吳士連
From his extensive 72 comments in "Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư", Ngô Sĩ Liên appeared to be a Neo-Confucian scholar. He often quoted from Confucian literature in criticizing an event or a decision of the previous dynasties that, according to Ngô Sĩ Liên, did not follow the Confucian codes for an appropriate ruling institution. According to O. W. Wolters, Ngô Sĩ Liên respected the Confucian perspective to the extent that the highest praise he could lavish on a Vietnamese ruler was that his achievements could not be bettered by even the most famous Chinese emperors in antiquity. However, the criticism and often harsh remarks of Ngô Sĩ Liên towards previous dynasties, especially the Trần Dynasty, could be understood as the historian's concern for the current dynasty, because the Lê Dynasty would fall into collapse unless it could avoid the mistakes that were committed by its predecessors like the Trần Dynasty. Besides, the historian paid attention in defining the identity of the nation; a typical example of this intention was the existence of the Hồng Bàng Dynasty in Peripheral Records, Ngô Sĩ Liên's introduction of this dynasty was challenged by several historians for the lack of information and the real motive of the historian in writing about Hùng kings. Some remarked that Ngô Sĩ Liên made the Hồng Bàng Dynasty the first dynasty of Vietnam only because he wanted to emphasize the identity and the independence of Vietnam from China.