The Tears of Lady Dong

In the deep twilight of an autumn day in 1681, inside the secluded inner chambers of the Anping Royal Palace in Tainan, a white-haired, grief-stricken matriarch wept softly, leaning on her maidservants for support. She was Lady Dong, the Grand Dowager consort of the founding king, Koxinga.

For the past twenty years, the eyes of the world had been fixed on the battlefield, watching her husband and son command fleets across the roiling seas, while completely overlooking this "Iron Lady" who silently held the regime together from behind the curtain.

Lady Dong’s life was an epic of relentless compromise against fate, family tragedy, and political intrigue. She had stood by Koxinga through the grueling hardships of founding a new nation, only to witness him sink into madness on his deathbed, where he brutally ordered her own execution alongside their son over a devastating family scandal. In that era of tempestuous storms, she survived purely on iron will, emerging after her husband's death as the most powerful and respected political mediator within the regime.

Yet, most of the political tears shed by this Iron Lady were wept for her own unyielding, troubled descendants. When her son, Zheng Jing, succeeded to the throne, he managed to govern Taiwan beautifully with the counsel of the "Eastern Ning Prime Minister" Chen Yonghua, but in his later years, he fell into utter despair after the catastrophic failure of his mainland military campaign during the Revolt of the Three Feudatories.

Upon retreating back to Taiwan, Zheng Jing drowned his sorrows in alcohol and indulgence, dying suddenly in 1681 at the age of thirty-nine. Staring at the coffin of her prematurely taken son, Lady Dong felt her heart break into pieces. But fate granted the old grandmother no time for grief; the sudden vacuum of power immediately ignited a bloody storm within the palace walls.

Following Zheng Jing’s death, the throne rightfully belonged to his eldest son, Zheng Kezang—a young man who had been meticulously groomed for leadership and was widely respected for his unyielding integrity and righteousness. However, his rise provoked fierce opposition from corrupt courtiers and royal relatives who despised his strict discipline.

Seizing the moment, the powerful courtier Feng Xifan, desperate to install his own twelve-year-old grandson Zheng Keshuang onto the throne, allied with ambitious members of the royal clan to trigger a palace coup known as the "Coup of Eastern Ning." They flooded Lady Dong’s ears with malicious slander, falsely claiming that Zheng Kezang was not of royal blood at all, but rather a merchant’s orphan adopted by Zheng Jing years ago in Xiamen.

Exhausted and emotionally hollowed out by back-to-back family deaths and palace conspiracies, the aging matriarch finally buckled under the united pressure of the courtiers and her own kin. In a haze of confusion and helplessness, she quietly sanctioned the decree to depose Zheng Kezang. She could never have foreseen that this single decision would condemn her most treasured grandson to death—that very night, Zheng Kezang was brutally strangled to death within the palace gates by Feng Xifan's men.

The brutal murder of her cherished grandson and the absolute tyranny of the courtiers became the final, deepest blade thrust into Lady Dong’s heart. In the wake of the coup, as she watched her twelve-year-old, puppet grandson Zheng Keshuang thrust onto the throne, surrounded by the arrogant clamor of Feng Xifan and his faction, the Iron Lady who had witnessed three generations of dynastic change finally saw the tragic destiny of the kingdom. Consumed by endless regret, isolation, and self-reproach, her health collapsed rapidly.

Within just a few short months of the coup, she passed away in bitterness inside her bedchambers at the Anping Palace. With a lifetime of tears and stoic endurance, she had borne witness to both the glorious rise and the fratricidal collapse of the Zheng family in Taiwan. Her departure officially stripped the Kingdom of Tungning of its very last pillar of internal stability, accelerating its final slide toward total surrender just two years later.