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Trần Lệ Xuân (22 August 1924 – 24 April 2011), popularly known as Madame Nhu, was the ''de facto'' First Lady of South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. She was the wife of Ngô Đình Nhu who was the brother and chief adviser to President Ngô Đình Diệm. As Diệm was a lifelong bachelor, and because she and her family lived in Independence Palace, she was considered to be the first lady. Known for her incendiary comments attacking the Buddhists of South Vietnam and the American influence in the country, she had to live in exile in France after her husband Nhu and her brother Diệm were assassinated in 1963. ==Early years== Trần Lệ Xuân was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Hanoi, French Indochina, then part of the French colonial empire. Her given name means "Spring's Beauty" 〔 Her paternal grandfather was close to the French colonial administration, while her father, Trần Văn Chương, studied law in France,〔 and practicing in Bac Lieu in the Mekong Delta before marrying into the ruling imperial dynasty.〔J. Lacouture, Vietnam: Between Two Truces, p. 79〕 Her father also served as the first foreign secretary for Indochina under Japanese occupation.〔Lacouture, p. 79.〕 Her mother, Thân Thị Nam Trân, was a granddaughter of Emperor Đồng Khánh and a cousin of Emperor Bảo Đại.〔(The Royal Ark )〕 She dropped out of Lycée Albert Sarraut, a prestigious French school in Hanoi. She spoke French at home and could not write in Vietnamese; as an adult, she drafted her speeches in French and had them translated into Vietnamese.〔Karnow, pp. 280–284.〕 She gained a reputation in her youth as a tomboy who loved ballet and piano, once dancing solo at Hanoi's National Theatre.〔Jones, pp. 292–93.〕 She had an elder sister named Trần Lệ Chi (who married the Frenchman Etienne Oggeri and changed her name to Lechi Oggeri) and a younger brother, Trần Văn Khiêm.〔Warner, p. 93.〕 When she became an adult, her mother introduced her to a series of eligible young men, but she insisted on Nhu. He was fourteen years older and referred to her as "little niece" in accordance with Vietnamese custom.〔Prochnau, pp. 122–23.〕 In 1943, aged 18,〔Jones, p. 293.〕 she married Nhu, and converted from Mahayana Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, her husband's religion. After an uprising by the Viet Minh in August 1945, her brother-in-law, Ngô Đình Khôi, the eldest of the Ngô brothers, was buried alive, and Nhu and another brother, Ngô Đình Cẩn, were forced to flee. She, her mother-in-law and her eldest daughter, at the time a baby, were captured. Thinking her piano was a radio for communicating with French colonialists, the Viet Minh blew it up and then exiled her to a remote village for four months, where she lived on two bowls of rice a day.〔 The French dismissed Nhu from his post at the National Library due to his brother (Diệm)'s nationalist activities, and he moved to Đà Lạt and lived comfortably, editing a newspaper, where his wife bore three more children.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Madame Nhu」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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