to Chang'an at sixty-three, provided for by the Tang emperor whose dynasty had replaced hers, and died there at eighty. Four dynasties and a steppe empire — she outlived all of them.
