16. Forging a National Identity
The Chinese set out to reconquer Vietnam, and the Trung sisters led Vietnamese armies to keep the invaders out. Despite being greatly outnumbered, the badass siblings managed to fend off the Chinese for three years. Eventually, however, the Chinese concentrated an overwhelming force to recapture Vietnam, and in 43 AD, the Trung sisters were finally defeated in battle. Captured, they were decapitated by the Chinese, who then went on to reassert their control over Vietnam.
Their independent state might have been short-lived, but the Trung sisters succeeded in planting the seeds of Vietnamese national identity. Conventional wisdom in Vietnam holds that if the Trung sisters had not rebelled and fought against the Chinese, Vietnam would have been wholly absorbed and dissolved into China, and there would be no Vietnamese nation today.