Lạc Long Quân
Based on Wikipedia: Lạc Long Quân
The Dragon King Who Fathered a Nation
Every Vietnamese person alive today, all ninety-eight million of them, traces their ancestry back to a single mythological event: a sac containing one hundred eggs.
This is the story of Lạc Long Quân, the Dragon King, and how he became the founding father of an entire civilization through what might be the most amicable divorce in the history of mythology.
A Marriage of Incompatible Elements
Lạc Long Quân was no ordinary king. His father, Kinh Dương Vương, ruled the ancient kingdom of Xích Quỷ, but his mother was Thần Long, a dragon goddess who commanded both the sky and the ocean. This made Lạc Long Quân something more than human—a being caught between the terrestrial world and the realm of dragons and immortals.
He fell in love with Âu Cơ, a mountain goddess who was herself descended from immortals. Their union would seem blessed by heaven itself. And in a way, it was—Âu Cơ gave birth to a sac containing one hundred eggs, which hatched into one hundred sons. This is the mythological explanation for why Vietnamese people sometimes call themselves "Con Rồng Cháu Tiên," meaning "Children of the Dragon, Grandchildren of the Immortal."
But even divine love has its complications.
One day, Lạc Long Quân turned to his wife and spoke words that still resonate through Vietnamese culture thousands of years later: "I am descended from dragons, you from immortals. We are as incompatible as water is with fire. So we cannot continue in harmony."
This wasn't a bitter split. There were no arguments, no courts, no custody battles. Instead, they simply divided their children equally. Fifty sons followed their father south toward the sea, while the other fifty accompanied their mother north into the mountains. The eldest son, who went with Âu Cơ, would eventually return to succeed his father as the first of the legendary Hùng Kings, establishing a dynasty that ruled Vietnam for thousands of years.
Vietnamese historians sometimes call this the earliest divorce in their nation's history. What makes it remarkable is its civility and its symbolic power—it explains why Vietnamese people have always inhabited both the coastal lowlands and the mountainous highlands, and why they consider all Vietnamese to be siblings regardless of region.
The Monster Slayer
Before his famous separation from Âu Cơ, Lạc Long Quân earned his legendary status the hard way: by killing monsters that terrorized his people.
The kingdom of Văn Lang in those ancient times was isolated and undeveloped. The people lived in fear of forces they couldn't control. Chief among these terrors was Ngư Tinh, a colossal fish that had lurked in the Eastern Sea for centuries. This was no ordinary sea creature. Its mouth was so vast it could swallow an entire ship—complete with ten fishermen—in a single gulp. When it swam, waves rose high enough to touch the sky, drowning any vessel unfortunate enough to cross its path.
Ngư Tinh made its lair in a cave beneath the sea, topped by a mountain so massive it divided the waters into two separate regions. Sailors learned to avoid those waters. Fishermen abandoned their livelihoods. The creature had become an apex predator with no challenger.
Lạc Long Quân decided he would be that challenger.
His plan was clever rather than simply brave. He built an enormous ship, then constructed a human-shaped piece of metal and heated it until it glowed. He sailed directly toward the monster's nest, holding the burning effigy aloft. Ngư Tinh, seeing what it believed was a human, opened its cavernous mouth to swallow its prey. The dragon king hurled the searing metal down the creature's throat.
The fish thrashed in agony, its throat burning, trying desperately to capsize the king's ship. But Lạc Long Quân drew his sword and went to work. When the battle ended, Ngư Tinh lay in three pieces, and the seas were safe once more.
The Nine-Tailed Fox
The fish was not the only ancient evil plaguing the land.
In the region of Long Biên, beneath Rock Mountain in the west, there lived a fox that had survived for a thousand years. In that millennium, she had grown powerful enough to sprout nine tails—in East Asian mythology, a sign of immense supernatural power. Her name was Hồ Tinh, the fox spirit.
This fox was more insidious than the sea monster. Rather than simply devouring prey, she used shapeshifting magic to disguise herself as a human. She would lure unsuspecting villagers—both men and women—into her cave, where she devoured them at leisure. For centuries, her predation had spread terror from Long Biên all the way to Tản Viên mountain. Entire villages had been abandoned as families fled to escape becoming the fox's next meal.
Lạc Long Quân traveled to the beast's lair with his sword. When he arrived at the cave entrance, Hồ Tinh smelled human flesh and emerged to confront whoever had dared enter her domain. But this was no ordinary human.
The dragon king called upon the elements themselves. Wind and thunder converged on the fox spirit, trapping her in a prison of elemental fury. For three days, the battle raged. Finally, weakened and desperate, Hồ Tinh tried to flee. Lạc Long Quân caught her and took her head.
He then descended into the cave and found survivors—villagers she had captured but not yet consumed. He led them out of the darkness and returned them to their homes in Long Biên.
The Genealogical Puzzle
For a figure so central to Vietnamese identity, Lạc Long Quân's story presents some uncomfortable complications.
The fifteenth-century historian Ngô Sĩ Liên, who compiled the comprehensive "Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư" (Complete Historical Records of Great Việt), noticed something troubling about the romantic origins of the Vietnamese people. According to the genealogy, Lạc Long Quân's father Kinh Dương Vương and Âu Cơ's grandfather Đế Nghi were brothers.
This would make Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ first cousins once removed.
Ngô Sĩ Liên diplomatically described the relationship between the two progenitors as "somewhat primitive," which may be the most understated critique in Vietnamese historiography.
Later scholars were less diplomatic. Emperor Tự Đức, who ruled Vietnam in the nineteenth century, reviewed the historical records and declared the tales of Kinh Dương Vương and Lạc Long Quân to be "stories referring to buffalo ghosts, snake gods, and myths without standards." He ordered both figures removed from the official history entirely.
The emperor had a point about historical rigor. The earliest written accounts of Lạc Long Quân come from the fourteenth-century "Lĩnh Nam chích quái" (Wonders Plucked from the Dust of Linh-nam), which collected local legends and folklore. These stories were then incorporated into the sixteenth-century "Hùng Vương sự tích ngọc phả cổ truyền" (Ancient Jade Genealogy of the Hùng Kings). By the time official histories were being compiled, the line between mythology and history had become thoroughly blurred.
Modern historian Liam Christopher Kelley has observed: "Over the centuries, the traditions they created have become second nature. In fact, in the past half century, under the influence of nationalism, those invented traditions have become and are becoming unchangeable facts."
Parallel Myths: The Đạo Mo Version
The Lạc Long Quân story is not the only Vietnamese origin myth. An ancient belief system called Đạo Mo preserves a remarkably similar tale with different characters and fascinating variations.
In this version, the Earth God and the Forest God had a daughter named Shennong. She fell in love with the Dragon God, son of the Water God and the Storm God. The problem? Their families hated each other with the passion that only cosmic beings can muster.
The Forest God sent tree ghosts to harass the young couple. Shennong cut down every one. The Dragon God, ever practical, used the wood to build them a house. The Storm God was furious—he sent hurricanes to blow the house down. But the Dragon God simply rebuilt, making each new house larger and sturdier than the last.
This went on for an incalculable time. Finally, the Dragon God constructed a dwelling that even his father's storms couldn't destroy. He named it "the wind," implying that compared to his love, even storms were nothing but gentle breezes. The Storm God gave up and went away.
Shennong became pregnant and, like Âu Cơ, gave birth to a bag containing hundreds of eggs. These hatched into a hundred children. The Dragon God stayed with his family for a while, caring for his wife and children. Then homesickness overcame him, and he returned to the sea.
He never came back.
Shennong climbed the mountain to look out over the ocean, waiting for her husband forever. Their children scattered across the land, and they called each place they settled a "country"—a word that in Vietnamese carries echoes of their origins, a way of staying connected to each other and to the hope that someday their father might return.
This version is sadder than the official myth. There's no amicable divorce, no equal division of children, no explanation of cosmic incompatibility. Just a man who went away and a woman who spent eternity waiting.
Living Memory
Walk through any major city in Vietnam today and you'll find streets named after Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ. They're usually perpendicular to each other, intersecting at right angles—a geographical reminder of the parents who went their separate ways but remain forever connected through their children.
The worship of Lạc Long Quân isn't merely symbolic. In Bình Đà village, part of the Thanh Oai district of Hanoi, stands Nội Temple, a national monument dedicated to the dragon king. The temple houses a statue of Lạc Long Quân along with precious antiques accumulated over centuries. Most striking is a large inscription bearing four Chinese characters: "VI BÁCH VIỆT TỔ," meaning "Ancestor of the Hundred Việt."
The phrase "Bách Việt" or "Hundred Việt" refers to the various ethnic groups that once inhabited southern China and northern Vietnam. By claiming Lạc Long Quân as their common ancestor, Vietnamese people assert an identity that predates modern national boundaries.
The temple has been a site of pilgrimage for over a millennium. In the year 1032, Emperor Lý Thái Tông issued a decree formally honoring Lạc Long Quân. Over the following six centuries, sixteen emperors personally traveled to Bình Đà to conduct ceremonies for the National Ancestor. Sixteen imperial decrees honoring him as "Khai Quốc Thần" (God Who Founded the Nation) are preserved in the temple and the National Museum of History.
The tradition continues. Every year during the festival season, a delegation from Hùng Temple in Phú Thọ province—the site associated with the Hùng Kings who descended from Lạc Long Quân's eldest son—travels to Nội Temple to offer incense. They formally invite the Holy Ancestor to attend the Hùng Temple festival on the tenth day of the third lunar month.
It's a gesture that spans three thousand years of history, connecting the present day to a time when dragons walked the earth and a king could slay monsters with a sword and burning metal.
Myth and Nation
Vietnamese schoolchildren learn the story of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ in primary school. It's taught not as mythology but as the foundation of national identity—the explanation for why Vietnamese people exist and why they belong to a single family.
This use of mythology for nation-building is hardly unique to Vietnam. The Romans had Romulus and Remus, suckled by a wolf. The Japanese have Amaterasu, the sun goddess whose descendants became emperors. The British had King Arthur. Every nation needs an origin story that makes its people feel connected to something larger than themselves.
What's distinctive about the Vietnamese myth is its emphasis on division and unity simultaneously. The hundred children split into two groups, going to the mountains and the sea, yet they remain siblings. The parents separate, yet they're both honored equally. The story acknowledges difference while insisting on fundamental kinship.
Perhaps this explains why the myth has survived Emperor Tự Đức's attempts to excise it from official history. Perhaps it explains why streets bearing these names crisscross every Vietnamese city. Perhaps it explains why, nearly two millennia after the myth was first recorded, Vietnamese people still identify as "Children of the Dragon, Grandchildren of the Immortal."
Some facts are too useful to be merely true.
And some stories are too powerful to be merely mythological.
Lạc Long Quân may never have existed as a historical figure. The hundred eggs almost certainly didn't hatch into the progenitors of an entire people. The fish monster and the nine-tailed fox were probably metaphors for natural disasters or rival tribes rather than literal creatures.
But for nearly a hundred million people, the Dragon King remains father to them all.