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13 Ibid.

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18 In the course of the two Indochina conflicts, many of Huế's noble elite fled to the United States and France, where many remain today.

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29 Ibid., p. 23.

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32 Ibid., p. 37.

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35 Marr, Vietnamese anti-colonialism, pp. 246–7.

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40 Phan Thuận An, ‘Huế the imperial city’, in An introduction to Vietnam and Hue, pp. 265–79.

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42 Phan Thuận An, ‘Huế the imperial city’.

43 See also Johnson, ‘Renovating Hue’.

44 Ibid., p. 76.

45 Ibid., p. 84.

46 Hess, Garry, ‘The first American commitment in Indochina: The acceptance of the “Bao Dai solution”, 1950’, Diplomatic History 2, 4 (1978): 331–50Google Scholar; Chapman, Jessica, ‘Staging democracy: South Vietnam's 1955 referendum to depose Bao Dai’, Diplomatic History 30, 4 (2006): 671–703Google Scholar.

47 Huynh Thi Anh Van, ‘Revival of ritual ceremony in Huế royal temples after Renovation (Ðổi mới): The reconstruction of identity’ (Chiang Mai: Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development, Chiang Mai University, 2007).

48 Ibid., p. 9.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 In her paper, Huynh includes a photograph of me attending a royal ritual with the caption ‘tourist taking photos’, rather than a fellow researcher who had been invited to observe royal rituals. This could be an indication of how foreign researchers are construed by local counterparts when they find themselves in the midst of the latter's fieldsite.

52 Marina Marouda, ‘Lives intimately connected: The living and the dead in contemporary central Việt Nam’ (Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, 2009).

53 See also Johnson, ‘Renovating Hue’.

54 As mentioned earlier, this move by the Vietnamese state was not without precedent: the Nguyễn monarchy rigorously promoted the posthumous cult of loyal subjects while rendering the act of sacrificing to unregistered spirits punishable. Dror, Cult, culture and authority, pp. 55–6.

55 Marouda, ‘Lives intimately connected’.

56 See also Huynh, Revival of ritual ceremony.

57 All other structures in the citadel stand partially restored or dilapidated. For more on the royal temples, see HMCC website, http://www.huedisan.com.vn (last accessed 30 July 2014).

58 Hellman, Jörgen, ‘Meeting with ancestors: Contesting borders in Indonesian religion and politics’, Anthropological Forum 23, 2 (2013): 178–97Google Scholar.

59 See the introduction to the published genealogies of the royal clan: Cao, Vĩnh et al. , Nguyễn Phúc Tộc Thế Phả [Genealogical records of the Nguyễn clan] (Huế: Nhà Xuất Bản Thuận Họa, 1995), p. 5Google Scholar.

60 Tảo mộ (‘weeding ancestral graves’) is a task reverently undertaken by ordinary kin groups across Huế in preparation for the Lunar New Year.

61 During my fieldwork, rumours circulated that provincial authorities offered to commission boats to take pilgrims to the royal tombs via the city's Perfume River, thus turning the occasion into a spectacle for the crowds, but the royal clan is said to have declined.

62 See Lockhart, The end of the Vietnamese monarchy.

63 See Wook Choi Buyng, Southern Vietnam under the reign of Minh Mạng.