Emperor Canh Thinh

In the palace at Phú Xuân, which is Hue today, a small boy often stood under the eaves and looked out at the courtyard. Sunlight lay gold on the stone steps. He was very young, thin in the shoulders and clear in the eyes, and he still ran on quick little steps like any child. The boy was Nguyễn Quang Toản.

The records say he was born in 1783. His father was a remarkable man, Emperor Quang Trung, who was also called Nguyễn Huệ. He was the hero in plain cloth from the Tây Sơn land. The Tây Sơn were three brothers who led an uprising from 1771 and for a time ruled Vietnam. The boy's mother was Phạm Thị Liên, the principal wife in the palace. He grew up among the sound of books being read aloud and gentle lessons, in a house with a famous father whom he loved dearly.

He was a boy who lived in the shadow of a great father and looked up at him every day, as at a mountain. In his heart, his father was surely the strongest and steadiest of men, a support that nothing could shake. He loved his father with all of a child's heart.

Then one day the emperor died suddenly. It was 1792. The palace fell quiet. The boy found that the greatest support of his life was no longer there. For a child, that is an emptiness hard to put into words.

But the boy had little time to be only a child. That same year, when he was about 10 years old, he was placed on the throne to carry on after his father. The royal cap and robe, made for a tall man, now rested on his small shoulders. From that day the people of the palace bowed low and called him Your Majesty.

Ten is an age for play and for lessons. Yet he had to begin a very large task, keeping safe the whole realm his father had left. The next year, 1793, the court gave him the reign name Cảnh Thịnh. From then on, people called him by that formal name, Emperor Cảnh Thịnh.

A boy of ten could not manage the affairs of state alone. But he was not alone. Before his death, his father had made careful arrangements and left trusted ministers at the boy's side. There was the seasoned general Trần Quang Diệu. There was also the boy's own uncle on his mother's side, Bùi Đắc Tuyên, who took charge of running the country and shared out the heavy tasks.

So, day by day, the boy learned to be a king. He learned to sit straight in the court, to listen as his elders discussed affairs, and to carry on his shoulders what even grown men found heavy. Each morning, surely, he told himself to try hard and to keep well what his father had built with such effort.

The finest thing about him, perhaps, was his devotion as a son. He missed his father and wanted to please him. For him, keeping his father's work was not only a king's duty. It was also a son's way of caring for what his father held dearest. That devotion stayed with him through every day on the throne.

The boy who once stood under the eaves watching the sun had now learned to stand straight in the court. He was still small, and much lay ahead that he could not yet know. But he carried a whole heart set on keeping safe what he had been given.

When people remember Phú Xuân of old, that picture comes back. A boy under the palace eaves, thin shoulders carrying a crown too large for him, eyes still clear. He cherished what his father left, one day at a time, with all his childlike heart. And his story lingers, gentle as the evening sun on the stone steps of Phú Xuân.