Our companion piece, Road to Empress: Real History, walks through the broad strokes of how the game adapts Wu Zetian’s rise to power. This article takes a different approach. Instead of a comprehensive comparison, we are zooming in on seven specific historical details—the moments where the game nails it, the moments where it takes creative license, and the moments where the truth is actually stranger than what New One Studio put on screen.
Whether you finished the game and found yourself wondering “did that really happen?” or you are a history buff weighing the game’s accuracy before buying, this is for you.
When the young Wu Zhao—called Wu Yuanzhao in the game—enters Emperor Taizong’s palace, her rank is Cairen, a fifth-grade consort title. This is historically accurate. The Old Tang Book (旧唐书) and the New Tang Book (新唐书) both record that she entered the palace as a Cairen during Taizong’s reign.
The game’s portrayal of what being a Cairen actually meant is also well-rendered. Cairen was a low-ranking position in the imperial harem, far below the Empress and the four consorts who held real influence. A Cairen had limited access to the emperor and virtually no political power of her own. When Road to Empress shows Wu Yuanzhao struggling to survive the petty cruelties of higher-ranking women—Consort Wei’s casual humiliation, Empress Wang’s cold manipulation—that dynamic is grounded in historical reality.
Where the game diverges slightly is in how quickly Wu Yuanzhao gains agency. Historically, Wu spent roughly twelve years as a Cairen under Taizong with little recorded advancement. The game compresses this timeline significantly for narrative pacing, which is a reasonable adaptation choice but worth noting.
When Emperor Taizong died in 649 CE, childless consorts were expected to shave their heads and enter Buddhist convents. Wu Zhao was sent to Ganye Temple (感业寺), and this is exactly where Road to Empress places her at the start of the mid-game and at the beginning of Road to Empress II.
The game captures the emotional weight of this institution correctly. Ganye Temple was not a voluntary spiritual retreat—it was a form of social death. Former consorts who entered the temple were expected to remain there for the rest of their lives, praying for the deceased emperor’s soul. Escaping required extraordinary political intervention, which is precisely what the game depicts when Empress Wang summons Wu back to the palace as a pawn against Consort Xiao.
One detail the game omits: historical records suggest that Wu may have already begun her relationship with the crown prince (the future Emperor Gaozong, Li Zhi) before Taizong’s death, while she was still a Cairen. The game handles this ambiguity by showing the emotional connection developing after Li Zhi visits Ganye Temple, which is the more dramatic but less certain version of events.
The core of the Li Zhi romance in Road to Empress—that a young prince became emotionally attached to a low-ranking consort of his father’s, eventually bringing her back from Ganye Temple and elevating her to the highest position in the empire—is historically grounded. Li Zhi did recall Wu from Ganye Temple, and she did rise from a returned concubine to Zhaoyi (a second-grade title) and eventually to Empress.
The game’s simplification lies in the timeline. The historical process of Wu’s return and elevation took years. She was brought back to the palace around 650–651 CE, made Zhaoyi shortly after, and did not become Empress until 655 CE—roughly five years after her return. The game compresses these political machinations into a much shorter narrative arc, which makes the story punchier but understates how patient and methodical the real Wu Zetian had to be.
The game also downplays the role of Empress Wang in engineering Wu’s return. Historically, Wang brought Wu back specifically to distract Emperor Gaozong from Consort Xiao, fully intending to control Wu as a useful pawn. The game presents this dynamic but makes Wang’s miscalculation feel more abrupt than it was. In reality, Wang spent considerable time believing she could manage Wu before realizing she had created a rival far more dangerous than Consort Xiao ever was.
Road to Empress shows Empress Wang and Consort Xiao being outmaneuvered and ultimately destroyed through a combination of political scheming and Wu Yuanzhao’s strategic brilliance. The broad strokes are accurate: Wu did orchestrate the downfall of both women, and both were eventually eliminated.
The game’s dramatic embellishment comes in the methods. Without spoiling specific scenes, Road to Empress depicts several confrontations and schemes that, while historically plausible, are not directly attested in the primary sources. The historical record is frustratingly vague on the exact sequence of events that led to Wang and Xiao’s downfall. We know the outcome—both women were deposed and later killed—but the specific maneuvers are reconstructed by historians from fragmentary evidence.
One thing the game gets notably right is the sheer difficulty of removing an Empress. Empress Wang came from the powerful Wang clan of Taiyuan, one of the most prestigious families in the empire. Deposing her required Li Zhi to overcome the opposition of his own chancellor, Zhangsun Wuji, who was Wang’s uncle by marriage. The game shows this political mountain accurately—it is not just about convincing the emperor; you have to dismantle an entire power structure.
In Chapters 7 and 8 of Road to Empress, the plot turns on an ominous prophecy: a woman of the Wu surname will become emperor. This is drawn from a genuine historical episode recorded in the Old Tang Book.
Li Chunfeng (李淳风), a renowned astronomer and diviner at Taizong’s court, reportedly warned the emperor that a woman from the Wu clan would seize the throne within thirty years. According to the account, Taizong considered executing everyone surnamed Wu but was dissuaded by Li Chunfeng, who argued that heaven’s mandate could not be defied by mass execution and that the predicted woman might actually be less dangerous if allowed to emerge naturally.
The game adapts this into a detective-like sequence where Wu Yuanzhao must identify who the prophecy refers to and navigate the resulting political danger. The historical prophecy was vaguer and more passive—there is no record of Wu Zhao actively investigating the prophecy’s origins as the game depicts—but the core idea of a divination threatening her life before she ever reached power is real.
What the game does not fully convey is how this prophecy continued to haunt Wu Zetian decades after she actually became emperor. Even in her own reign, opponents cited the prophecy as evidence that her rule was preordained and therefore illegitimate—a fascinating double bind that the game’s timeline (ending at Chapter 16) does not reach.
This may surprise players who have died thirty-plus times in Road to Empress, but the historical Tang Dynasty court was more brutal than anything in the game.
The real Wu Zetian did not merely outmaneuver her rivals through clever dialogue choices. She operated a sophisticated intelligence network, employed a corps of informants known as the “cruel officials” (酷吏), and oversaw purges that killed thousands—including members of her own family. Her daughter’s death (which some historians attribute to Wu herself, though this remains contested), the execution of the chancellor Pei Yan, and the systematic elimination of the Li royal family members who opposed her rule are all well-documented.
Road to Empress presents court intrigue as a series of choices with lethal consequences, but it frames most of the killing as reactive self-defense or political necessity. The historical Wu Zetian’s capacity for preemptive elimination—ordering deaths on the basis of potential future opposition—does not appear in the game, likely because it would make the protagonist unsympathetic to a modern audience.
This is not a criticism of the game. It is a creative adaptation, not a documentary. But players should understand that the real Tang court was not merely dangerous when you made the wrong choice. It was dangerous all the time, and the wrong choice was sometimes simply existing in proximity to someone more powerful than you.
Road to Empress I spans 16 chapters and ends with Wu Yuanzhao securing her position in the palace. Road to Empress II extends the story through her consolidation of power and the beginning of her direct rule. But the full historical arc of Wu Zetian’s life is far longer and more dramatic than either game captures.
After Gaozong’s death in 683 CE, Wu served as regent for her sons—first Li Zong (Zhongzong), whom she deposed after six weeks, then Li Dan (Ruizong), who was essentially a figurehead. She did not formally declare herself Emperor of the Zhou Dynasty until 690 CE, when she was sixty-six years old. She ruled as emperor until 705 CE, when she was forced to abdicate in a coup at the age of eighty-one.
This means that the events covered by both games combined—roughly from her entry into the palace as a teenager through her establishment as Empress during Gaozong’s reign—represent only the first act of a three-act life. The most extraordinary chapters—founding her own dynasty, ruling as emperor for fifteen years, and being overthrown in a palace coup at the age of eighty-one—have not yet been adapted by New One Studio.
Given that RtE II ends with the “Emperor and Empress” era rather than Wu’s solo reign, it is reasonable to expect that a potential Road to Empress III could cover the most unprecedented chapter in Chinese imperial history: a woman sitting alone on the dragon throne.
Road to Empress is not a substitute for reading the Old Tang Book. It takes liberties with timelines, softens its protagonist’s ruthlessness, and dramatizes events where the historical record is thin. But it gets the structural truths right: the crushing hierarchy of the imperial harem, the political mechanics of alliance and betrayal, the genuine danger of the prophecy, and the extraordinary improbability of a low-ranking Cairen rising to become the most powerful person in the empire.
If the game makes you want to learn more, that is a win. Here are some accessible starting points:
Historical facts in this article are drawn from the Old Tang Book, the New Tang Book, and the secondary sources listed above. Game-specific details are based on gameplay of Road to Empress I (Steam) and Road to Empress II (Steam).