Wei Xuantong

Wei Xuantong (魏玄同) (617 – November 2, 689), courtesy name Hechu (和初), was an official of the Chinese dynasty Tang Dynasty, serving as chancellor during the reign of Emperor Gaozong and the regency of his wife Empress Wu (later known as Wu Zetian) over their sons Emperor Zhongzong and Emperor Ruizong. During Emperor Gaozong's reign, he had drawn hatred from the official Zhou Xing as the conveyor of the bad news that Zhou was not getting promoted, and in 689, Zhou, having by that point become one of Empress Dowager Wu's trusted secret police officials, falsely accused Wei of opposing Empress Dowager Wu. She forced Wei to commit suicide.

Wei Xuantong was born in 617, near the end of Tang Dynasty's predecessor Sui Dynasty. He was from what would eventually become Ding Prefecture (定州, roughly modern Baoding, Hebei), and his grandfather Wei Shikuo (魏士廓) had served as a general for Northern Qi.

Wei Xuantong himself had passed the imperial examination, and thereafter became the magistrate of Chang'an County, one of the two counties making up Tang's capital Chang'an. By 664, he was serving as the director of performance reviews at the ministry of civil service, when, on account of his friendship with the chancellor Shangguan Yi, who had been executed after unsuccessfully trying to persuade Emperor Gaozong to depose his powerful wife Empress Wu (later known as Wu Zetian), Wei was exiled to the Lingnan region. It was said that during his exile, he was not particularly interested in returning to politics, and he spent most of his days hunting.

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