Imperial Concubine Phi Yến (Vietnamese: Thứ phi Hoàng Phi Yến), born Lê Thị Răm (Hán-Nôm: 黎氏菻), is a controversial local legend of the Côn Đảo archipelago, Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu province. According to the legend she was the concubine of Lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh and gave birth to a son known as Prince Cải, she advised Lord Ánh not to ask foreigners for help as that would make their victory less glorious and might cause issues in future, these comments caused Lord Ánh to be suspicious of her motives and to lock her up in a cave. Later when their toddler asked where his mother was he killed him. She grieved their son and later committed suicide as she was touched by a butcher during a vegetarian festival seeing it as "harming her honour as a concubine". This caused the villagers of Côn Đảo to hold a festival in her honour every year.
In early 2022 the festival honouring her death was recognised as an intangible part of the national cultural heritage (di sản văn hóa phi vật thể quốc gia) of Vietnam. However, historians didn't receive this move by the government of Vietnam well.
Historians and Nguyễn dynasty scholars pointed out there are quite a number of inconsistencies with this story, namely that the island of Côn Lôn where Nguyễn Phúc Ánh fled to is actually Koh Rong in southern Cambodia and not Côn Đảo, also at the time that the story supposedly took place Nguyễn Phúc Ánh was a lord (主, Chúa) or king (國王, Quốc vương) and wasn't yet elevated to the status of Emperor (皇帝, Hoàng đế), something which he would only become in 1802 after crowing himself the Gia Long Emperor. So, it would make no sense for him to have a Thứ phi Hoàng in the 1780s. In reality the actual origins of her story are likely a localised version of the Goddess Thủy Long (Thủy Long thần nữ).
Representatives of the Nguyễn Phúc / Nguyễn Phước clan have described the story as insulting the legacy and character of their ancestor and in April 2022 they petitioned to revoke the status of her festival as an intangible cultural heritage. In June 2022 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism responded and stated that the festival had to be renamed to honour Bà Phi Yến (Mrs. Phi Yến) instead of Thứ phi Hoàng Phi Yến to ensuring that "the principle of respecting the subject community of the heritage, avoiding misunderstanding about history, or causing conflicts among communities in the great unity of the Vietnamese people".
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