Fu Youyi (傅遊藝) (died August 24, 691兩千年中西曆轉換
/ref>), known as Wu Youyi (武遊藝) during the reign of

Wu Zetian Wu Zetian (17 February 624 – 16 December 705), personal name Wu Zhao, was the ''de facto'' ruler of the Tang dynasty from 665 to 705, ruling first through others and then (from 690) in her own right. From 665 to 690, she was first List of ...

, was an official of the Chinese dynasty

Tang Dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdo ...

and Wu Zetian's Zhou Dynasty, serving as a

chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

briefly after she took the throne in 690. He was known for being the first official to publicly

petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offic ...

her to take the throne and establish her own dynasty, and was awarded for his public stance by being promoted within a year from a low level official to the upper echelon of the imperial administration. In 691, however, he was accused of having even greater ambitions and arrested; he committed suicide. It is not known when Fu Youyi was born, but it is known that he was from Ji County (汲縣, in modern

Xinxiang Xinxiang ( ; postal: Sinsiang) is a prefecture-level city in northern Henan province, China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to its southwest, Kaifeng to its southeast, Hebi and Anyang to its north, Jiaozuo to its west, and the ...

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

). As of 690, when Wu Zetian was serving as

empress dowager Empress dowager (also dowager empress or empress mother) () is the English language translation of the title given to the mother or widow of a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese emperor in the Chinese cultural sphere. The title was al ...

and

regent A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state ''pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy, ...

over her son Emperor Ruizong, he was serving as an assistant imperial censor (), when he led a group of some 900 people from the

Guanzhong Guanzhong (, formerly romanised as Kwanchung) region, also known as the Guanzhong Basin, Wei River Basin, or uncommonly as the Shaanzhong region, is a historical region of China corresponding to the crescentic graben basin within present-day ...

region to publicly petition, outside the palace, the abolition of Tang Dynasty and the establishment of a new Zhou Dynasty with her as "emperor." Empress Dowager Wu initially publicly declined, but promoted him. As a result, waves of petitions requesting the same thing came, and eventually Emperor Ruizong also submitted such a petition. Empress Dowager Wu eventually accepted and took the throne as emperor, establishing Zhou and interrupting Tang. After she took the throne, she made Fu ''Luantai Shilang'' (), the deputy head of the examination bureau of government (鸞臺, ''Luantai''). She also gave him the designation ''Tong Fengge Luantai Pingzhangshi'' (), making him a chancellor ''de facto''. She further bestowed him the imperial family name of Wu. As, within the same year, he had gone through the four colors of official uniforms—blue, green, red, and purple, from the lowest grade to nearly the highest grade, he was referred to semi-derogatorily as "the seasonal official." In 691, Fu was given the additional honorific title of ''Yinqing Guanglu Daifu'' (); at that time, his brother Fu Shentong () served as the minister of public works. A month later, he was made the deputy minister of ceremonies and was no longer chancellor. Meanwhile, around the same time, Fu Youyi had a dream in which he sat in one of halls in the imperial palace, Danlu Hall (). He told this dream to a close associate, an action that was considered inappropriate as it showed ambition to be emperor. The associate secretly reported this to Wu Zetian. She had him arrested, and he committed suicide while in prison.

Notes and references

* ''

Old Book of Tang The ''Old Book of Tang'', or simply the ''Book of Tang'', is the first classic historical work about the Tang dynasty, comprising 200 chapters, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories. Originally compiled during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kin ...

'', vol. 186, part

* ''

Zizhi Tongjian ''Zizhi Tongjian'' () is a pioneering reference work in Chinese historiography, published in 1084 AD during the Northern Song dynasty in the form of a chronicle recording Chinese history from 403 BC to 959 AD, covering 16 dynas ...

'', vol. 204. {{DEFAULTSORT:Fu, Youyi Chancellors under Wu Zetian 691 deaths Year of birth unknown Politicians from Xinxiang Tang dynasty politicians from Henan Suicides in China