Banished Potentates by Robert Aldrich;

Author:Robert Aldrich;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Manchester University Press

Imperial lives on a tropical island

The exile of Duy Tan and Thanh Thai produced the curious circumstance of two deposed emperors, father and son, living on the same small island. They had never enjoyed close relations. Thanh Thai blamed his son’s involvement in the 1916 anti-colonial plot for the overseas exile he had desperately wished to avoid in 1907. He also disapproved of his son’s efforts at naturalisation.99 The French identified a particularly thorny issue between the two men. The governor-general of Indochina, mentioning the ‘dissension that exists’, revealed that on the eve of their departure, Duy Tan accused his wife of having sexual relations with his father: ‘Though he provided no evidence for what he said and one should beware of his inventive imagination, such a fact does not appear unlikely given the mores of Prince Buu Lan.’ The governor-general surmised, not unreasonably, that such a liaison would ‘be of a nature to create grave conflicts between the two princes’, and advised that Thanh Thai be made to understand that his status provided no immunity from the law if he abused paternal authority or if his conduct gave rise to ‘similar scandals to those that motivated his removal’.100

Duy Tan himself wrote to the French in 1916: ‘My father and I do not get along, that is to say, he abuses the [filial] submission that I show to him out of respect.’ He was temporarily interned in the same compound in Cap Saint-Jacques as Thanh Thai, who expected that he act as an obedient child. He forbade Duy Tan to go out without him, and when they did, ‘he slapped me or kicked me when it pleased him’; ‘he behaves towards me as to a slave’. Thanh Thai’s record made Duy Tan fear that ‘he will continue on me his habits of brutality and cruelty’. He complained that although Thanh Thai received a larger pension than he did, his father spent Duy Tan’s money. On their journey to Réunion, ‘he brutalised me several times and what I say can be attested by the whole ship’. Furthermore, he ‘behaved towards me in a fashion impossible to put into a letter’ – a discreet reference, perhaps, to Thanh Thai’s affair with his wife.

Soon after their arrival a report to the governor-general of Indochina stated that relations between father and son had deteriorated further and forced intervention to ‘avoid unfortunate scenes’ (of an unspecified nature). Thanh Thai and Duy Tan were no longer on speaking terms. Duy Tan wanted to file an official police complaint against his father about the relations with his wife, as well as to begin divorce proceedings. An official cautioned obedience to French law, but also inquired about Indochinese divorce law, since Duy Tan argued that the French laws were inapplicable to him.101 A coded telegram from Hanoi failed to clarify the matter, but suggested that the civil code in Cochinchina might be the appropriate legal instrument.102 The Indochinese government later advised Réunionnais authorities that Duy Tan might formally repudiate his wife, and she could then return, at his expense, to Vietnam.

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