Under the emperor at home, king abroad system used by later dynasties, Vietnamese monarchs would use the title of emperor (皇帝, Hoàng đế; or other equivalents) domestically, and the more common term sovereign (𤤰, Vua), king (王, Vương), or his/her (Imperial) Majesty (陛下, Bệ hạ) elsewhere.

[1][2] Imperial titles were used for both domestic and foreign affairs, except for diplomatic missions to China where Vietnamese monarchs were regarded as kingship or prince.

Many of the Later Lê monarchs were figurehead rulers, with the real powers resting on feudal lords and princes who were technically their servants.

[citation needed] According to Mark Alves, Vietnamese vua was seemingly a loan word borrowed from the Old Chinese form of title Wáng (王, king), *‍ɢʷaŋ, to Proto-Viet-Muong.

[6][7] Buddhism exerted influence on a number of Vietnamese royal titles, such as when the late 12th-century devout Buddhist king Lý Cao Tông (r. 1176–1210) demanded his courtiers to refer him as phật (Buddha).

[8] His great-grandfather and predecessor Lý Nhân Tông (r. 1072–1127), a great patronizer of the Buddhist sangha, in his stelae inscription erected in 1121, compared himself and his accomplishments with ancient rulers of the Indian subcontinent near the time of Gautama Buddha, particularly king Udayana and emperor Aśoka.

[10] After the fall of Vijaya Champa and the Simhavarmanid dynasty in 1471, all Sanskrit titles disappeared from Cham records, due to southern Panduranga rulers styled themselves as Po (native Cham title, which also means "King, His Majesty, Her Majesty"), and Islam gradually replaced Hinduism in post-1471 Champa.

Following is the list of 18 lines of Hùng kings as recorded in the book Việt Nam sử lược by Trần Trọng Kim.