Li Shimin was the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, and his position depended on his powerful means and courage. With a desire for power and a simple desire not to be dominated, he organized and planned a bloody coup against his brothers and sisters; At this point, the sword in the hands of Li Shimin, the king of Qin, no longer points to the fighters beyond the Great Wall, but to his own brothers whose blood is thicker than water.
After the Xuanwumen incident broke out, Li Shimin successfully ascended the position he had longed for for for a long time, gained the power of laughing in his dreams and reached the peak of his life. But he was blinded by the temptation of power and the concept of kinship, and he just wanted to legalize his position as soon as possible. This process is a bloody killing process; He personally ordered the killing of all his brother's sons.
Although Shimin ordered the killing of his brother's son, he did nothing to his harem, so his sister-in-law, sister-in-law and niece are still alive. Many people have a feeling that they don't understand what he did, because everyone said that pulling weeds should be uprooted for fear of leaving hidden dangers, but he didn't do that.
In the past dynasties, when officials and political opponents were sentenced to death, most of the rulers only slaughtered the men in the family, because in that patriarchal era, men represented the effective fighting capacity of a family and the possibility of revenge for their fathers, so they must be severely punished for fear of revenge when they grew up.
Historically, wives and daughters are rarely executed in families, unless the anger of the dominator reaches its peak and wants to give it the most painful punishment.
On the one hand, his status is not legal enough, because he is not the eldest son, and his younger brother Li, who was killed by him, is the legitimate heir of the Tang Dynasty empire. But he won all this on his own, and the winner is naturally king, which gives the people a means to solve the hidden dangers of political status. But in order to make the world feel that what he said and did was valuable? Legitimacy? He can only leave his brother's wife and daughter. The advantage of this is that he won't lose his breath and try to defend his brother and kill him? Is it reasonable? 、? Legal? Show the world the legitimacy of his succession and the kindness of doing things (no murderer's wife and daughter).
Therefore, in my opinion, killing my eldest brother Li's son and my third brother Li Yuanji is to eradicate the future trouble forever and completely seize the position of heir to the throne, rather than killing their wives and daughters to show mercy. In the patriarchal society where ancient women depended entirely on men for their livelihood, a few weak women could not turn over the storm, and it was better to keep their lives than to kill them completely.