this novel is healthy

Chapter 1590 Wu Zetian without the filter
Then, as everyone knows, Wu Zetian had a direct relationship and relationship with Li Zhi during the period when Li Shimin was seriously ill.

Some people may argue that this is oppression from feudal ethics, and that the harem is a place where people eat each other, and the emperor has so many concubines. What's wrong for a young woman to pursue love?

There is nothing wrong with pursuing love, but is it okay for you to pursue love when your husband is seriously ill? Moreover, the object of your pursuit of love is your nominal son. This is something that is completely unacceptable ethically and cannot be justified in modern society.

Then, she had sex with Li Zhi in the temple, and then Li Zhi openly took her back to the palace to be his wife.

Of course, these things are not really a big problem. After all, as long as human desires do not hurt others, there is no right or wrong in themselves. After all, in today's society, even if someone cheats, it is just a normal divorce, and the court will not order you to pay a penny more in compensation. It is not a serious crime.

What truly revealed Wu Meiniang's viciousness was what happened after she entered the palace.

In the whole of China, the most well-known cruel thing that Wu Zetian did was probably the famous murder of her daughter, which was recorded in the New Book of Tang and Zizhi Tongjian.

It is said that Wu Zetian gave birth to her eldest daughter, Princess Andingsi. However, one month after her daughter was born, Queen Wang came to visit the princess and took the opportunity to tease her. After Queen Wang left, Wu Zetian took advantage of the fact that no one was around and strangled the princess to death, and then covered her with a quilt.

When Li Zhi came to visit Wu Zetian, he found out that his daughter had been strangled to death. He then asked the attendants, and the attendants naturally said that only Queen Wang had been there. So Li Zhi hated Queen Wang from then on, and made up his mind to depose her and make Wu Zetian his queen.

This is a story that almost everyone in China knows, and it fully reflects the viciousness of Wu Zetian, who strangled her own daughter to death for power. However, Liu Xu did not add this plot to his novel, because in the eyes of some professional historians, this story is fake news that cannot withstand any scrutiny.

First of all, there is no record of this story in any of the documents of the Tang Dynasty. It was not until the Song Dynasty began to compile historical materials of the Tang Dynasty, especially when the great Sima Guang began to compile Zizhi Tongjian, that such a convincing plot appeared.

But the problem is, even if you look at the plot before and after this historical material in Zizhi Tongjian, you will find that the killing of the princess was a completely isolated case and had no impact before and after.

First of all, Queen Wang and Wu Zetian were political allies at the time, and they had to work together to deal with Xiao Shufei, the most favored concubine at the time. Many people have always believed that Li Zhi's favorite was Wu Meiniang, after all, Li Zhi gave her almost all the power.

But if you look closely at the history books of that time, you will find that Li Zhi's favorite was actually Concubine Xiao Shufei.

Li Zhi was actually a typical wolf friend, and he only had one criterion for the women he liked, that was, seductiveness. Xiao Shufei and Wu Meiniang were both such seductive women, so Li Zhi hurriedly took Wu Meiniang out of Ganye Temple. Rather than saying that he had deep feelings for her, it was more like Li Zhi was eager for sex, and he simply coveted Wu Meiniang's beauty.

The physical relationship between the two was far greater than the emotional one. Otherwise, if it was really for the emotional one, Li Zhi would not have left Wu Meiniang in Ganye Temple for two years. After all, judging from Li Zhi's later behavior, this guy was actually a man who would not wait for revenge. But the problem was that the wife Li Shimin chose for Li Zhi was a woman carefully selected from the royal family of Taiyuan, a noble family. She was the most standard lady and in line with the mainstream values ​​of the time, but she was completely not in Li Zhi's eyes.

Therefore, Queen Wang lived a far worse life than Concubine Xiao Shufei, and her power was not as good as hers. So when it came to Wu Meiniang entering the palace, Queen Wang actually put in a lot of effort. It was Queen Wang who took the initiative to let Wu Meiniang enter the palace as the queen, rather than Li Zhi issuing a direct edict. After all, Zhangsun Wuji was in power at that time, and Li Zhi did not have that much courage.

The reason why Queen Wang did this was to use the charming woman Wu Meiniang to deal with the charming woman Xiao Shufei. In fact, this plan was not very smooth at the beginning. Although Xiao Shufei made stupid mistakes and was caught repeatedly, and even such a big thing as witchcraft was exposed, Li Zhi still did not take action.

After all, Wu Meiniang gave birth to three children in the four years since she entered the palace, and she had very little time to accompany Li Zhi, so Li Zhi still needed Concubine Xiao Shufei.

Therefore, when Wu Meiniang gave birth to her eldest daughter, there was no need to frame the emperor and empress. They were still allies and it was not time to get rid of them.

Secondly, in the year or so before and after his daughter's death, Li Zhi did not show any disgust or punishment towards Queen Wang, and did not even say a bad word about her. This is also unreasonable.

Later, the reason why Li Zhi deposed Queen Wang was still the art of exorcism, that is, the witchcraft doll.

Moreover, if her daughter was really killed by Queen Wang, then after coming to power, Wu Zetian would definitely find ways to put the blame on Queen Wang again, saying that she killed her daughter or something, so as to prove the legitimacy of her position as queen.

However, Wu Zetian herself never talked about this matter. After all, she could openly talk about her and Li Shimin during the reign of Li Zhi, and later even openly took male favorites. There is no reason for her not to dare to talk about Queen Wang.

So in real history, the eldest princess most likely died young due to illness, and Queen Wang had nothing to do with this matter. Wu Meiniang herself did not put the blame on Queen Wang. To put it bluntly, these were all intentional attempts by later historians to prevent women from interfering in politics and the emergence of another female emperor, so they deliberately brought such a story that only existed in unofficial history into the official history to discredit Wu Meiniang.

Especially the Song Dynasty, after all, this was an era that almost produced another Wu Zetian.

Wait, if this well-known evil deed is all false, doesn’t that further prove that Wu Zetian didn’t commit any major sins?

This is not true. In fact, there is a lot of negative information about Wu Zetian, and her crimes are countless as clearly recorded in various historical books. It's just that later generations chose to remember a fabricated story, ensuring that the horrifying things that Wu Zetian actually did were completely forgotten.

(End of this chapter)