Wu had a daughter whom the empress liked to dandle on her knee. In 654, the empress played with the baby; when she left, Wu suffocated her own daughter and then, when the emperor visited, she revealed in an agony of grief the blue-faced child, blaming Empress Wang. Gaozong questioned the staff, all of whom replied that ‘the Empress’ was responsible. Gaozong cried, ‘The Empress has murdered my baby!’ Wu’s career was recorded after her death by hostile historians, but even if she did not murder her own daughter, she used the death to destroy Gaozong’s relationship with his wife, whose barrenness
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