Cao Nuong

The old chronicles say

By the Complete Annals, Cao Nuong was the daughter of Trieu Viet Vuong. Nha Lang, son of Ly Phat Tu, asked for her hand; the king agreed, and because he loved his daughter dearly, he had Nha Lang come and live in his household as a son-in-law — the main text even explains the term within the line: when a husband lives in his wife's house, it is called living as a son-in-law. In 570 Nha Lang asked his wife what magic her father had that could drive back his own father's army; she did not see what he was after, secretly brought out the helmet with the dragon claw and showed it to him, and Nha Lang quietly worked out a way to swap the claw. In 571 Ly Phat Tu broke his oath and raised his army; Trieu Viet Vuong saw that he could not hold, fled south with his daughter, and at the Dai Nha estuary, blocked by the water, threw himself into the sea.¹²

The main text of the Complete Annals does not say how she died afterward. Writing about My Chau, Ngo Si Lien suspected that the chronicler, seeing that both the Thuc and the Trieu lost their countries through a son-in-law, took one event and told it twice, and he said that the daughter of Trieu Viet Vuong had been written into the same scene of marking the road, just like My Chau. But the annal of Trieu Viet Vuong in the Complete Annals as we have it contains no such scene: of Cao Nuong it records only that she secretly showed her husband the helmet, and then fled south with her father. Under the Nguyen, when the Cuong muc retells this scene, it says outright what the Complete Annals leaves unspoken: the king, having lost the dragon claw, fled south with Cao Nuong.³¹²⁴