Death
Huo Guang's wife, Lady Xian, would not be denied her wish of making her daughter an empress, however. In 71 BC, Empress Xu was pregnant when Lady Xian came up with a plot. She bribed Empress Xu's female physician Chunyu Yan (淳于衍), under guise of giving Empress Xu medicine after she gave birth, to poison her. Chunyu did so (with aconitum), and Empress Xu died shortly after she gave birth. Her doctors were initially arrested to investigate whether they cared for the empress properly. Lady Xian, alarmed, informed Huo Guang what had actually happened, and Huo, not having the heart to turn in his wife, instead signed Chunyu's release. (It is not known what happened to Empress Xu's newborn child, but since Chinese historical sources at that time did not pay much attention to children who die young, presumably the child died early.)
Empress Xu was buried with full imperial honors near, but not with, her husband, whose third wife Empress Wang was later buried with him. Her son Prince Shi would later become crown prince and later Emperor Yuan after surviving attempts on his life by Empress Xu's successor, Empress Huo. Eventually, the Huo clan would be destroyed in 66 BC.
Read more about this topic: Empress Xu Pingjun
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship—only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22.