Avenging a Husband, Uniting in Revolt
Trung Trac’s husband was put to death for angering the local Han officials, and this event became the direct spark of her uniting with her sister Trung Nhi and the local tribal chiefs to revolt against Han rule; the rebel army swiftly took Jiaozhi and more than sixty surrounding cities, for a time driving Han power wholly out of the region, and Trung Trac then set herself up as king, founding a briefly independent local regime — this revolt was the first large-scale organized national resistance movement in ancient Vietnamese history.
The Legend of Fighting on Elephants and the Drowning of Honor
In Vietnamese folk legend and later artistic imagery, the Trung Sisters are often portrayed as valiant women generals riding war elephants and leading the charge in person, an image that thereafter became one of the most recognizable national-hero symbols in Vietnamese culture. The Han Emperor Guangwu sent the general Ma Yuan south to suppress them, and the rebel army was at last no match for the elite Han troops; by tradition the two sisters, after defeat, chose to drown themselves to die for honor rather than suffer disgrace at the enemy’s hands, a tragic end thereafter long retold and commemorated in Vietnamese histories and folk legend through the ages.