Wu Zetian

, also known as , is an Assassin-class Servant summoned by Ritsuka Fujimaru in the Grand Orders of Fate/Grand Order.
==Profile==
===Identity===
Prioritizing the ease for understanding, she goes by the name "Wu Zetian". That is based on her posthumous name "Great Sacred Empress Zetian", which was given after her death. As for herself, she holds great liking to the title "Divine and Sacred Emperor", which she took upon claiming the throne.
The sole ruling Empress in China's history. Initially, she was a consort of the Second Emperor, , although she was only one of many. She met with Taizong son's , and became his concubine after Taizong's death. And eventually, Consort Wu gave birth to Gaozong's child—But that small life's flame was extinguished at infancy.
Pursuing the then whom she treated as the culprit of her child's death, and overthrowing the most favored concubine, , it is said that Consort Wu reached the seat as Gaozong's Queen.
At that point, Consort Wu had both Empress Wang and Consort Xiao executed in a manner where they were stuffed into wine jars after the amputation of their limbs. From this flow of events, there are parties that think that Consort Wu killed her own child and placed the blame on Empress Wang but———The truth cannot be ascertained.
Seizing power as the Empress, she repeatedly exterminated (assassinated) troublesome relatives and political opponents. After Gaozong's death, she changed the country's name to "", and upon finally taking the throne, she added the moniker "Divine and Sacred Emperor/Empress Regnant Shengshen" to her name. Whilst restoring the nation, she promulgated a rule of fear which encouraged incrimination through secret informants. Through the cruel torture of the specially tasked "Kù Lì/Kokuri", the country's people were fearful from their hearts———
===Appearance===
===Personality===
Her attitude towards others is haughty and disrespectful, and she acts fundamentally in her own self-interest.
"Kufufufu, isn't it only natural that we are more gorgeous and dazzling than anyone else? That aside, do not address us lightly as a young girl. You fool!"
While normally a Servant would materialize and be summoned during their golden age, Wu Zetian herself doesn't understand why she was summoned as a child, believing it to be a "prank" from the "greater grail" and finds it preferable if she was summoned in her beautiful adult body. 
Wu Zetian is surprisingly religious. She liked changing era names, titles, and even street names, but this was due to both her preference for new things and superstition. Additionally, her belief in the curse "You'll be reincarnated as a mouse. I will return as a cat to bite you to death!" that came from the executed Consort Xiao just before her death led Wu Zetian to impose a strict ban on keeping cats in the palace. Furthermore, she feared being haunted by their ghosts, and relocated the capital from to ———
"H-Hey! Sneakily recording our weakness like that is cowardly, no, all those are lies and it's not like I'm scared of cats or ghosts but anyways, you will be punished!"
====Relationships====
;Qin Shi Huang
:"Oh-ho, so that's Qin Shi Huang. It is certainly a great accomplishment to be the first to unify someplace so vast as China! Even someone like me should be impressed... If there's ever an opportunity, I'd really love to sit down and have a conversation about policy and governing!"
;Jing Ke
:"That woman... She's not trying to assassinate me too, is she? (Glare)"
;Prince of Lanling
:"So you're Prince of Lanling. I hear you suffered quite a lot because of your imbecile master during your lifetime. I'll have you know that I stand by how I treated my subjects. What do you think? It's not too late to start serving me, you know!"
;Red Hare
:"You're...Red Hare...no, Lu Bu...? Argh, whatever! Anyway, I'll give you the honor of having me ride on your back. Now go!... H-hey, w-wait, you're going too fast! Ack!"
;Chen Gong
:"Hey, Chen Gong! Don't look at my jiangshi with eyes that say "They're perfect for self-destructing bullets"! I'll never let you borrow them!"
;Yang Guifei
:"Hey! Yang Guifei! Quit it, quit it, don't stand by my side! Our auras are overlapping, you're dispersing the gazes! Well, I am the superior one, though!"
;Xuanzang Sanzang
:"I've finally understood your feelings, Xuanzang Sanzang. Swimsuits are unexpectedly easy to move with. If you regard energy as important, I can understand that you usually have that appearance. Hm? Yours is not really a swimsuit? Is… that true?"
;Tamamo Cat
:"Cat. There is a cat-like person. For it to say 'woof', we don't understand the reason at all. W-we are not scared. We just dislike it."Fate/Grand Order Lines
;Jaguar Man
:"Cat. There is a cat-like person. Tiger cat...what fiendish claws. ...It's not, frightening. We were just thinking of seeing if we could borrow those for our next torture session!"
;Erice Utsumi
:"The one called Erice, to think that you are haunted by evil spirits. Okay! Put out your forehead, and stay there. Slap! Hum, how is it? Hum, it doesn't work. It seems that the evil spirits within you cannot be dealt with through ordinary means. Let's leave that issue for later."
;Medb (Swimsuit) / Consort Yu (Swimsuit)
:"This suffering of one who was beautiful from the beginning unconsciously gathering even more looks by wearing a swimsuit. Uuuum, would you agree that I'm like Medb or Yu Miaoyi? Being too beautiful is so troublesome."
;Carmilla (Swimsuit)
:"That one makes criminals shriek as a burglar, and I make dead spirits shriek as a Taoist. Ku fu fu fu. This means that wearing a swimsuit will never make your torture skills decrease."
;Female Children Servants
:"This is me as a pah-fekt emperor. I know you are jealous, but it's not like you can grow up and be an adult just by wearing a swimsuit, children. Strive in your self-improvement without rushing."
==Role==
===Fate/Grand Order===
====Subspecies Singularity II: Agartha====
Wu Zetian is summoned by Scheherazade to serve as the Nightless City's inauthentic ruler to increase the Agartha Singularity's fictional nature.Fate/Grand Order: Epic of Remnant - Agartha: The Mythical Subterranean Society - Section 16: Women of Agartha Under her rule, men and women are considered equal as long as men strictly follow the law, though only women have basic human rights. Men are encouraged to report all transgressions they see, resulting in them selling each other out in order to survive. Those reported are publicly and tortuously executed by the city’s police force, the Torturers.Fate/Grand Order: Epic of Remnant - Agartha: The Mythical Subterranean Society - Section 8: The Brilliant Fortress City
At some point, Scheherazade became her tactician after leaving Dahut's service. Formerly Dahut's confidant, Scheherazade told Wu Zetian where Dahut kept the key to Ys' floodgates. Wu Zetian then set out for Ys by herself.Fate/Grand Order: Epic of Remnant - Agartha: The Mythical Subterranean Society - Section 6: The Pirate Princess Lewdly Smiles
Infiltrating Ys, she encounters Ritsuka’s party while they are hiding from the city’s pirates. She offers to show them a secret path to Dahut’s mansion. They follow her through her secret path, eventually reaching the mansion’s rear garden. Wu Zetian infiltrates the mansion separately without their notice.
While Ritsuka’s party was fighting Dahut, Wu Zetian stole her floodgate key. She then unlocked the floodgates to allow the lake to flood the city. As it floods, she appears before everyone. Dahut reveals her to be, to the group’s shock, that she is the Empress of the Nightless City. She mocks Dahut for not thinking that Scheherazade would betray her after leaving Ys. After the flood waters wash away Dahut, Wu Zetian invites the group to her city and escapes.
She speaks to the group from her underground palace after they were caught in a trap at the city’s execution scaffold. She agrees to reward the man who sold them out, but not before torturing him for his insolence. After he’s taken away, she invites the group into her palace. She then has her castle emerge from where the scaffolding was, calling it Yaoguang Hall. She invites the group inside while also sending her Torturers after them.
When the group reaches her throne room, Wu Zetian has Scheherazade introduce herself. She reveals it was Scheherazade’s strategy to flood Ys and recounts how they met. She then asks what the group’s opinion on her city, believing it to be better than Ys. They criticize it for its lack of basic human rights for men, and its justice system that encourages men to betray one another to survive. Wu Zetian ignores the possibility of false reports, believing such things only happen in lesser nations. Her ideal nation is one where even the smallest evil is snuffed out without tolerance thanks to its citizens’ vigilance. After being criticized again, she decides to punish them personally with the help of her Torturers and Scheherazade. She again defends her system while also asserting that suppression of one’s desires (even non-criminal ones) allows for a true and just nation. She tries to convince the group to be her subjects, but they refuse since Nightless City is rotten as Ys. They defeat her, but she refuses to give up when Megalos crashes through the ceiling and crushes her.
Surviving, she kept herself hidden until Phenex separated from Scheherazade. She ambushes him while Ritsuka’s party was struggling against him. She then unleashes her Noble Phantasm, Manual of Accusation, to torture him. Phenex severely wounds her in retaliation. Wu Zetian urges the group to finish him off while he’s in a constant state of life and death. After Phenex is destroyed, she disappears, having exerted the last of her strength.
====Halloween Event: Halloween Strike! Devil's Building Climber====
A subordinate of Mecha Eli-chan, Wu Zetian has Carmilla retreat with her after the latter was defeated by Ritsuka's party. Inside the pyramid,  she and Carmilla team up with Cleopatra to fight Ritsuka's party, only for them to lose. Carmilla wasn't told ahead of time that they'd be teaming up. Wu Zetian admits she made the decision in the spur of the moment.
She and Carmilla encounter the group again following their fight with Amazoness CEO. They escaped the castle before they were caught in the explosion caused by the Guardian of Csejte's missile. Both of them agree to help stop Osakabehime, though Carmilla says Mecha Eli-chan needs a heart circuit before she can fight again. Ritsuka installs the heart circuit into Mecha Eli-chan, stabilizing her Spirit Origin. Then, with Amazoness CEO also joining them, Ritsuka's party climb the castle. Wu Zetian has her Torturers form a ladder for her to climb.
Passing through Castle Csejte into the pyramid, the group fight Cleopatra, who seems to believe Carmilla and Wu Zetian are forming a new queen trio with Amazoness CEO. After defeating Cleopatra, Wu Zetian briefly brings her out of her depression about having a minor role in the story now by saying she'll have to wait for a slim version of Julius Caesar to come. But Mecha Eli-chan says such a thing would be miraculous, and even if it did happen, Caesar would flirt with other women. Cleopatra faints and Ritsuka's party moves onto Himeji Castle. 
At Himeji Castle, the group fights Halloween Knights seemingly under Osakabehime's control. Truthfully though, they were promised a raise and paid leave on Halloween to avoid Elizabeth's concert, so they were easy to defeat. After defeating pirates who were weirdly excited for Elizabeth's concert, Wu Zetian asks Carmilla why she's been silent. Carmilla answers she learned last year to completely empty her mind when dealing with her past self. She can keep her stress levels low enough that the worst that happens is that she occasionally coughs up blood.
The group enters Osakabehime's room, but she isn't there. They search for a secret passage when they find Mecha Eli-chan's original heart circuit that Osakabehime removed. They soon find and pass through the secret passage. They soon catch up to Osakabehime, who had retreated from them earlier. She calls Mecha Eli-chan MkII for help, but the robot girl refuses. With no other choice, Osakabehime fights the group with the Guardian of Csejte. The group defeat her and use the same elevator she used to escape.
They arrive at the factory, where Mecha Eli-chan was built, and the Guardian of Csjete was modified. Osakabehime reveals she built for mass producing Mecha Eli-chan MkII before Mecha Eli-chan went rogue. She then activates the mass-produced models and retreats into the reactor chamber. The group destroy them then follow after Osakabehime. There they find Mecha Eli-chan MkII with an imprisoned Elizabeth Bathory. Mecha Eli-chan MkII activates "Omni-Eli-izer" to absorb everyone's magical energy (including Osakabehime) and convert it into Elisa Particles. Mecha Eli-chan however divides her energy among everyone so they can move again. The group struggle against Mecha Eli-chan MkII until Elizabeth's oddly beautiful singing weakens her. Invigorated by Elizabeth's singing, the group defeat Mecha Eli-chan MkII. Ritsuka installs a heart circuit in her, then frees Elizabeth. After Ritsuka decides to return to Chaldea with one of the Mecha Eli-chans, the reactor goes into overload. Everyone gets ready to escape, but Osakabehime stays behind to contain the blast with her Noble Phantasm, along with Elizabeth.
The group escape the castle before reactor core explodes. Fortunately, the Elisa Particle density was low enough that only the reactor chamber was destroyed. The group seem to believe Elizabeth and Osakabehime perished; Carmilla decides to have statues of them erected in honor of their sacrifice. The princesses survived, however, thanks to Elizabeth's Noble Phantasm. Osakabehime wants to disappear with the Singularity to make amends, but Ritsuka and Elizabeth convince her to join Chaldea instead. Afterward, everyone returns to Chaldea.
==== Christmas Event: Holy Samba Night ====
Wu Zetian is a competitor in the Santa Tag Team Tournament representing China. Her motive for competing is because she believes only the most important person in the world should deliver presents to the commonfolk. She has Carmilla and Red Hare on her team, even though it's illegal to have over two members and to have a teammate who isn't from the representing country or doesn't have a bloodline related to said country. But by using loopholes in the rules, Wu Zetian got both of them on her team. For Carmilla, she claimed she was her niece, Hua Meilou. As for Red Hare, she claimed he was her horse. She also gets her torturers in the matches by claiming they’re tools. It was through these tactics that the Chinese team beat Jeanne Alter Lily and Charles-Henri Sanson. 
After Bradamante and Quetzalcoatl win their third match, Wu Zetian hires thugs to injure the two before their next match, which is against her team. But she is pleasantly surprised when they arrive for the match completely uninjured. Afterward, she explains how she exploited the loopholes in the rules to get Carmilla and Red Hare and her motivation for competing. She then calls on her torturers and the match starts.
During the match, Wu Zetian traps Bradamante and Quetzalcoatl in her poison pot while Carmilla binds Bradamante’s wrists with chains. Quetzalcoatl, however, goes underneath Bradamante, allowing her partner to stand on her shoulders. Bradamante defeats Carmilla, then moves to do the same to Wu Zetian and Red Hare. Seeing Bradamante coming towards them, Wu Zetian orders Red Hare, who she’s riding on, to get out of the way. But Red Hare says he can’t move freely with the ring so crowded with tortures, allowing Bradamante to take him and Wu Zetian down.
==Abilities==
===Combat===
She ridicules loudly to some extent during those moments. She also has a wild temperament while alive, having studied hand-to-hand fighting and fencing techniques in jest, but now that she has transformed into a Servant, she attained and displays genuine hand-to-hand fighting skills because of her Imperial Privilege Skill.
===Skills===
====Class Skills====
* Presence Concealment (D): ... At its foundation, it is about as much as the empress concealing herself behind the bamboo blind.
====Personal Skills====
* (A): The ability of the empress, who had started as a consort of T’ang and then arrived to establishing her own personal state of Zhou dynasty, in grasping the nature of human spirit. It makes state administration feasible. While she may have widely imposed the politics of fear, her ability in appointing those with talent is considered to be excellent.
* Imperial Privilege (B): For Wu Zetian, the corresponding Skills include Riding, Swordsmanship, Arts, Charisma, Tactics, among others.She, who possesses a firm will and rose as a consort of T'ang, made all manners of great efforts to promote herself, all for the sake of staying in the eyes of the emperor.Pursuit of knowledge, endurance build, refinement of etiquette, improvement of traditional arts... even knowledge of warfare; all of them becomes necessary so that she can keep up their lovers' talk without him losing his interest. Her foundation as an empress who "possesses everything as a matter of course" is not something she was born with; it is something she had acquired out of her endeavor during that time.
* Torture Technique (A): The familiar-like beings (Ku Li) she employs also possess the techniques of the same quality. When she or the Ku Li made use of this skill on a criminal, said criminal would, “without fail”, recognize of his or her own sin. In addition, when they use it on a subject who was in possession of secrets which threaten the righteous nation administration, they would, “without fail”, be able to obtain said secret....While said intel’s objective truth may not be secured, with the next torture it would most likely become the truth.
** Burnt Bone Tree Peony (A+)
===Noble Phantasm===
Her Noble Phantasm is Manual of Accusation. Instruction book for the Ku Li (torture officials), said to be composed by Wu Zetian during the time of her reign. It was, so to speak, a how-to book on torture and interrogation for the purpose of fabricating criminals. Geat variety of torture methods can be used to punish the rogues, but lately, it appears that Wu Zetian often uses an arrangement of wine jars and poison. 
== Forms and Alternate Versions ==
=== Swimsuit ===
=== Skills ===
==== Class Skills ====
* Territory Creation (A): No information available.
* Item Construction (A): No information available.
* Ambition for Imperial Ascension (EX): No information available.
* 
==== Personal Skills ====
* Concubine's Charisma (Summer) (EX): Charm based on multiple elements, including her good looks, unquestionable intelligence, and proficiency in the traditional arts. This Skill includes Assassin Zetian's Charisma of the Empress, but she became able to display its power more amply and directly due to growing closer to the proper age and being on a summer version of her Saint Graph. 
* Inauspicious Wu Princess (A): A prophecy said "A woman of the name Wu will destroy Tang and gain supremacy over the nation". This Skill is superficially similar to Yang Guifei's Consort of Devastating Beauty.
* Empress' Tao Arts (EX): No information available. 
**
=== Noble Phantasm ===
Wu Zetian's main Noble Phantasms is Lailai Kuli Jiangshis. A Tao Art that jiangshifies and controls her enforcers (who were practically her familiars anyways) by attaching talismans to their foreheads. They temporarily forget their original quality as high-level torture officers and serve Wu Zetian hopping around like real jiangshi, all while wondering why is any of this necessary. However, they're also able of walking like normal. Also, by attaching the talisman to the forehead and using the spell, she can control people other than her officers as jiangshi to some extent, meaning she's always open to hiring new recruits. 
==Development==
===Creation and Conception===
Wu Zetian was designed by Takehito Harada in Fate/Grand Order.
On September 14, 2021, almost the entirety of Wu Zetian's assets were removed from the Chinese server due to certain government policies regarding the depiction of historical figures.Yahoo article (Chinese) This included her illustrations, profile and voice clips, while leaving limited access to her in-game sprites and visual novel portraits. In addition, all instances of her name were removed and replaced with the moniker "Assassin of the Nightless City", even after players have her True Name revealed.
==References==
vi:Assassin (Fate/Grand Order - Võ Tắc Thiên)
Category:Servants
Category:Assassin-class Servants
Category:Characters in Fate/Grand Order (Part 1.5)
Category:Chinese Servants
Category:Heroic Spirits
Category:Humans
Category:Lawful Evil Servants
Category:Human Attribute Servants
Category:Sovereigns
Category:D rank Strength Servants
Category:E rank Endurance Servants
Category:A rank Agility Servants
Category:B rank Mana Servants
Category:A rank Luck Servants
Category:B rank Noble Phantasm Servants
Category:Children Servants
Category:Introduced in 2017