Empress Nam Phương on her wedding day (1934).
The stoic royal portrait of Marie-Thérèse Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan, the last Empress Consort of Vietnam, belies the controversy behind the wedding. The bride was born into a Catholic merchant family in Cochinchina, a French colony in the Mekong Delta. This was deeply concerning to some of her husband’s subjects. She married in a Buddhist ceremony, but refused to renounce her Catholic faith and requested a dispensation from Pope Pius XI. She was educated in France, giving her a worldly perspective on her husband’s government. And with that education came more concern; perhaps the bride had more French allegiance than Vietnamese. Additionally, the Emperor’s mother and one of his father’s secondary wives preferred a different bride altogether. This takes the stereotype of the ‘abrasive mother-in-law’ to a new level. But marry they did, and Nam Ph’o’ng served as Empress until the 1947 Communist takeover of the country.