The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

The couple crisscrossed the land fighting border skirmishes, raiding into China, trading along the Silk Route, putting down revolts, and imposing a stronger centralized rule than Mongolia had enjoyed in the intervening centuries since Genghis Khan’s death. The combination of fighting and giving birth became ever more strenuous for Manduhai. She was forty years old when she became pregnant for the fourth time, with what turned out to be her final set of twins, and when she entered into what would be almost her final battle.

Although advanced in her pregnancy, Manduhai insisted on leading her troops into battle, just as she had so often done over the past fifteen years. In a scene reminiscent of her helmet falling from her head in the middle of battle during her first campaign against the Oirat, Manduhai unexpectedly lurched in her saddle. She then swiveled awkwardly and plunged to the ground, where she lay in a twisted heap. Had she been wounded, fainted, gone into labor, or simply fallen? Was she alive or dead?

The sudden fall of the highest commander on the battlefield presents a shocking spectacle for the soldiers, and such a misfortune can easily change the outcome of an engagement by disrupting the chain of command and confusing the warriors, as well as disheartening them at a crucial moment in their struggle. If seen by the enemy, the fall will almost certainly encourage them and reinvigorate their fighting.

Such an event can also provide an unexpected opportunity for potential rivals within the commander’s army, giving them an opening into which they might rush forward and seize control. The year 1488 was the Year of the Earth Monkey, a capricious creature in whose era earthshaking events like this could be expected.

Horse-herding nomads, who spent their lives in the saddle, understood well that such a fall from a horse not only could result in serious damage, paralysis, or death, it carried extra symbolic significance. For a khan or other leader, the horse can symbolize the nation, and control of the horse parallels control of the state; a rider who cannot master a horse certainly cannot master a tribe or nation of unruly people. Thus Manduhai’s fall from the horse held a deeper and more sinister meaning. The death of Genghis Khan himself had been preceded only a short time earlier by a fall from his horse. Through the literate history of Mongolia, chroniclers and observers had recorded the falls of khans from horses with more avid precision than their marriages, battles, or other events to which sedentary people might attribute greater importance.

For Manduhai, the fall occurred not only at an unfortunate moment in the battle, but at a potentially devastating moment in her life. After almost two decades of struggle, she had nearly, but not yet, achieved the complete reunification of all the steppe tribes that had followed Genghis Khan. Her goal loomed tantalizingly close as she led her troops into battle that day, but this one fall could jeopardize all that she had struggled to achieve.

Manduhai no longer displayed the physical strength or emotional stamina that she had had as a younger woman. She had fought many battles on and off the field of war; she had struggled against seemingly impossible odds to unite and rule the Mongol nation. It would seem only logical that at this stage in her life, even her most ardent followers might begin to waiver in their support or to wonder how much longer her destiny would allow her to rule and to lead.

Her husband, the Great Khan, who was still in his early twenties, lacked the necessary military and leadership experience, though he had succeeded against Beg-Arslan, and he had not shown the aptitude for command needed to control the vigorous and independent Mongol tribes. He had also shown no sign of wishing to oppose his wife or to contest her leadership. Instead, he remained doggedly faithful to her, just like the thousands of men who served under her command.

If the fall incapacitated Manduhai for even a few hours, one of her powerful or popular generals might step forward to replace her. At this moment, as she lay sprawled on the battlefield, her empire could easily be dismembered, or simply crumble. All an ambitious new commander need do, if he had the backing of even a small but dedicated band of warriors, was to grab one of her young sons, declare the child to be the new ruler, and exercise power as a self-declared regent.