The three years of Queen Trung

In AD 40, Trung Trac set herself up as queen. In 43, it was all over. In between are three years in which the land of Giao Chi had a woman on the throne.

How did she rule? Who served as her officials, what orders did she give, by what law were disputes judged? The most honest answer is that almost no one knows. The national history of the Le dynasty gave her a whole annal of her own, and that annal runs to just two folios.¹

The Book of the Later Han records the rising in two of its books, and in both places it wraps those three years in the same phrase: Trac set herself up as queen.²³

In book 86, in the very next sentence, the writer's brush turns to the Han side. The regional inspector of Giao Chi and the commandery governors could do no more than defend themselves. Emperor Guangwu issued an edict to Truong Sa, Hop Pho and Giao Chi to make ready carts and boats, repair roads and bridges, clear the mountain streams and store up grain. Then, in the year 42, the Han sent a general south with an army.²

So in exactly the place where those three years belong, this official history records the other side getting ready. Where the woman who had made herself queen was, what she did, whom she put in charge of what — the passage has not a single line.

Not even her capital is in the main text. You have to go down to the layer of commentary. The Tang commentary of Li Xian quotes a lost book, the Viet chi, which records that Trung Trac raised troops and made her capital in the district of Me Linh.⁴

Another lost book, the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, quoted in the Thuy kinh chu, adds exactly one stroke to the picture of how she held power: she subdued the Lac generals, and all of them turned to Trung Trac as their sovereign, with her seat of government in Me Linh district.⁵ Beneath her stood the Lac generals — men who bore the same title as her father.

The Dai Viet su ky toan thu does it differently. It gives her an annal of her own, the Annal of Trung Nu Vuong — Queen Trung — set between the annal of the period under the Western Han and the annal of the period under the Eastern Han. In the run of the national history, those three years are a dynasty.¹

But those two folios have to carry everything: her background, why she took up arms, the sixty-five cities, and the last battle. About the reign itself, what the Complete Annals can offer is that she made her capital at Me Linh, along with one odd detail. The main text says she was by origin of the Lac clan, and then a later passage records that only at that time did she take the surname Trung.¹

More telling is the way that same history names these three years. A note in small print at the head of the annal says the queen drove out To Dinh and founded a state and took the royal title, but because the ruler was a woman she could not achieve the work of restoration. And where her army breaks and scatters, the main text uses four characters, quoc thong phuc tuyet: the line of the realm was broken again. That word "again" means the line had once been joined.¹

Ngo Si Lien is a little more guarded. His comment says that Lady Trung raised her arm and gave a single shout, and the line of our Viet realm very nearly came together.⁶

Le Van Huu, on the other hand, praises her outright: two women gave a single shout and sixty-five cities answered; founding a state and taking the royal title was as easy as turning over a hand. Then he turns to rebuke the men of more than a thousand years, from after the Trieu to before the Ngo, who knew only how to bow their heads as servants of the northerners.⁷

The way the Complete Annals arranged things was not the only way. The Viet su luoc, compiled around the fourteenth century, has an annal for the Trieu dynasty but none for the Trung sisters. Her story sits in the section on the officials who governed the land in successive ages, under the entry for Ma Yuan — that is, under the name of the very general who ended those three years.⁸

In the nineteenth century, the Nguyen court's Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc removed the annal on purpose. Its editorial principles set out a clause just for this:

The Trung clan raised troops to take revenge, but had not yet made a state. Si Nhiep came by command to hold the territory, and never styled himself king. They are not the same as An Duong Vuong and Trieu Viet Vuong. The old histories each gave them an annal of their own; now these are removed, and events are simply recorded as they happened, so as to keep to the facts, still placed within the annals of the period under the Han.⁹

The clause does not explain what it would take to count as a state. But the consequence is plain to see in the main text. The rising becomes one entry under the year Canh Ty, the sixteenth year of Jianwu under the Han, and its leader is called a woman of Giao Chi, Trung Trac.¹⁰ Those are, word for word, the words the Book of the Later Han uses to open this story.²

The irony is that the same book carries a comment from the Nguyen king full of praise. The two Trung ladies, though only women in skirts and hairpins, raised a righteous cause and shook the Han court; though their strength was small and the times against them, it was enough to stir men's hearts and leave a light in the pages of history.¹⁰ Removing the annal was a matter of the rules for recording history, not a rebuke.

Keep the annal or erase it, both sides stand on the same thin ground of facts: a capital at Me Linh, a royal title, and three years.