So. Apparently the empress Wu in White Cat Legend isn’t Wu Zetian after all. I’ll be honest, for the longest time I thought she wasn’t just the prototype but the actual character, but going back I can see that in all the other chapters she’s always been referred to just as “Empress Wu” and never as Wu Zetian. Still, it’s very obvious that Wu Zetian was the inspiration and a lot of other terms (like the reign title) match, so I’m going to refer to Wu Zetian for any future notes just the way I did before translating this chapter.

To be honest, one of the first things I thought upon seeing Empress Wu in the donghua was “is it a bug or a feature?” She looked so child-like that I wondered if she was supposed to be as old as she was at that time in reality – but this chapter answers this question. For all her young features, she’s around the age she should be.

Her exact date of birth is disputed, but it should be around 623-624, which means that probably about a year had passed since her ascension and Li Bing becoming the Vice Minister.

The Empress uses the imperial “I” while general Qiu continues using a humble “I”.

The Left Tribunal refers to the division of the Censorate that existed in Tang dynasty (684-712). It mostly concerned itself with the disciplinary surveillance of the central government and the military. Vice Censor-in-chief refers to the 2nd executive official of the censorate. With the division into the Left Tribunal and Right Tribunal I’m relatively certain that means he’s the head of the Left branch.