Emperor Kien Phuc

A little boy of about two toddled through a garden in the royal palace at Hue. His legs were short, and his steps wobbled. Around him were flower beds, rows of trees, and the curved roofs of palace halls, their shadows falling across the courtyard. The boy had a very long name, Nguyễn Phúc Ưng Đăng. Later, people would call him by a shorter and lovelier one, Kiến Phúc.

Ưng Đăng was born in Hue in 1869. His father was a member of the royal family, Nguyễn Phúc Hồng Cai. And this Hồng Cai was a younger brother of Emperor Tự Đức. So royal blood ran in the boy from the day he was born.

There was a particular reason he came to the palace. Emperor Tự Đức had no children. A ruler whose house had no sound of little ones must have felt an empty place in his heart. So the emperor adopted three of his nephews, to cherish them and keep them close, as if they were his own sons. One of the three was Ưng Đăng.

He was brought into the palace when he was only two. He was placed in the care of a kind foster mother, whose title was Học phi. Her name was Nguyễn Văn Thị Hương. A two-year-old had left the arms of his own parents, and a new mother took him in. She sang him to sleep, taught him to eat and to speak, and guided him through his earliest years. She raised him with great care within the walls of the court.

As he grew, the old records say, he was a boy who understood things early. His temper was gentle, and he liked quiet. The palace was vast, and it could offer a child so many things. Yet he chose a joy that was all his own. He loved only books and poetry.

A boy lived in a splendid royal palace, yet what made his eyes light up were the pages of a book. In the morning he sat quietly by his writing desk, tracing each character. In the afternoon he wandered through the flower garden, perhaps watching a petal fall while he turned over a line of poetry he had just read. It was a gentle spirit, growing up between the two loveliest things, books and flowers.

Years passed, and the toddler grew into a teenager. He was still gentle, still quiet, and still in love with books and verses, just as he had been as a small child. He trained himself within the palace, quietly and diligently, like a seedling that keeps reaching upward in its own way.

Then, in 1883, a very large change came to him. That year he took the throne and became emperor. He was given a new reign name, Kiến Phúc. The name stayed with him afterward, lovely as a blessing.

He was about 15. It is an age that still longs for the pages of books and loves verses more than the business of the world. Yet this young man now sat on the throne in the capital at Hue. Kiến Phúc was the seventh emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty. He was one of the youngest ever to take the throne of his country.

And so a 15-year-old, used to books and gardens, put on the robe of an emperor. In his heart there was surely both the shyness of youth and an honest wish. The wish was to do good for the people and for the country, like the fine things he had read in the books of the sages.

Here, at the loveliest picture, the story of Kiến Phúc comes to rest. A boy of two walks into the palace among the flower beds. A youth grows up gentle, fond of books and poetry. A very young man has just stepped onto the throne, his heart full of a sincere wish to serve. He is remembered like this, as a young man who loved the pages of books and the blossoms of flowers.