The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [50]
She reigned as yeke khatun from 1241 until 1246 because it took that long to orchestrate her son Guyuk’s succession as Great Khan. She had to overcome the stated preference of Ogodei for another heir, as well as the opposition of most of the officials appointed by her husband. She could not persuade these men, so she reorganized the administration of the court and the newly conquered territories, appointing new administrators from China to Turkey. In the cases of recalcitrant officials who did not heed her words, she resorted to extreme measures of public punishment. The Uighur scribe Korguz, who had been quite loyal to her husband and had been given administration over eastern Iran, angered the empress; she had him arrested and executed by stuffing stones in his mouth until he choked to death.
One of her most problematic issues derived from northern China, where she repeatedly had trouble exerting her authority over the Mongols in charge there, particularly over her second son, Koten. He harbored ambitions to take power from his mother and to become Great Khan; so when she began persecuting his father’s former officials, many of them escaped to Koten’s court for refuge.
Toregene continued and intensified her husband’s struggle for land within the Mongol Empire. The lands closest to hers were those of Ogodei’s sisters. Just as Ogodei had moved against the lands of his sister Checheyigen on an unconvincing pretext, Toregene now moved against his sister Al-Altun.
Al-Altun had ruled the Uighur territory under the aegis of Genghis Khan. It is not known what type of dealings Ogodei had with his sister while their father lived, but around the time of Ogodei’s death, someone from his faction executed her. According to the Persian chronicle of Rashid al-Din, this was done in violation of laws of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. “They put to death the youngest daughter of Genghis-Khan, whom he loved more than all his other children … although she had committed no crime.”
The official excuse for executing Al-Altun seems to have been the accusation that she poisoned her brother Ogodei. She “had killed his father [Ogodei] with poison at the time when their army was in Hungary, and it was for this that the army had retreated from those countries. She and many others were judged and killed.” Accusing her of such a crime against her brother at least partially justified killing her since she would have been the first to break the law against killing a member of the family. The claim, however, did not convince the family, as evidenced by a subsequent speech made by Tolui’s son Khubilai Khan at the trial of some of the retainers of Ogodei demanding to know why they killed her without a trial, as mandated by Genghis Khan.
Ogodei’s daughter Alajin Beki assumed power over the Uighurs. She first married the eldest son of the old Idiqut, who had been married to her aunt, and when he died, she married his younger brother.
Like their father, each of them inherited the title of Idiqut upon marrying the daughter of the Great Khan.
In 1246, five years after her husband’s death, Toregene had gained sufficient control of the empire to summon a khuriltai to select Ogodei’s successor and to have her son named Great Khan. It had been almost two decades since the last khuriltai in 1229 to elect Ogodei, but this khuriltai contrasted markedly with the last one. The Secret History specifies that the princes of the family as well as the princesses and the imperial sons-in-law attended the khuriltai of 1229, but the role of the imperial daughters-in-law at that time was so negligible that their presence was not even mentioned. By 1246, these women had risen so quickly in power that they completely controlled the khuriltai and managed every detail of its agenda.
By the khuriltai of 1246, all four of Genghis Khan