Wu Zetian is the 18-year-old protagonist and archetypal anti-hero of Iron Widow. Her feet were bound at the age of five by her grandmother, leaving her unable to walk without aid. Zetian lives in an unnamed village in the Sui-Tang frontier along with her unnamed parents, grandparents, and brother Dalang. Her big sister Ruyi recently died under mysterious circumstances as a concubine-pilot to Yang Guang, setting off the events of the novel. Wu Zetian is often cold, calculating, and uncaring because the world she lives in requires her to take on these traits. Zetian often judges others harshly and unfairly for what she sees as complicity with the status quo of the unjust patriarchy. Zetian begins the novel believing that escaping systemic oppression is an easy fix, but by the end of the novel, she understands that escaping this dynamic carries a heavy personal cost and cannot be achieved solely by willpower and desire.

Ultimately, her quest for vengeance leads her to darker, more extreme actions until she eventually takes over the country of Huaxia via the systematic elimination of the previous government. Wu Zetian lives in a gender-based

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