eir mantle of virtue.Though this vaunted collection of sages and worthies offered some political currency to Wu Zhao, the only female emperor in Chinese history, she necessarily sought alternative sources of legitimacy both within and beyond the confines of the Confucian tradition. While continuing to pay homage to the lineage of Confucian worthies from antiquity, she also associated herself with female divinities and paragons of every ideological persuasion-Buddhist devis, exemplary Confucian women like the Mother of Mencius and Daoist figures such as the Queen Mother of the West. The connections between Wu Zhao and these exalted women of the past were promulgated in carefully scripted political rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated theatrically in her court, and made manifest to all by engraving them upon monumental steles. This purposeful affiliation with past female luminaries, elegantly rendered with her characteristically deft aesthetic touch, significantly enhanced Wu Zhao's political authority, providing both a divine aura and tremendous normative charisma. This paper will examine the role of the mother of Qi in magnifying Wu Zhao's political profile. Qi's MotherIn the second chapter of Records of the Grand Historian, it is recorded that Qi was the son of Yu and a woman of the Tushan clan夏后帝启，禹之子，其母涂山氏之女也。[2]（[2] Shiji 2.84）Set along the Huai River in Fengyuan, Anhui, Tushan was a small ancient statelet.[3]（[3] Albert O'Hara, The Position of Women in Early China (Taipei: Mei Ya Publications, 1971), 20 fn 1）According to the Book of Documents, after marriage Yu remained with the Tushan Girl for a mere four days, and, criss-crossing the empire during his toils to quell the flood, ignored the wailing and weeping of his son Qi.[4]（[4] Clae Waltham trans. Shu Ching (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1971), 34. From juan 5, "Yi and Ji."）
A commentary on the History of the Han Dynasty by Yan Shigu contains a passage, purportedly from the Huainanzi, about the birth of
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