Trung Trac

The old chronicles say

The Book of the Later Han, written in the fifth century, introduces her through two ties: the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh district, and the wife of Thi Sach, a man of Chu Dien. The father has no name, only a title; more than a thousand years later the Complete Annals still record her only as the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh district. The Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, a lost book surviving through the Thuy kinh chu, calls the husband the son of the Lac general of Chu Dien, so the marriage joined two lineages that held power in two districts. The names of the sisters' parents so often told today are in none of the histories used here; they come from shrine legends.²³⁵

The reason for the rising changes shape with the year each book was written. The Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky gives none; it only describes a woman of nerve and courage who rose in arms with her husband. The Book of the Later Han says To Dinh bound her with the law, and she was angry and so rebelled — the one bound was her, not her husband. The Viet su luoc adds: her actions did not follow the law. The Complete Annals keep the law and add an enmity: To Dinh had killed her husband; among the books compared, this is the first time that detail is plainly recorded. The Viet su tieu an has her march out while not yet out of mourning; the Cuong muc calls To Dinh greedy and cruel, the Viet Nam su luoc of 1920 calls him brutal, and both have him kill her husband.^5283161718

The main text of the Book of the Later Han wraps her years as sovereign in a single phrase: she set herself up as queen, without saying where. The capital at Me Linh comes from the Viet chi, which Li Xian of the Tang quotes in his commentary, and from the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, in which she subdued the Lac generals and all of them turned to her as their sovereign. The Complete Annals give her an annal of her own, just two folios long. The Viet su luoc has none for the sisters; her story sits under the name of Ma Yuan. The Nguyen court's Cuong muc removed the annal on purpose, holding that the Trung clan had not yet made a state, though the same book carries a comment from the Nguyen king full of praise.^275181920

Even the direction of her last movement depends on who is writing. In the Book of the Later Han, Cam Khe is the place Ma Yuan pursued Trung Trac and her band to, defeating them several times. In the Complete Annals, it is the place Queen Trung herself fell back to hold, seeing the enemy was too strong, while her troops, because their ruler was a woman, scattered and ran. Li Xian of the Tang placed a note right after the words sending the heads to Luoyang, saying she fled into the Kim Khe cave and was caught only after two years, and set down both without ruling between them. The Cuong muc, twelve centuries later, arranged things the same way: the death in the main text, the cave in the note.⁴⁹⁷¹⁰

How later ages remembered

Later generations remembered those three years through temples more than through records. The Complete Annals record that the people of the region loved Queen Trung and built a temple to worship her. In the eighteenth century Ngo Thi Si noted that at the sisters' temple the ritual objects were all lacquered black, and worshippers in red had to take it off, for tradition held that Queen Trung died in war, and red looks like blood. Today, according to the websites of state cultural agencies, the Ha Loi temple holds its festival on the sixth day of the first lunar month, recorded as the day the sisters feasted their troops; the Hat Mon temple on the sixth day of the third month; the Dong Nhan site on the sixth day of the second month, recorded as the day the sisters passed away.^1221131415