Bao Dai - Marriages

Marriages

On 20 March 1934, aged 20, at the imperial city of Huế, Bảo Đại married Marie-Thérèse Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan (died 15 September 1963, Chabrignac, France), a commoner from a wealthy Vietnamese Roman Catholic family. She was renamed as Nam Phương (Southern Scent). The couple had five children: Crown Prince Bảo Long (4 January 1936 – 28 July 2007), Princess Phuong Mai (born 1 August 1937), Princess Phuong Lien (born 3 November 1938), Princess Phuong Dung (born 5 February 1942), and Prince Bảo Thắng (born 9 December 1943). She was granted the title of Empress in 1945.

Bảo Đại had four other wives, three of whom he wed during his marriage to Nam Phương:

  • Phu Ánh, a cousin, whom he married c. 1935, and by whom he had one daughter, Princess Claire Phương Tao
  • Hoang, a Chinese woman, whom he married in 1946
  • Bùi Mộng Điệp, whom he married in 1955 and by whom he had two children, Princess Phương Minh (born 1949) and Prince Bảo An (born 1953)
  • Monique Baudot, a French citizen whom he married in 1972, and who was styled "Imperial Princess" and renamed Monique Vĩnh Thụy. She was known as Empress Thai Phương after her husband's death in 1997.

One of his concubines was a dancer from Hanoi, Lý Lệ Hà

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