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The Falling Prince and the Rising Queen
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SEXUAL POLITICS DESTROYED THE COURT OF MANDUUL KHAN. The Tibetan chronicle states that the horrendous charges and countercharges about the incidents were too dreadful to repeat, but of course the author teases the reader with a hazy sketch of events displayed to tantalize more than inform. The Mongolian chroniclers more eagerly described specific details of some events while obscuring others, depending on the genealogical connections and political allegiances of the writer. Each chronicler had some personal connection to the people in the story and often wanted to protect a particular person’s reputation while placing the blame firmly on another.
Sex is always political, and in politics every relationship is potentially sexual, or at least is open to accusations of being so. Usually the sex remains just a little hidden in the domain of speculation, gossip, and rumor, but in the breakup of Manduul Khan’s court, almost every person was accused of an inappropriate relationship with someone, or several people, in the group.
Bayan Mongke came to court for sexual purposes, at least some of which were clearly stated. He had already proved his ability to father a son, and now he would be expected to do so again to carry forth the Borijin clan. As the heir, the young prince Bolkhu Jinong would also marry the wives of the old khan when he died. This custom reached far back into steppe history and set them clearly apart from their Chinese and Muslim neighbors, who disapproved highly of this practice. As a Confucian scholar wrote of them, “They marry by succession their stepmothers, the wives of their deceased younger paternal uncles, and the wives of their deceased elder brothers. ” He further described the Mongols as facing the ridicule of future generations, stating that only through “civilization and law” could the Mongols abolish these incestuous, barbaric traditions.
By installing Bayan Mongke and giving him the title Bolkhu Jinong, Manduul made this expectation clear. As the khan bragged about the nephew when presenting him, “He will be a fruitful branch from the noble Borijin family tree. ” The khan used a metaphor understood by every Mongol. He compared the young prince to the fermented mare’s milk saved at the end of the horse milking season for next year’s fermentation. Manduul Khan called his nephew the khorongo for the Borijin lineage.
According to Mongol tradition, the heir would wait until the father died before taking one of his wives. Yet sometimes among the tribes from Siberia to Tibet, when one man failed to father a son, another member of his lineage, or bone, might help to do so. In Tibet, such relations had official standing for two or more brothers married to the same wife, but in Mongolia, such marriages had no historical validity. Still, any child born of a married woman became the child of her husband. Genghis Khan made this rule clear in acknowledging his wife’s first-born child as his own son, despite his wife’s capture and brief marriage to another man. As Genghis Khan declared, if he himself claimed to be the father, what right did any other person have to dispute it?
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Ahmad Ibn Arabshah, an Arab writer who lived and traveled extensively in the Mongol world at the opening of the fifteenth century, carefully observed and recorded the habits and customs of the Mongols. He noted two aspects of their conjugal life that surprised him. Women retained control and all rights over their dowry after marriage, and women commonly had sexual relations with other men in their husband’s family, though they would never do so with any man outside of it. This also seemed in keeping with Genghis Khan’s dictum separating family issues from communal issues, whereby he decreed that affairs of the ger should be settled in the ger and affairs of the steppe on the steppe.
The European historian Edward Gibbon, who evidenced little respect for any of the steppe tribes, described the Mongol homes and their habits with ostentatious contempt. “The houses of the Tartars are no more than small tents, of an oval form, which afford a cold and dirty habitation for the promiscuous youth of both sexes. ”
The sexual and political dynamics of Manduul’s court produced much confused commentary and speculation. Initially the senior khan seemed infatuated with his young heir and refused to see anything wrong in what he did. Bayan Mongke seemed eager to please the khan and keep his support. As a child whose survival often depended on ingratiating himself to more powerful people around him, Bayan Mongke understood the importance of this role.
Bayan Mongke may have been inexperienced in warfare and international diplomacy with the Chinese court, but he understood the dynamics of the Mongol court. His hold on power in the short term derived from pleasing his uncle, but in the long term it depended on the favor of Manduhai or Yeke Qabar-tu, since as the heir he had to marry one of them, preferably the senior wife, to become khan after his uncle died. It behooved him to cultivate favor with one of them now, but it was a dangerous path in controlling precisely how far the relationship should go while the old khan still lived.
Manduhai had no reason to like or trust the young prince. He had essentially replaced her at court. Her husband confided in the prince, not in her. Her husband lavished gifts and power on him and had made the young prince co-ruler, a position that should have gone to the younger and heretofore favored wife. The dashing prince in his golden robes and belt on his chestnut horse attracted everyone’s attention, and those around her pushed her toward an amicable relationship with him in the hope that she might eventually marry him and produce heirs with him.
Manduhai’s misgivings about the young prince were shared by General Une-Bolod. The prince had replaced Une-Bolod as the heir. A political alliance can be made on a mutual attraction, but it can just as easily be made on a shared antipathy. Because the young prince’s presence threatened both of them, Manduhai and Une-Bolod had a natural alliance in their dislike of him. Soon, gossip linked the two romantically as well.
General Une-Bolod was a descendant of Genghis Khan’s younger brother Khasar. The lineage of Genghis Khan and the lineage of Khasar had perpetuated the sibling rivalries of the two brothers. The two branches of the family usually worked closely and amicably together, but occasionally the relationships ruptured out of antagonism into hostility. The descendants of Khasar never forgot that he was a better marksman with a bow and arrow, and they repeatedly complained about the lack of credit and material reward for their ancestor’s role in creating the empire and for the family’s continuing contribution to the nation through the rise and fall of the centuries.
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Manduul’s unwillingness to trust Une-Bolod completely was based in a two-hundred-year-old dysfunctional relationship between the two lineages within the Borijin clan. Genghis Khan and his descendants frequently suspected Khasar’s line of plotting against them and of being so envious that they might betray them and try to seize the office of Great Khan. Aside from the direct competition between Genghis Khan and Khasar, rumors of amorous rivalry and adulterous betrayal also plagued them. Genghis Khan heard repeated reports of an affair between his main wife, Borte, and his brother Khasar. She certainly knew him well, and as a young bride she had lived in the ger with Khasar and the rest of Genghis Khan’s family. Though never confirmed, the suspicions constantly plagued their relationship and continued to intrigue their followers long after all the parties had died.
Yeke Qabar-tu, Manduul’s first but unloved wife, sided with the Golden Prince. Manduhai was her rival for power as well as his. Soon rumors circulated through the royal encampment about the relationship between the senior queen and the young prince. Someone provoked a servant of the prince to report their relationship to the khan. The servant told the khan that the Golden Prince was plotting to do evil to his uncle and that he was attempting to “rob” the khan of his wife, but he did not state specifically that they were already engaged in a sexual union.
For a boy to have sexual relations with the wife of his uncle did not constitute a crime. So long as the female in-law had a senior position to him, as both Manduhai and Yeke Qabar-tu did in regard to Bayan Mongke, no taboo was broken. The adultery would not be an issue unless it represented a possible conspiracy by the older woman and young prince to replace the khan. The implicit politics far surpassed the sex act in significance and potential impact.
When summoned to answer the charge, instead of flatly denying it, the Golden Prince objected to the khan that he would not listen to slander from a servant. Under Mongol law, his accusation, even if true, constituted a capital crime of betrayal. Several times in history, Genghis Khan had executed people for similar offenses of betraying their master, even when the betrayal was done with the purpose of aiding Genghis Khan himself.
The khan sided, once again, with his nephew. He turned his wrath on the servant and accused him of seeking to create “trouble between two brothers and to divide them. ” The khan ordered his guards to slice off the accuser’s lips and nose for having made the statement. After this punishment, they killed him.
The khan’s response to the first accuser demonstrated clearly where his affection and trust lay. The Golden Prince came first. No one else in the court dared to raise an objection or voice a criticism of the khan’s favorite.
The plotters against the Golden Prince had been deterred, but not defeated. They needed to find a person outside the court, someone who was not a vassal. They also needed an eyewitness to offer direct testimony of sexual infidelity. Simply trying to “rob” the khan of his wife had not been sufficient.
Events in the south kept Beg-Arslan preoccupied expanding his control of the Silk Route ever eastward toward the Chinese border at the Gansu Corridor. Too busy to personally manage the affairs of the Mongol tribes in the north, he sent his young prot& #233; g& #233; Issama, called Ismayil in the Mongol chronicles, to Manduul’s court to maintain his influence over the royal family.
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Beg-Arslan had been taishi, the overlord of the Mongols, but now Ismayil assumed the office. Ismayil immediately took command of the Mongol army. Une-Bolod, who had been the former commander, retired from court life and returned to his own home area. With Une-Bolod out of the way, Ismayil now needed to rid himself of the other contender for power, the Golden Prince.
Ismayil was a young warlord on the rise, and soon he was looking for ways to increase his own power independently of Beg-Arslan. He devised a plan against the young prince, but one that also could cause a rupture in Manduul’s relationship to Beg-Arslan by implicating Yeke Qabar-tu, the senior queen and Beg-Arslan’s daughter, in a plot to overthrow Manduul.
First, Ismayil confronted the Great Khan privately with direct evidence, which he claimed he had seen with his own eyes. He insisted that the charges made by the servant against the prince were true. “Out in an isolated place, ” he informed the khan, “the Golden Prince and your wife met in conjugal embrace. ” Ismayil wanted to give the khan time to reflect on the charges, and he did not attempt to push the khan into any type of decision or action. Having successfully injected the poison of doubt into the khan’s mind, Ismayil left him to fret alone.
Then Ismayil, posing as a friend and ally to both sides that he was working to turn against each other, approached the prince to warn him that he had lost favor with his uncle the khan. Ismayil reported to the prince that his uncle Manduul had learned the truth about the charges made by the dead servant; he knew that the prince was having an affair with his uncle’s wife. Not only had the khan turned against the boy, according to Ismayil, but he intended “to do evil” to the Golden Prince to prevent him from forcefully removing the old man.
The prince refused to believe Ismayil’s warning that his uncle could turn against him. Ismayil advised the prince to be cautious and to be watchful because someone was about to trick him. He told the gullible prince that “the proof” of his uncle’s anger would soon be on its way to him when a messenger would arrive from the khan. He said that the khan would send someone to question the boy’s loyalty and to trick him into saying something that could be used against him.
The allegations against the Golden Prince weighed heavily in the old khan’s mind. It seemed not to matter to him that his wife Yeke Qabar-tu may have betrayed him, but it deeply bothered him that the boy, whom he loved so much and whom he had made his heir, might have rebelled. “This is the second time that I have heard the charges, ” he was quoted as saying. He began to reconsider the earlier statements made by the now dead servant against his “younger brother. ”
“I myself am not in good health, ” he reasoned. “I am without male descendants, and after I am dead, my queens and people will be his. ” The charges, rumors, and conjecture churned in the khan’s mind. “Maybe they are true, ” he speculated to those around him. The khan wondered if the boy was rushing too quickly ahead, as though he had already replaced the khan and need not respect him any longer. “It is bad that, starting now, he should have such excessive desires. ”
Wavering in his opinions, the khan sent another person to talk to the young prince, to tell him that a second set of allegations had been made against him. The khan wanted his young heir to defend himself, reaffirm his loyalty, and remove the stain of the charges against him.
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“The khan asks, ” said the envoy, “what reasons do you have to be against me? ”
The prince immediately remembered the warning of Ismayil that a messenger would come to trick him. The prince became highly tense and agitated, but in his confusion he did not know how to answer. Having always depended on his charisma and good luck to solve his problems and propel his interests, he had no education and no words with which to devise a strategy or argue his own case. The prince merely stared nervously at the messenger and said nothing.
The envoy reported back to the khan about the prince’s frantic state and that the prince refused to answer the chargers.
The khan accepted the silence as guilt, and he now convinced himself that he had been betrayed by the young prince. “It is like this, it is true that he has evil intentions towards me, ” he said. The khan openly deliberated on the plight of the Mongol nation and the most appropriate action to preserve it. The khan considered the painful consequences for the nation if it had no khan. Yet, perhaps in confusing his own emotions toward the prince with the needs of the state, he concluded: “The people do not need a ruler like him. ” The boy had strayed too far, too fast. “So saying, the khan became enraged. ”
Since the days of his infancy when his great-great-grandmother Samur had saved him from the wrath of his grandfather Esen, flight had been the only response that the prince had learned in the face of grave danger. The Golden Prince heard about the khan’s anger, and without trying to explain his case or clarify his actions, he impulsively fled the royal camp in fear.
Ismayil waited, and then the khan came to him with his decision. He told Ismayil to gather the army and go after the prince. Once again, the Mongol nation headed into civil war. People had to choose sides between the old, but still ruling, khan and the upstart prince, who had so enthralled the khan, the court, and the people, but who was now labeled a traitor and rebel. Few people came to the prince’s side.
Perhaps the khan remembered that after Genghis Khan’s gift of a golden belt to Jamuka, the two men, who had sworn eternal friendship three times, only stayed together for a year and a half. The khan and his nephew were parting in much the same way that Jamuka lamented his parting from Genghis Khan. “Together we ate food that is not to be digested, ” Jamuka said. “To each other we spoke words that are not to be forgotten. ” Then the words of outsiders drove them apart. “We parted for good saying … that we had exchanged weighty words, the skin of my black face peeled off in shame. ” But he deeply regretted the separation. “And so I have been living unable to come near you, unable to see the friendly face of my sworn friend the Khan. Saying to myself that we had exchanged unforgettable words, the skin of my red face came off in shame. ” In the separation from one another, Jamuka concluded, each of them had to live “with a long memory. ”
The prince had few options open to him, and he had no one to whom he could turn. He suddenly concocted a strange plan to flee to Manduul’s and Ismayil’s nemesis: the father of the queen with whom he was accused of having the affair. Perhaps with Beg-Arslan’s approval they might together remove the old khan, and then the prince would marry Yeke Qabar-tu, produce an heir with her, and thereby make Beg-Arlsan the grandfather of the next khan.
Fearful of arriving unannounced in Beg-Arslan’s camp and confronting him alone, the prince sought out Borogchin, a Borijin woman described as Bayan Mongke’s sister and as Manduul and Manduhai’s daughter. She was most likely a niece of Manduul and thus, under the Mongol system of kinship, would be equivalent to a sister for Bayan Mongke and a daughter to Manduhai. She had been married to Beg-Arslan or his son. The prince found the camp, which consisted of several gers for different wives and relatives. Borogchin received him warmly, but she and her two sons immediately moved to hide him in their ger.
She did not think that his plan for redemption would succeed. Beg-Arslan would not be so easily turned against Manduul and Ismayil, two underlings who, as far as Beg-Arslan knew, had always followed his leadership in the past. The prince would not find protection from Beg-Arslan, who much preferred having an easily controlled old man as khan rather than this impetuous, and apparently easily frightened, youth.
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The nature of Borogchin’s relationship to the young prince is not clear, but someone recognized the beautiful chestnut horse of the prince hobbled nearby to graze. As soon as Beg-Arslan heard, he came looking for the rider.
When Beg-Arslan could not find the prince, he confronted Borogchin, demanding to know where the young man was hiding. Fearful of lying to him, but unwilling to expose the prince, she replied with a question. “If he comes around me should I hand him over to you? ” she asked Beg-Arslan.
“If I see him near you, ” Beg-Arslan responded in boastful anger, “I shall eat his flesh and drink his blood. ” He rubbed his hands across his face and hair; it was recorded that he became so agitated that his nose began running. He smeared the yellow mucus across the tip of his nose and stormed away.
Later, in a ruse to lure the prince out of hiding, Beg-Arslan left to go hunting. Borogchin used his absence to encourage the prince to flee, and Beg-Arslan’s spies failed to see the prince leave. When they could not find his horse, they knew he had escaped and they sent word to Beg-Arslan.
The warlord sent a messenger back to camp demanding to know where the chestnut horse had gone. Borogchin insolently responded that she had already sent the prince safely home, and she demanded to know why Beg-Arslan wanted to harm her relatives when she never did anything to harm his. “Have I enmity towards your kin? ” She claimed that the prince was only a clan brother of hers. “Have I jealousy towards friendly relatives? ” she defiantly asked.
By so defying as powerful a man as Beg-Arslan, she knew that her life and the lives of her sons might be in danger. To protect them, Borogchin then sent her sons away; however, she decided to stay behind to face Beg-Arslan’s wrath. “I myself will die, ” she explained to the boys as she bade them farewell. After that encounter, no further mention of Borogchin occurs in the chronicles.
Having failed to find refuge with Beg-Arslan, the Golden Prince fled this time out into the Gobi in search of sanctuary with his wife, Siker, and their son. The Gobi, however, does not keep secrets. Word soon reached the Mongol royal camp that the prince had returned to his former home, and Ismayil set out in pursuit of the young prince. Always fortunate enough to hear when someone came after him, the prince again abandoned his wife and son and fled farther east into the Gobi.
Ismayil found the camp of the prince’s family and seized it, all the animals and everyone there. He even claimed Siker, the prince’s wife, for himself. Somehow in the m& #234; l& #233; e, the baby boy born to Siker and the prince disappeared.
For the moment, Ismayil’s work seemed done. He had rid the Mongol court of both General Une-Bolod and the young prince. With the prince’s wife as his own, he now returned south, where the Mongols were having some renewed success raiding the Chinese, and where Beg-Arslan, still his overlord, was planning a full assault on the Chinese in the Gansu Corridor and the territory of Ningxia.
Ismayil departed, but his allies now occupied most of the Gobi, and it would not be long before they would find the Golden Prince.
The political scene at the Mongol court changed dramatically and permanently: Manduul Khan was dead. The senior queen, Yeke Qabar-tu, disappeared, never to be heard from again. How these events transpired, and in what order, remains unknown, but around the same time, the exiled Golden Prince also met his final fate.
Chinese and some Mongolian sources record that at this point the prince began to style himself as the Great Khan and actually tried to raise an army of supporters. No matter what title he used at this moment, the Golden Prince seems to have been wandering alone in the immense Gobi. Having deserted his family and fled from the royal camp, the prince who had so recently dazzled the court now had only a few loyal companions remaining. He still had his beautiful clothes, his handsome horse, and dreams to rule as Great Khan of the Mongol nation.
It was 1470, the Year of the Tiger. Without allies in Mongolia, he seemed to have the idea that he might escape back to China, where he had been received with some enthusiasm in his failed effort to challenge the Ming court. Perhaps he could enlist the help of the Chinese and return to enforce his claim as Great Khan, or perhaps the Ming emperor might receive him and be willing to help put him in command of their distant enemy.
He followed a remote trail southward with one attendant who knew the area. To reach China, he had to cross the territory of the Yungshiyebu, the allies of Ismayil. He ran out of food and water somewhere near the modern Mongolian-Chinese border, in the area where today the Beijing-Moscow train crosses. Since his companion came from the area, he sent the man to seek out his family and possibly secure assistance from them. The companion found his family, but rather than offering help for the prince, they convinced the man to stay at home and abandon the prince in the desert.
The Gobi has occasional springs and wells, but there are so few that there is almost always someone camped around each one. The prince knew that in order to reach water, he had to pass through the encampment and certainly would be seen. Nearly dying of thirst, he took a chance and went anonymously into a small camp, where he obtained some airag from a young girl. Although he did not reveal his identity to her, he rode a fine white and chestnut horse, and was dressed in his brocade deel lined with squirrel fur and tied with a golden belt. He looked an unusual sight in the middle of the desert.
After the prince hurriedly refreshed himself, he headed back out into the desert. The young girl found several young men and told them about the wealthily clad young man, and five of them saddled their horses and raced off after the unusual visitor.
Although the prince and his horse had water, the horse was slow and worn. The men easily overtook him. When they reached him, one shouted at him, “What sort of man are you? ”
“A traveler, ” the prince responded, trying not to reveal his identity to them.
“Give us your belt, ” the attackers demanded.
The prince refused. The belt was an emblem of manhood, and being of gold made it both a precious object but also a higher symbol of his royal rank. To rob a man of his clothes, particularly his belt, constituted one of the gravest insults, as well as a financial loss. The very word “beltless” stood as a synonym for “woman. ” It was almost all that the prince had left in this world.
One of the men grabbed the bridle of the prince’s beloved horse while the others pulled him from the saddle and killed him.
Because a man’s deel is next to his skin, it absorbs not only his sweat and odor but a part of his soul and his fate. No matter how beautiful and costly his deel, the assailants dared not put it on and possibly assume the fate of this Golden Prince. Instead, they seized his gold belt, took his beautiful chestnut horse, and left him.
Many dreams ended there in the Year of the Tiger. The beautiful prince, whose mother hid his genitals to save his life, who crouched in an iron pot under a mound of dung, who was tossed in the air at the tip of a bow and rescued by a man racing on horseback, who grew up in obscure poverty but briefly reigned beside a khan who dressed him with gold and silk and told him that he could conquer the world, was dead at age nineteen. Bayan Mongke Bolkhu Jinong, the Eternally Rich Rising Golden Prince of the Mongols, lay stretched out on the Gobi rocks, beltless and lifeless in a silk deel embroidered with threads of gold and lined with squirrel fur.
No one mourned him, and as his body rotted in the desert, the survivors of his drama had to go on living. With all the important actors now dead, the twenty-three-year-old Manduhai stood alone on an empty stage. Her fate seemed hardly more auspicious than that of the dead prince. Her first husband was dead and so was his heir. The widowed queen was only a junior wife from a distant place. She had been given in marriage by her family, but now the clan to which she had been given was empty. Everyone was gone.
Death had taken away every role Manduhai knew; life had taken away her fate. The dead khan left no male heir to marry her. Manduhai was still queen of the Mongols with every right to continue ruling, but for the first time since Genghis Khan created the nation, it appeared that he had no descendant to be khan.
Life had not prepared Manduhai for this moment. She did not yet know of what she might be capable. She had no man to fight for her, no woman to advise her. The road before her had no destination and no markers. There were no myths or stories to instruct her, no sayings to guide her. Even if the young queen had learned to read, she had no scripture to inspire her and no priest to counsel her.
There was no time to learn. An unprotected widowed queen was the target for any ambitious man who wanted to become khan. With the khan and crown prince both dead and no other heir around, marrying the dead khan’s wife was the only legitimate path to power. She was the target and trophy for any ambitious man on the steppe. It was a unique moment when the office of khan was completely open to whoever could claim and occupy it. Whatever warlord or general powerful enough to seize the queen would prove that he had the blessing of the Eternal Blue Sky to become khan.
It was better for her to choose among the contenders rather than wait for one of them to take her by force. Who would be her new husband? Une-Bolod, the accomplished warrior whom it was supposed she loved, would be the safest and most traditional Mongol choice. As a descendant of Khasar, he was a member of the Borijin clan, even if he did not belong to the lineage of Genghis Khan. With him, her life might be the closest to what she had known in the past.
But the ambitious warlord Ismayil was already the taishi of the Mongols, and he had cleverly manipulated the downfall of the prince. With his connections to the trade caravans, he offered exotic trinkets and other delights, and she could return to live in the warmer climate among the southern oases of the Silk Route. She would drink grape wine from glass goblets made in Italy and enjoy luscious melons cooled in underground irrigation chambers. Throughout the winter she could nibble delicacies sweetened with raisins, and the men around her would wear gleaming white turbans and carry swords of sparkling Damascus steel.
The tempting luxuries of the Muslim warlords paled, however, in comparison with those offered to Manduhai by the Ming court of China. If she would but follow the choice of the slain prince and flee to the Chinese border and request refuge, the officers of the Ming court would almost certainly provide her with a good life, in return for which she need only swear loyalty to them. As the widow of the Great Khan, she would be a starring addition to their menagerie of captive barbarians. She would live as a coddled symbol of the final acknowledgment by the Mongol royal family, and thereby the Mongol nation, of the power of the Ming Dynasty and the superiority of Chinese civilization.
Under Chinese cultural protocols, a new dynasty demonstrated legitimacy and heavenly favor not only by seizing the government and taking control of the country but also by receiving the formal surrender of the defeated dynasty. Nothing short of this official surrender could mark a legal and final conclusion of the Yuan Dynasty. If Manduhai would only perform this public ritual and kowtow to the Ming emperor in a lavishly staged ceremony, she would be guaranteed a life of luxurious ease. She might even be admitted into the emperor’s harem as a concubine and have her every need catered to by a phalanx of eunuchs. If she sought to live alone, they would provide a pampered widowhood for her, with a household of servants and retainers. She could even take a husband if she pleased. Comfortably within the cocoon of the Chinese elite, she would never have to endure another worry or responsibility so long as she lived.
She had to choose quickly: the handsome Mongol noble, a fierce Muslim warlord, or a pampered Chinese widowhood.
Une-Bolod certainly presented the most compelling case. “I will light your fire for you, ” he said in his proposal of marriage sent by messenger to Manduhai. “I will point out your pastures, ” he promised. The reference to the fire meant that he would give her sons by which to start a new dynasty. For a woman with no male heir, the offer must have seemed tempting, but she showed no hesitation in emphatically rejecting his offer.
“You have a tent-flap I must not raise, ” she responded to Une-Bolod. “You have a threshold I must not step over. ” To make sure that he did not think she was merely being coy, she added firmly, “I will not go to you. ”
The people around Manduhai in the Mongol court knew of the proposal, and they knew of precedent by which she should marry the popular, dashing general. Manduhai asked the people for their advice to her.
“It would be much better for all of us, ” the first person answered, presenting a simple and practical reason that the nation needed a fully grown man. It will be better for the nation “if you would accept the proposal of Une-Bolod. ”
The second speaker disagreed, with a longer and more profound explanation. For Manduhai to marry outside the lineage of Genghis Khan, even if it were to a descendant of his brother, “your path will grow dark. ” With such a marriage, she would no longer be the queen. “You will divide yourself from the people, and you will lose your honored and respected title of khatun. ” If Manduhai would devote her life to the Mongol people without thinking of personal comfort or benefit, she was told, she would follow the white road of enlightenment for herself and her nation.
Manduhai thought about the responses for a moment, and then she turned to the one who recommended that she accept Une-Bolod’s proposal. “You disagree with me just because Une-Bolod is a man and I am only a widow, ” she charged. Growing angrier as she spoke, she said, “Just because” I am only a woman, “you really think that you have the right to speak to me this way. ”
Queen Manduhai raised a bowl of hot tea and flung it at the head of the supporter of this marriage. Manduhai had made the first independent decision of her life. She had decided not to marry any of her suitors. She was the Mongol queen, and she would make her own path.
It was the Year of the Tiger.
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