Vietnamese folklore explains annual floods as a recurring mythic war between spirits

Evidence

And THAT, the Vietnamese say, is why Vietnam has terrible floods every single year, when the rivers rise and the rains pour down: it is the Water Spirit, Thuy Tinh, renewing forever his ancient, hopeless war against the Mountain Spirit, Son Tinh, over a princess he lost long ago by arriving just a few hours too late. — , A Year of World Stories, 8769

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the flood myths theme — parallels other culture-nature origin myths like the Greek river gods and the volcano-goddess Pele traditions, and to the ‘explaining natural disasters via mythic feuds’ pattern seen throughout world folklore.
• FICTION: The image of a god renewing a hopeless war every year because he arrived hours too late is a potent seed for a story about obsessive grief or eternal futility.