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Princess Mukushen (Y/C. 穆库什 Mùkùshén), 86 AG-Present, is a young noble of the Nara clan, and an imperial kinswoman of the deposed Great Ri dynasty. She was born in the Si Wong desert, where her clan were banished after their support for Chin the Great in the Earth Kingdom civil war. She was forced to flee from her home when political violence within the Nara clan resulted in the deaths of her parents.

Name and Title

Mukushen was born to the Aisin (Y. 愛新 Aisin, C. 金 Jīn) family of the Nara (Y. 納喇 Nara, C. 日 Rì) clan of the Yonggan people. Her semi-nativized name in the Central Earth Kingdom language is Rijin Mukushen (日金·穆库什), and she also has a completely-nativized Earth Kingdom name, Rì Jīnmù 日金穆 in which her clan name is interpreted as a surname and her nativized family name is the first syllable of her "given name." Traditionally, the Yonggan do not use surnames as such, and it would be strange to address Mukushen by her family or clan names in the Yonggan language. However, under the influence of the Earth Kingdom culture, most Nara are familiar with and accept the concept of surnames in Earth Kingdom contexts.

Mukushen's full title, omitting titles that she might theoretically hold but have never been operative in her lifetime, is: The Lady Mukushen of the Noble House of Aisin, Granite Princess of the Imperial Nara Blood.

Among the Nara (and other Yonggan who might recognize her nobility) she would generally be addressed as gege ("princess") rather than by a personal name, except by her family and friends. However, among the cosmopolitan Earth Kingdom culture, she quickly gave up on having people call her "Princess" and goes by her assimilated name, Jinmu.

Ancestry

The Aisin descend from the Prince of Jin, younger brother of the first Ri monarch of the Earth Kingdom and one of the conquest elite of the then-new dynasty. As she has no brothers and the Yonggan use male-preference primogeniture, with the death of her father, Mukushen is the de jure heir to the Principality of Jin, northeast of Ba Sing Se. However, her family lost control of these lands during the twilight years of the Great Ri. They lost their remaining holdings in traditional Yonggan lands, after the Nara clan supported Chin the Great in his ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against the Hou-Ting dynasty that had supplanted the Great Ri centuries prior.

Names are as transcribed in the relevant volumes of the Veritable Records of the Great Ri or the Register of the Imperial Nara Kinfolk, in its Si Wong recension.

Early Life

Mukushen was born to a life of relative privilege, though she and her family were very conscious of just how far they had fallen during their exile and, indeed, since the glory days of the Great Ri. Her household was semi-nomadic, shifting hunting grounds for their dwarf badgermole herd four times a year through the Si Wong desert and portions of the bandlands included in the Bryce/Scratch/Nara Pale of Banishment. They lived in an Ukdun, a traditional Yonggan dwelling constructed with earthbending. Her father Bahai the Younger was the eldest son and heir apparent to the Luminous Khanate of the Nara, and her mother was his secondary wife, MOGIYA-NARA Sain, a haruspical priestess and earthbender. Mukushen was the firstborn, arriving a year after Sain and Bahai were married. The birth was difficult for Sain and she was advised to avoid subsequent pregnancies, which she and Bahai reluctantly accepted. Bahai resisted pressure from his father to take a third wife and attempt to produce a son.

Mukushen had a wet nurse, GIAO-NARA Hojo, in keeping with the tradition of Nara families of high rank, who typically turned their infants over to wet nurses after a week or two. In Mukushen's case, Hojo had to feed her right away, as Sain's milk production was very poor due to her poor state of health after the delivery. Hojo nursed Mukushen until the age of six and half, also the typical practice for highborn Nara children.

As a child, Mukushen was noted to be intelligent and precocious. She was able to read the (phonetic) Yonggan script at the age of four, and could speak two dialects of the Central Earth Kingdom language (Ganjinese and the Si Wong dialect) in addition to her native language. She was noted to be an earthbender at the age of five. Her formal schooling, with tutors, began at the age of six. She learned the Ba Sing Se dialect, and the common ideographic written language of the Earth Kingdom, from them.

Adolescence