Hi guys, I need some opinions on a divergence point set in ancient china. Zhao Ji was the mother of the man who would become the First Emperor of a unified china. In our timeline she becomes a widow early into the reign of Huangdi's father, making her and the chief chancellor Lu Buwei the defacto rulers of Qin until Qin Shi Huandi comes of age. According to Han historians (which, we have to keep in mind, were enemies of the Qin Dynasty and went out of their way to paint every aspect of it as corrupt and broken) Zhao Ji was a lusty woman who had an affair with Lu Buwei and later a man named Lao Ai, who attempted a poorly executed coup that Huangdi and his generals easily put down. Embarrassed, Huangdi executed Lao Ai and banished Zhao Ji and Lu Buwei from his state, along with most of Lu Buwei's collection of scholars. The exception to this was Li Si, a scholar of the Legalism philosophy with particularly strong and brutal views on how the state should be run (even by the standards of other legalists, who are already advocating a school of thought that proclaims that all men are naturally evil and selfish and must therefore be governed by minutely detailed laws that enforce strict and uncompromising punishments). The Qin dynasty was marked by brutal executions, steep taxes and costly projects like the Great Wall and the tomb of the first Emperor that drained and enslaved the population. It collapses under massive rebellions in less than five years following the sudden death of Huangdi.
So let's do what we do best. Putting aside rumors that Lu Buwei poisoned Huangdi's father (something I consider unlikely, given how much money and strings Lu had to pull to put the man on the throne in the first place!) the most likely cause of his death was plague and fever. In this timeline, that sickness passes on to Zhao Ji, who follows her husband to the grave less than a month later (just enough time to appoint Lu as ruler of the kingdom until Huangdi comes of age). No schism occurs between Lu Buwei and Huangdi, who retains the old merchant as his chief advisor. Lu Buwei presents a more well rounded perspective for nation building, setting the foundation for a China who's laws are strict but bearable. Given the plethora of scholars at his disposal thanks to Lu's patronage, the Emperor has the opportunity to get a second opinion and thus be dissuaded from some of the more ill advised remedies for his mortality (like, for instance, the mercury pills he was taking at the end of his reign, a heavy metal that likely did nothing good for his sanity or paranoia). That, combined with the fact that his mother never betrayed him, allows Huangdi to govern with a far more even hand with less obsession and suspicion. His great projects are done at a slower pace, sparing the peasantry the burden of impossible taxes and enslavement at the cost of the glory of achieving his visions in his own lifetime. Rebellions no doubt flare up, but a somewhat richer and certainly better fed populous keeps those rebellions from gaining the numbers they had in our timeline. Qin's son is able to put them down just as the Han Dynasty put down the rebellions of the nobility early in its reign. For this reason the Qin survives significantly longer than in our TL, perhaps eventually dying out in the Red Eyebrows rebellion in the last century BC.