Bảo Long

Bảo Long in his first year of life

Crown Prince Bảo Long as a child in ceremonial clothing

Nguyễn Phúc Bảo Long (阮 福 保 隆, born January 4, 1936 in Huế ; † July 28, 2007 in Sens ) was the last Crown Prince of Vietnam . He was the eldest son of Emperor Bảo Đại and belonged to the Nguyễn dynasty .

Life

Bảo Long was born in early 1936 as the first child of Bảo Đại and his main wife Nam Phương in the Kiến Trung Palace of the Forbidden Purple City . His father had formally sat on Annam's throne for ten years at this point , but had spent most of those years studying in France. Due to the French colonial rule , he had no political power. In 1934 Bảo Đại married the Catholic Vietnamese Marie-Thérèse Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan, who had taken the name Nam Phương on the occasion of the wedding . Because of her beliefs, the Confucian court officials and the majority of the population were hostile to her; because of her marriage to a non-Christian, the Catholic community had turned away from her. Since Bảo Đại soon returned to traditional polygamy and entered into relationships with other women, the marriage was broken up after a short time.

On September 17, 1938, Prince Bảo Long was officially appointed heir to the throne ( Đông Cung Hoàng Thái tử ); On March 7, 1939, the official inauguration followed in the Cần Chánh Palace . In 1945 he became Crown Prince of the pro- Japanese All-Vietnamese Empire , which was abolished by the Việt Minh after only six months .

From the end of 1945, the French returning to Indochina were looking for a Vietnamese leader who should be installed as a pro-French opponent to Hồ Chí Minh . Since De Gaulle's favorite , the ex-ruler Duy Tân , had died shortly before, the young Bảo Long was also considered in the meantime; the corresponding plans were not pursued further due to his young age. Instead, in the end, due to the lack of alternatives, the choice fell on his father Bảo Đại, although he was considered unsuitable and had no support among the population. In mid-1949, Bảo Đại was appointed head of state of Vietnam .

The mother had already left the country in 1947, after the outbreak of the Indochina War , with Prince Bảo Long and his four younger siblings in 1947 and moved to France, where the family lived in the Château Thorenc near Cannes . The children also adopted the Catholic faith, which gave hope to Christian monarchist circles for a Catholic ruling dynasty in Vietnam. Bảo Long attended the École des Roches in Normandy and then studied at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris.

In 1953 he took part in the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth II as the official representative of Vietnam . In 1954, in absentia - he never returned to his homeland after 1947 - he was appointed heir to the throne of Vietnam when he came of age (although it was not a monarchy). The partition of Vietnam as a result of the Indochina Conference and the deposition of his father by Ngô Đình Diệm the following year put an end to all hopes for a restoration of the Vietnamese Empire.

Bảo Long began a military career in the French service: after attending the Saint-Cyr officers' academy and the Saumur cavalry school , he fought as an officer of the 1st cavalry regiment of the Foreign Legion in the Algerian war and received several awards here. He finished his combat service with the rank of captain and became a member of the famous Cadre Noir riding school before retiring from the military after about ten years.

He then settled in the Paris area and worked as an investment banker . He never married and remained childless, but had a relationship with designer Isabelle Hebey for a while . He moved to London in the mid-1990s. He did not have a good relationship with his father, who also lived in France. After his death in 1997 he succeeded him as head of the imperial dynasty.

Prince Bảo Long received numerous awards; In addition to the Order of the Dragon of Annam , the Royal Order of Cambodia , the Order of the Million Elephants and the White Umbrella and the National Order of Vietnam from his time as Crown Prince, he also wore the Croix de la Valeur militaire with three stars, the North Africa Medal and the French National Order of Merit . He died in 2007 and was buried next to his mother in Chabrignac ( Limousin ).

The new head of the family was his brother Bảo Thắng .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Christopher Buyers, The Royal Ark : Royal and Ruling Houses of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas: Vietnam (with picture)
2. ↑ Jessica M. Chapman: Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam , Cornell University Press, 2013, p. 157
3. ↑ Bruce M. Lockhart: Monarchy and Decolonization in Indochina , In: Marc Frey , Ronald W. Pruessen, Tai Yong Tan: The Transformation of Southeast Asia: International Perspectives on Decolonization , ME Sharpe, 2003, p. 55
4. ↑ Jacques Dalloz : The war in Indo-China 1945-54 , Gill and Macmillan, 1990, p. 111 ( “Bao Long had been brought up in the faith by a Christian mother, and some saw him as the Clovis of Vietnam” )
5. ↑ Bảo Long - Le dernier Đông Cung Hoàng Thái Tử (with pictures)
6. ↑ Christopher Petkanas: Isabelle Hebey - Nerves of Steel , In: T: The New York Times Style Magazine , November 4, 2011
7. ^ Justin Corfield: The History of Vietnam , ABC-CLIO, 2008, p. 128
8. ↑ VietNamNet: Vietnamese crown prince passes away ( Memento of October 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive )