Given recent slanderous and absurd accusations made against me by the leadership of the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League, namely that I have been a secret Communist agent in the employ of the Vietnamese government to implode their movement (which nonsense I think gives both us too much credit), I feel it is necessary to let everyone know exactly what has been going on and what has happened to this group which I, apparently now, naively supported for the past six years. I feel this is necessary for principle most of all. The leader of the group, Nguyen Phuc Buu Chanh, has threatened me with an "international legal conspiracy" based on things he believes I was responsible for other people saying about his royal legitimacy. Needless to say, in the United States there is complete freedom of speech and there are no recognized titles or royalty or nobility of any kind, so such legal threats are absurd in the extreme. However, I feel it is necessary to make others aware of the facts of the matter and how this has become a pattern of behavior for this particular royal pretender.
I first wrote to Buu Chanh offering him my support after reading a brief article on the subject in the journal of the International Monarchist League. That was in 1999, not long after joining that group. I was 18-years-old at the time, and the enthusiastic response I received showed me that there were not exactly very strict requirements for becoming a "Member of Great Honor of the Nguyen Imperial Dynasty". Through a lot of study and family connections, I had and still have, a great interest and appreciation for Vietnam and her history and traditions. Although Buu Chanh claimed to have extensive support in the Vietnamese community, powerful political connections etc, it seemed very soon that I was being called upon to do an awful lot. I designed certificates, a group flag, wrote over a hundred web pages and donated money when I was able.
Based on my own experience, I also tried initially to keep away people of questionable character. However, it soon became clear that anyone would be accepted no matter what information I found on these characters. One who stands out was a French man named Johan Domas, who friends at the International Monarchist League warned me about. Buu Chanh ignored my advice, but later dismissed the man when it became clear that his bad reputation was entirely well founded. Since it had been made clear anyone would be accepted, I stopped trying. Over time people joined who claimed all sorts of absurd titles and bogus positions, all of them taken at face-value.
However, things really got interesting with the additions of three men: Carl Lindgren, David Pritchard and Timothy Carmain-Perillos, who claimed to be a count. They immediately tried to get almost everyone else in the group fired, managed to obtain Vietnamese hereditary titles for themselves and managed to get themselves appointed to the top positions of the group, though none had ever shown the slightest interest in Vietnam before this time. They also oversaw the restoration of the old French colonial order, used by the Vietnamese during French rule, the Order of the Dragon of Annam, which was promptly conferred on them and a host of other individuals. They also used this as an opportunity to "suggest" an exchange of orders with the Ethiopian and Rwandan royals.
This flurry of activity got the attention of many individuals who follow Asian royalty and chivalric orders. Questions were raised about the authority of Buu Chanh to confer orders of knighthood and hereditary titles, whether the last Crown Prince and dejure Vietnamese Emperor had any knowledge of this, and why the leadership of this group consisted almost entirely of Americans. The only response to these questions were attacks and threats against the people who posed them, including myself as I was blamed for being "behind" the whole affair, though I did not participate in the controversy at all. Some rather embarrassing information came out about these individuals, which apparently could not be refuted, so name calling was the result. As soon as the "Count" Perillos began slandering me and publicly accused my parents of being cult members, I resigned immediately and, figuratively, shook the sand from my shoes as I left.
There were blanket accusations made against everyone involved in daring to question their claims. Some who were singled out by name were Christopher Buyers, author of the Royal Ark website ( http://www.4dw.net/royalark/index.html ) who was accused by Buu Chanh of being a secret Communist agent in an email sent to his associates: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&selm=2eb80cd5.0408292349.32c3c781%40posting.google.com&rnum=1 Another was chivalry researcher Guy Stair Sainty, author of the website Chivalric Orders ( http://www.chivalricorders.org/ ) who was accused of being a Communist and even a racist by Carl Lindgren, Buu Chanh's official who took the Vietnamese name and hereditary title Ba Tuoc Linh Giang:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2796475357d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&selm=cfufda0162k%40drn.newsguy.com
Later, Buu Chanh claimed to me that he had made a mistake in trusting these individuals and had corrected the problem. I later found out this was false, they remained in the organization, and in any event the questions raised about the legitimacy of Buu Chanh and his group were never answered. In fact, if anything, the explanations given have worked against them. There has also been a campaign of subtle deception, aside from the blatant deception of accusing everyone from a Europe knight of several orders to a 23-year-old college student of being Communist agents.
To name just a few examples of this, Buu Chanh includes in all of the information provided about himself, some form of the phrase that he is "of the same family rank as the late Emperor Khai Dinh". This is "family rank" is actually just a way of identifying generation descent from Emperor Minh Mang. It is true that Buu Chanh and Khai Dinh are both the same number of generations removed from Minh Mang (hence the name "Buu" in each of their names -Nguyen Buu Chanh and Nguyen Buu Dao) but the statement is extremely misleading. Emperor Minh Mang had 142 children, so one can well imagine how many great-great grandchildren he has by this time. There are literally thousands of Vietnamese around the world who are "of the same family rank as Emperor Khai Dinh". However, the generation was never a form of rank in the Nguyen Dynasty. Khai Dinh was enthroned, not based on his generational rank, but because he was the oldest son of Emperor Dong Khanh. According to Buu Chanh, he is the great-grandson of the 71st son of Emperor Minh Mang, quite a distance from the throne by eastern or western standards.
Buu Chanh has also claimed the titles of "Prince of Vietnam" and "Duke of Kien Hoa" as well as others I will address later. First of all, the only information provided so far that Buu Chanh is actually descended from the 71st son of Emperor Minh Mang, who was the Duke of Kien Hoa, has come from Buu Chanh himself. However, even if this is true, titles were not perpetually hereditary in Vietnam. This should be fairly obvious given the immense size of the imperial family, the 142 children of Minh Mang being a prime example. If all titles were perpetually hereditary, almost every Vietnamese man and woman alive would be a prince or noble of some variety several times over. Even high-ranking members of the Vietnamese government, incidentally of the same generational rank as Buu Chanh, such as Prime Minister Buu Hoi, were not given the title of prince by the last Emperor until the assumed a government post. When confronted on the issue, Buu Chanh could only reply by insulting the Crown Prince and his siblings and asserting that he simply "deserved" to be a prince and even raised doubts about the legitimacy of the last Emperor's birth.
In an open email, which was later posted at http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Vietnam&hl=en&lr=&group=alt.talk.royalty&selm=2eb80cd5.0408292349.32c3c781%40posting.google.com&rnum=3 Buu Chanh referred to the Crown Prince and the rest of the Emperor's children by saying, "Bao Long, the Crown Prince and the other princes of the late Emperor Bao Dai. They are staying away from the sufferings of their people. They do act as foreigners who are degenerated" They have done nothing for the Fatherland even followed the enemies selling out the country for the opposite side ruining the country and harming the people."
However, the title which received the most attention was that of "Prince-Regent" of the Nguyen Dynasty. Buu Chanh claimed that as regent he had the right to award hereditary titles and bestow orders of knighthood in place of the Crown Prince, who would have inherited these rights upon the death of the Emperor. However, Buu Chanh had, in fact, already awarded hereditary titles and "restored" the Order of the Dragon of Annam before claiming to be regent. He based his claim for this title on a council which was supposedly set up by Emperor Bao Dai, under the leadership of an older relative, Nguyen-Phuc Buu Phuc, to exercise authority on behalf of the dynasty after his death, the designated heir, Crown Prince Bao Long, effectively being denied his position.
The problems with all this took a little time to come out. Buu Chanh has admitted that there is no documentary evidence to prove that the Emperor authorized such a council, therefore there is no written guidelines as to what the alleged council was intended to do or how extensive its authority was supposed to be. Certainly then there could be nothing proving that it had the power to appoint a regent when the heir to the throne is alive, well and fully capable of exercising his office should he choose to. If such a meeting did take place between these men and Emperor Bao Dai, it seems impossibly hard to believe that nothing was written down, the imperial seal and signature were not put to any documents and that only three men, none of them close relatives of the Emperor, were chosen to make up this prestigious council.
However, the story given by Buu Chanh's officials, particularly the "Count" Timothy Carmain-Perillos, kept changing with every request for details. First, they claimed, as was originally told to me, that Crown Prince Bao Long was kept informed of what was going on, that he was the nominal head of the organization, but left all the work to Buu Chanh. Later, they were forced to admit that Bao Long had refused to have anything to do with them and that, on three separate occasions, when Buu Chanh and Buu Phuc tried to approach him about it, he refused to meet with them and had the maid ask them to leave. After this, their story changed once again, instead stating that Bao Long was actually no longer Crown Prince since the Emperor abdicated in 1945, the monarchy was abolished and had never been fully restored. It was then pointed out that, if this was so, and they recognized the last Emperor's abdication as legal and legitimate, they nor the Emperor himself, could have had any right to claim any royal privileges whatsoever. It was after that when the story became that the Emperor had actually disinherited Bao Long, appointed the council under Buu Phuc to rule after him and it was Buu Phuc who appointed Buu Chanh "Prince-Regent".
This still did not even attempt to answer the questions about Buu Chanh, or even Buu Phuc's entitlement to the style and title of "His Imperial Highness, Prince of Vietnam" and "Duke of Kien Hoa" for Buu Chanh. As stated above, there was also no documents available to prove any of this, the only thing being produced were documents issued by the council (which also underwent a few name changes) naming Buu Chanh regent, but absolutely nothing to verify the council itself or the right of Buu Chanh to grant orders of knighthood, hereditary titles, to raise his wife and children to princely status or to claim to speak "on behalf of" the Nguyen Dynasty, which actually includes well over ten thousand members all around the world.
Needless to say, it seems that not everyone in the Imperial Family has been pleased by this, though few have really bothered about it at all. Emperor Bao Dai's daughter, Princess Phuong Mai, said she had heard of the council, but that the family still recognized Crown Prince Bao Long as head of the family, a position he had in fact asserted in a televised speech after the Emperor?s death. The previous line of the family, that of Emperors Duc Duc, Thanh Thai and Duy Tan, were even more pointed. Prince Claude Vinh San, the son of Emperor Duy Tan, did not state whether or not he was already aware of the claims of Buu Chanh, but did state that he had no right to assume this position and that he considered it insulting to the senior members of the family, the children of emperors rather than, as Buu Chanh claims, the great-grandson of the 71st son of an emperor.
Since resigning from the group, I have received several apologetic emails but none which I am any longer able to take seriously. Those from Buu Chanh were filled with the same flattery and promises that I heard every time I complained about the behavior and actions of certain individuals, only to have nothing done. The rest came from his new right hand man who is (or claims to be) Imperial Guard Colonel Tran Van Ba. His own story has changed sufficiently when pressed for me to doubt or at least be unsure of his own claims, or to know even if Buu Chanh is sure of them. Nevertheless, it was after I restated my intention to remain outside of the group, and when others continued to question the legitimacy of the organization that an email was posted by the "Count" Perillos from Buu Chanh to all of his "officials" around the world (mostly non-Vietnamese) denouncing me as being paid by the Communists and asking for everyone's cooperation in an "international lawsuit" against me, for being "behind" all of these impenitent requests for evidence of his claims and dismissal of the group as fraudulent when they failed to produce any, or even manage to stick to one coherent story. In the last message I received they sounded as though it took them by total surprise that I "refused to help" anymore after being called a commie traitor. The entire situation is almost too ridiculous to believe.
However, what I find the most disturbing, and what has had the greatest impact, is not how many people were welcomed into the group with backgrounds in fake chivalric orders and fake titles of nobility, diploma mills and "virtual" universities, I knew of these and pointed them out to Buu Chanh until it became clear that he would accept anyone with a grand-sounding resume no matter what sort of actual facts I produced. Rather, the most disturbing thing was the number of legitimate groups and individuals taken in or nearly taken in by this. There were personal invitations, meeting, exchanges of decorations with heir to the throne of Portugal, the Imperial Council of Ethiopia, the King of Rwanda and recognition (or so they claim) from the Lao and Cambodian houses. They claim that an important supporter of theirs in Britain arranged for Buu Chanh to be a patron of the International Monarchist League, and during questions about the legitimacy of his claim to leadership of the Nguyen Dynasty have listed the Almanach de Bruxelles and the International Monarchist League as organizations that endorse his position. Due to his "generosity" there are now numerous Americans now listed as grand officers of the court, with Grand Crosses of knighthood from Vietnam, Ethiopia and Rwanda though in all their years previous they seemed to have never paid the slightest attention to Asia or Africa but were focused on European heraldry, chivalry and genealogy.
All of this, added to preexisting problems, have all but done me in. This sort of "court intrigue" is something I am really not up to. I am, and have been all my life, a country boy most at home on the ranch, fifty miles from nowhere and uncomfortable around big crowds of people. I became a monarchist out of religious conviction, a step taken after growing up on the family ranch, educated at a very small private school and then confronted with the hedonistic, anti-Christian and ultra-liberal life of a modern university. I turned to the Church and began to get serious about my religion, which ultimately led me to becoming a monarchist, convinced as I was that there are certain people God placed on this earth to rule his people and whom it is the duty of every Christian to defend. However, knowing exactly who the legitimate ones are is becoming harder and harder. With so many people apparently willing to take any pretender at face value, I have had a bit of crisis knowing who to trust, or even who I can trust to advise me on who to trust. So far, of the monarchist groups I have supported, written for, done everything I know how to help, one has fallen apart due to sheer membership apathy, another seems predominately focused on passing "royal gossip" rather than promoting traditional monarchy as a viable government alternative and now the other, after six years of service, over 100 web pages written (many of which they continue to use) has attempted to make an international case against me as Communist agent. I suppose I should be flattered in a way. I was only 18 when I first joined the Vietnamese group, so I suppose already being a secret government operative before you're old enough to drink is something no one else I know of has accomplished.
As long as I can sustain my faith, I will always be a monarchist. However, everything that has happened has convinced me that it would be best to listen to the advice of my family, give my nerves a break and cease to be involved in any sort of party of organization. It will not be easy, I'm someone who likes to be involved, but being attacked myself, having my own parents held up to ridicule and becoming somewhat distrustful as of late, I feel I have no other alternative but to keep my monarchism private and prayerful. I hope everyone, reading this, will understand why I feel this is necessary and fully understand the situation behind all of the confusion and absolute craziness that has become the Vietnamese Monarchist League.