Emperor Dong Khanh

In the old capital of Hue stands a golden throne, and three people from one family climbed onto it in turn. The grandfather sat first. Later came his son. Later still came his grandson. The one who began the line was a young emperor with a gentle nature. He died at the age of 24, before he could see his son and grandson grow up and sit exactly where he had sat. That young emperor was Đồng Khánh.

His birth name was Nguyễn Phúc Ưng Kỷ, and some books also call him Ưng Đường. He was born in 1864. He was the ninth emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty. That was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945. Like the other Nguyễn emperors, he lived and ruled in Hue, the old capital.

He took the throne on September 19, 1885, and chose the reign name Đồng Khánh. That name stayed with him for the rest of his life. People remember him not by his birth name, but by those two familiar words.

His was an age of great change. Before him, another emperor had left the capital, and the French had by then pushed deep into the country. He stepped onto the throne in those hard days, when the whole court was struggling to cope with so much that was new and hard to bear.

Yet what the records keep about the man himself is quiet and gentle. He was kind by nature. He liked elegance and a neat, orderly kind of beauty. At heart he wanted to modernize, which meant learning the new things of his age. A gentle emperor, fond of refinement and curious about what was new: that is how people long ago remembered Đồng Khánh.

He did not live long. Đồng Khánh died in 1889. At 24, many people today are still studying or have just started their first job. Yet he had become emperor and left this world within a few short years on the throne.

If the story stopped here, it would be very short. But what keeps his name alive is his family line, the people of his blood who climbed onto the throne after him.

Đồng Khánh had a son, and that son was Emperor Khải Định. Khải Định grew up. Many years after his father's death, he too took the throne, in the royal city of Hue, the very throne his father had once sat on.

Nor did it end with two generations. Khải Định had a son as well, and that son later sat in the same place. He was Emperor Bảo Đại, the last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty. That made Đồng Khánh his grandfather.

There is something strange in this line of three. The grandfather left while still very young. He had not seen his son, let alone his grandson, grow up to be emperor. Yet the line he began went on, generation after generation, until it brought his son and then his grandson to the place where he had once stood.

Behind Khải Định and Bảo Đại there stands one more figure, a young grandfather, gentle and fond of elegance, standing quietly. He was the first of the three to take the throne, and he opened the last stretch of a dynasty. That was Emperor Đồng Khánh.