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 (624 – 16 December 705), personal name Wu Zhao, was List of rulers of China#Tang dynasty, Empress of China from 660 to 705, ruling first through others and later in her own right. She ruled as queen consort , empress consort th ...

, was an official of the Chinese

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

and Wu Zetian's Zhou dynasty, serving as a

chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...

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 an officia ...

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 ( zh, s= , t= , p=Xīnxiāng ; Postal romanization, postal: Sinsiang) is a prefecture-level city in northern Henan provinces of China, province, China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to its southwest, Kaifeng to its sou ...

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

). 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 monarch, especially in regards to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese monarchs in the Chines ...

and

regent In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been dete ...

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 romanization of Chinese, 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 str ...

region to publicly petition, outside the palace, the abolition of the 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 Kingdo ...

'', vol. 186, part

* ''

Zizhi Tongjian The ''Zizhi Tongjian'' (1084) is a chronicle published during the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) that provides a record of Chinese history from 403 BC to 959 AD, covering 16 dynasties and spanning almost 1400 years. The main text is ...

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