Oda Tokuhime, the daughter of Oda Nobunaga, married Tokugawa Ieyasu’s five-year-old son Nobuyasu in 1563, when she herself was just five years old. The marriage, though for political advantage, became a happy one. The was just one problem: Tokuhime’s mother-in-law.
Lady Tsukiyama was so jealous and quarrelsome that even her husband had difficulty dealing with her. Among other things, she took a made a retainer’s daughter Nobuyasu’s concubine because Tokuhime had produced no sons by age 20 – although their two daughters would suggest that Tokuhime was certainly fertile enough.
At some point, Tokuhime decided she could not like with Tsukiyama anymore. She wrote an anonymous letter to her father, the very powerful Oda Nobunaga, and accused Lady Tsukiyama of treason. Tokugawa Ieyasu imprisoned his wife as a result, then to protect his alliance with Nobunaga, had her executed. But what would Nobuyasu, Tokuhime’s husband, do? Everyone was very concerned that he would seek an honorable revenge against Oda Nobunaga for the death of his mother. So Ieyasu ordered Nobuyasu to commit suicide by seppuku: his own son killed himself, to protect his father’s most important alliance. Tokuhime accidentally got rid of her husband while she was trying to get rid of her mother-in-law. Tokuhime lived another 50 years and never remarried.
