The ancient royal palace was like a besieged city. Although the people inside, although they superficially lived a life of glory and wealth, in fact they had no freedom at all, and many people did not even have the opportunity to leave the palace. Many people outside the palace, although their lives are poor, have the freedom that the people in the palace envy.
In the TV series "Glory of the Tang Dynasty", "Shen Pearl", played by Jing Tian, although she lives in the palace, she is smart and courageous, and her husband loves her very much, and her life is very enviable. But the real Shen Pearl in history is not so lucky. Disappeared at the age of 26, was searched by four generations of emperors for 46 years, and finally died without illness, Shen Zhu, the person, was gradually forgotten.
Shen Zhu was born in a family of official eunuchs, and for a woman like her, when she reached the age of talking about marriage and marriage, she would generally enter the palace to participate in the "draft". The ancient draft is nothing more than to choose the right wives and concubines for some royal descendants. Luck is good, after marrying the past, it will be pampered and respected; if you are unlucky, you can only be snubbed after marrying and live a miserable life.
However, Shen Pearl did not enter the palace to participate in the draft like most women from the official eunuch family. She has been smart and clever since she was a child, her appearance is particularly outstanding, and she is even more outstanding when she grows up. Therefore, when she grew up, she was given as a "gift" to Li Yu, the king of Guangping, as a concubine.
Such an identity is also doomed to her life will not be good. Concubines in ancient times, with a low status, were often looked down upon. However, after Shen Zhu married Li Yu, he soon bore him a son and named him Li Shi. Li Shi is the eldest son of Li Yu, as the saying goes, the mother is precious by her son, and with the identity of the son, Shen Zhu's status has also been improved.
But the good times did not last long, and later the Tang Dynasty broke out the Anshi Rebellion, and the whole country fell into a panic. In order to survive, Li Yu and others also fled with their families, but Shen Zhu, who originally had a very low sense of existence, was completely forgotten in the panic. In this way, she was forced to stay in the palace.
Like Shen Zhu, there were many people trapped in the palace, but most of them were some palace women. Later, An Lushan entered Chang'an and imprisoned all the people trapped in the palace. Shen Zhu, who had been pampered since childhood, had never suffered such a sin.
But when the country was in trouble, everyone was in danger, and even if she was imprisoned, she still did not give up hope. Because she also had her most concerned son, Li Shi, she believed that one day, the imperial court would win, and An Lushan's rebellion would eventually be put down. With this belief, she also barely saved her life in this war.
Li Yu's father, Li Heng, successfully ascended the throne after successively recovering Chang'an and Luoyang. After Luoyang was recaptured, Shen Zhu finally gained freedom and reunited with Li Yu. However, at that time, the situation was not yet stable, and Li Heng had just become emperor and urgently needed to stabilize his power, Li Yu once again embarked on the road of conquest after a hasty meeting with Shen Zhu.
During this special period, Shen Zhu was once again abandoned, and after that, she disappeared completely in the chaos of the war. No one knows where she went, dead or alive. After the situation really stabilized, the people of Luoyang returned to their previous normal life, but Shen Zhu's whereabouts were still unknown.
Later, Li Yu succeeded to the throne, and after he ascended the throne, he did not give up looking for the whereabouts of Shen Pearl. For Li Yu, his heart was full of guilt for Shen Zhu. If he hadn't abandoned her in the first place, maybe shen zhu now wouldn't have ended up missing.
What's more, Shen Pearl also gave birth to the eldest son of Li Shi, and in that era when the mother was expensive, Shen Pearl did not receive the preferential treatment she deserved. All this made Li Yu feel guilty about this. He could only alleviate the guilt in his heart by constantly searching for Shen Pearl.
Shen Zhu's disappearance is the eternal pain in Li Yu's heart. After Li Yu first ascended the throne, he was delayed in establishing an empress, and he fantasized that one day, he might be able to retrieve Shen Pearl. However, until his death, he still could not find the whereabouts of Shen Pearl. Originally, the empress dowager who belonged to Shen Zhu was posthumously honored as Empress Zhenyi after the death of the most favored imperial concubine at that time, Du Gushi.
Li Yu's various behaviors show that he has always been thinking about Shen Zhu in his heart. When he was forced by the situation and helpless, abandoning Shen Zhu was the most regrettable thing in his life. Before dying, he could not find the whereabouts of Shen Pearl, which was the regret of his life.
After Li Yu's death, according to the primogeniture succession system, crown prince Li Shi naturally inherited his throne. Shen Zhu was Li Shi's biological mother, and after he ascended the throne, he naturally did not give up searching for his mother's whereabouts. For Li Shi, his feelings for his mother are far deeper than Li Yu's.
In Li Shi's heart, he always felt that his mother was still in the world, so he also specially reused the people of the Shen family, hoping to tell the world that he was worried about his mother Shen Pearl. In this way, he told his mother that he had never given up looking for her.
But the world is so big, it is too difficult to find someone, like finding a needle in a haystack. In the process of searching, Li Shi had also encountered many people who impersonated Shen Pearl, after all, the mother of the lord of a country, who did not want to try this luck! However, the hope again and again brought only disappointment, Li Shi searched bitterly for more than 20 years, and there was still no whereabouts of Shen Pearl.
Later, Li Shi's son Li Shu, while inheriting the throne, also took on the task of continuing to search for Shen Pearl. At this time, it had been exactly 46 years since Shen Zhu's disappearance. She disappeared at the age of 26, and according to her age, even if she is still alive, she is already 72 years old.
Under the dynasty whose average age was only forty or fifty years old, everyone was obviously reluctant to believe that Shen Zhu could live to such a high age. Therefore, at the suggestion of the courtiers, Li Xuan gave up looking for Shen Pearl, but instead held a funeral ceremony for her and held a ceremony of canonization.
Shen Zhu's life was unfortunate, she was originally treated as a "gift" and given to Li Yu. Although he gave birth to the eldest son of a concubine, he encountered the Anshi Rebellion, not only was he abandoned and tortured, but he also mysteriously disappeared later, and the four generations of emperors searched hard, but they could not find her whereabouts. It was hard to imagine how Shen Zhu's life had come about.
For Shen Pearl, the imperial palace is a place with too many bad memories after all. Maybe it wasn't "missing" at the beginning, but she took the initiative to "hide" herself. She wanted to live a normal life, unwilling to be a "canary" in the palace, and had no freedom. If this is the case, then Shen Pearl is lucky to be able to live the life she wants to live.