With Dục Đức in captivity, the regents named his 34-year-old uncle Hiệp Hòa, Tự Đức's half-brother, as emperor. They may have skipped over Dục Đức's adoptive brothers to mitigate the backlash from the court women who had favored Dục Đức. Open protest of the regents' actions came from one senior official, Phan Đình Phùng, but he was quickly arrested and stripped of his position. During his brief reign, Hiệp Hòa similarly tried to rein in the regents' influence, but failed; he in turn was soon deposed and sentenced to die. Modern Vietnamese histories generally regard emperors from Dục Đức to Bảo Đại as puppets controlled by the French colonialists.