Bà Triệu (Civ6)/Civilopedia

Vietnam has a long history of wars with those who would seek to conquer it. Some of the leaders of these fights are regarded as heroes, or even local divinities. One of the earliest of these was named Triệu.
In the early 200s AD, northern Vietnam was occupied by the Wu Kingdom – one of three Chinese kingdoms that were struggling for power across the continent. It would have been a tense situation – the Wu already on edge and nervous in their occupation of what they considered a “barbarian south,” and the Vietnamese constantly agitating for independence. The Chinese might well have remembered the experience of the Han Dynasty, and the uprising of the Trưng Sisters over a century before – the Vietnamese certainly did. And in this environment, in a province then called Cửu Chân, near present-day Hanoi, came a remarkable woman. Bà Triệu (“Lady Triệu,” also called Triệu Thị Trinh, though her original name is unknown) fought not only the occupying Chinese, but also to her own society’s expectations of her. She reportedly said, “I’d like to ride storms, kill the killer whales in the open sea, drive out the foreign aggressors, reconquer the country, undo the ties of serfdom, and never bend my back to be the concubine of whatever man.”
Her early life was fraught with loss, oppression, and abuse. She was orphaned, and raised by her brother and his wife, who was less than accepting of the extra mouth to feed. Life was difficult in Vietnam during that time, but Triệu decided to do something about it.
When Triệu turned nineteen, she left her abusive household and murdered her sister-in-law on the way out. She fled to a nearby mountain and began to prepare for war, day and night, for months on end. She was angry: about her past, about the oppression her people faced, about the way women were expected to live at the time, and she sought a way to end these injustices. Word began to spread about a mighty warrior on the mountaintop preparing a rebellion against the Chinese, and warriors flocked to Triệu. These rumors led her brother (who didn’t seem to mind that his wife was dead – perhaps this says something about Triệu’s sister-in-law…) up the mountain, where he begged her to give up her fight. Triệu wouldn’t be dissuaded, and she ultimately convinced her brother to join her and her thousand-warrior army.
In 248, Bà Triệu struck. She fought in over thirty battles, using guerilla tactics against an asymmetrically powerful occupying force – a theme that was to recur in Vietnamese history. The Chinese at first underestimated her because she was a woman, but as time went on, she became a near-mythic, terrifying figure. Rumor had it she was over nine feet tall and rode into battle on an elephant, crying out with a voice like a temple bell. She wore bright golden armor or, on other occasions, a golden robe (concealing, according to one account, yard-long breasts that she threw over her shoulders while riding) and carried a sword in each hand. Most frightening of all was her beauty and fiery temper. Her prowess on the field and uniform earned her the title “The Lady General Clad in Golden Robe.”
Lu Yin, the military general charged with putting down Triệu’s uprising, was getting tired of being humiliated by not only a young opponent, but also a female one. The Wu Dynasty escalated the conflict, pouring more and more troops into Vietnam, until eventually Triệu’s homegrown resistance could not keep up. Her armies dwindled, and after months of heavy fighting, she was ultimately defeated. However, rather than allowing herself to be taken by her enemy, she chose her own death and allegedly drowned herself in a river. She was only in her early twenties when she died.
Later Vietnamese emperors honored Bà Triệu not only as a national hero, but as a goddess.