Dục ÃÂức (, ; born Nguyá» n Phúc ïng ÃÂi, 23 February 1852 â 6 October 1883), was emperor of Vietnam for three days, from 20 to 23 July 1883. He was the fifth emperor of the Nguyá» n dynasty and father of Emperor Thành Thái, who ruled from 1889 to 1907.
Dục ÃÂức was born Nguyá» n Phúc ïng ÃÂi and at age 17 was renamed Nguyá» n Phúc ïng Chân (). He was the second son of Nguyá» n Phúc Há»Âng Y, the fourth brother of Emperor Tá»± ÃÂức. He and his two cousins, Chanh Mong (later Emperor ÃÂá»Âng Khánh) and Duong Thien (Kiến Phúc), sons of Tá»± ÃÂức's twenty-sixth brother Thien Thai Vuong, were adopted by the emperor, who had no children of his own.
After Tá»± ÃÂức's death, his three regents, Nguyá» n VÃÂn Tðá»Âng, Tôn Thất Thuyết and Tran Tien Thanh, declared the thirty-one-year-old Dục ÃÂức would succeed him. This move was evidently controversial. Historian Pham Van Son and others write that Tá»± ÃÂức had determined Dục ÃÂức too decadent to rule, and amended his will to name Kiến Phúc as his successor instead. However, the Tam Cung, an alliance of powerful palace women, favored Dục ÃÂức, and convinced the regents to alter the will and appoint him Emperor.
Dục ÃÂức ruled for only three days before he was deposed and sentenced to death by the same regents who had enthroned him. The reasons are unclear. Pham Van Son wrote that Dục ÃÂức so embarrassed the court with his debauchery at the coronation that Tôn Thất Thuyết revealed the incriminating sections of Tá»± ÃÂức's will. The court quickly ruled to execute him with poison for violating the mourning rules and buried him in an unmarked grave, a notably disproportionate sentence. Other contemporary historians make no mention of this episode and say that Dục ÃÂức was not executed but rather was left to die in captivity, a likelier sequence of events considering that he lived for another three months. The true motivation for the overthrow may have been political; the regents may have feared Dục ÃÂức would strip them of the power they enjoyed under the weak Tá»± ÃÂức.
With Dục ÃÂức in captivity, the regents named his 34-year-old uncle Hiá»Âp Hòa, Tá»± ÃÂức's half-brother, as emperor. They may have skipped over Dục ÃÂức's adoptive brothers to mitigate the backlash from the court women who had favored Dục ÃÂức. Open protest of the regents' actions came from one senior official, Phan ÃÂình Phùng, but he was quickly arrested and stripped of his position. During his brief reign, Hiá»Âp Hòa similarly tried to rein in the regents' influence, but failed; he in turn was soon deposed and sentenced to die. Modern Vietnamese historians generally regard emperors from Dục ÃÂức to Bảo ÃÂại as puppets controlled by the French colonialists.
After several more years of turmoil, Dục ÃÂức's young son Thành Thái was installed as emperor in 1889. He constructed a mausoleum and shrine complex for his father in Huế known as the Tomb of Dục ÃÂức. This eventually became a family tomb, housing Thành Thái and various other members of the Nguyá» n dynasty.