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Emperor Bao Dai – photo courtesy of Phan Thuan An.
Emperor Bao Dai at his coronation.
seemed to have gone deaf’. ‘My announcement appeared as a thunderbolt rendering everybody petrified’. His own private secretary, Pham Khac Hoe, who was present at the ceremony, on the other hand, remembered it as a time that everybody clapped and cheered and that Bao Dai had read his statement in an emotional voice that wavered at times. In this atmosphere of general confusion in that fateful afternoon, Bao Dai quickly performed the required ceremony of handing over his symbols of royal authority - his Gold Seal (Kim An) and his Sword of Mandate - to representatives of Ho Chi Minh; Tran Huy Lieu, Nguyen Luong Bang and Cu Huy Can. The process of the abdication ceremony had been discussed and agreed between the court and representatives of the new government only the day before, as soon as the delegation from Hanoi arrived in Hue. According to Pham Khac Hoe, Bao Dai ‘dressed for the last time in his royal golden robes, a golden cloth headdress for crown, and embroidered shoes on his feet’. In the negotiation over the process of the ceremony, one of the requests that Bao Dai asked and was accepted was that his royal flag would be raised once more. During the ceremony, the royal yellow flag was raised and then lowered following his statement of abdication, to be replaced by the Red and Yellow flag of the new revolutionary government. The ceremony ended with 21 ceremonial shots of canon to announce that the exchange of power had been completed. The abdication ceremony over, Bao Dai left quickly and quietly, some said with tears in his eyes, to assume his new mantle of being Ngo Mon – view from inside the Citadel.
Blue and White Ceramic steam bowl.
Phap Lam plate. Emperor Bao Dai’s shoes. 18
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