The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [91]
Yeke Qabar-tu, Manduul’s first but unloved wife, sided with the Golden Prince. Manduhai was her rival for power as well as his. Soon rumors circulated through the royal encampment about the relationship between the senior queen and the young prince. Someone provoked a servant of the prince to report their relationship to the khan. The servant told the khan that the Golden Prince was plotting to do evil to his uncle and that he was attempting to “rob” the khan of his wife, but he did not state specifically that they were already engaged in a sexual union.
For a boy to have sexual relations with the wife of his uncle did not constitute a crime. So long as the female in-law had a senior position to him, as both Manduhai and Yeke Qabar-tu did in regard to Bayan Mongke, no taboo was broken. The adultery would not be an issue unless it represented a possible conspiracy by the older woman and young prince to replace the khan. The implicit politics far surpassed the sex act in significance and potential impact.
When summoned to answer the charge, instead of flatly denying it, the Golden Prince objected to the khan that he would not listen to slander from a servant. Under Mongol law, his accusation, even if true, constituted a capital crime of betrayal. Several times in history, Genghis Khan had executed people for similar offenses of betraying their master, even when the betrayal was done with the purpose of aiding Genghis Khan himself.
The khan sided, once again, with his nephew. He turned his wrath on the servant and accused him of seeking to create “trouble between two brothers and to divide them.” The khan ordered his guards to slice off the accuser’s lips and nose for having made the statement. After this punishment, they killed him.
The khan’s response to the first accuser demonstrated clearly where his affection and trust lay. The Golden Prince came first. No one else in the court dared to raise an objection or voice a criticism of the khan’s favorite.
The plotters against the Golden Prince had been deterred, but not defeated. They needed to find a person outside the court, someone who was not a vassal. They also needed an eyewitness to offer direct testimony of sexual infidelity. Simply trying to “rob” the khan of his wife had not been sufficient.
Events in the south kept Beg-Arslan preoccupied expanding his control of the Silk Route ever eastward toward the Chinese border at the Gansu Corridor. Too busy to personally manage the affairs of the Mongol tribes in the north, he sent his young protégé Issama, called Ismayil in the Mongol chronicles, to Manduul’s court to maintain his influence over the royal family.
Beg-Arslan had been taishi, the overlord of the Mongols, but now Ismayil assumed the office. Ismayil immediately took command of the Mongol army. Une-Bolod, who had been the former commander, retired from court life and returned to his own home area. With Une-Bolod out of the way, Ismayil now needed to rid himself of the other contender for power, the Golden Prince.
Ismayil was a young warlord on the rise, and soon he was looking for ways to increase his own power independently of Beg-Arslan. He devised a plan against the young prince, but one that also could cause a rupture in Manduul’s relationship to Beg-Arslan by implicating Yeke Qabar-tu, the senior queen and Beg-Arslan’s daughter, in a plot to overthrow Manduul.
First, Ismayil confronted the Great Khan privately with direct evidence, which he claimed he had seen with his own eyes. He insisted that the charges made by the servant against the prince were true. “Out in an isolated place,” he informed the khan, “the Golden Prince and your wife met in conjugal embrace.” Ismayil wanted to give the khan time to reflect on the charges, and he did not attempt to push the