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Overview
Niohuru-Nara Isangga was the Jianshun Emperor of the Great Ri, the Yonggan conquest dynasty that ruled in Ba Sing Se before the present Hao Ting. He was the twentieth enumerated Earth Monarch. During his relatively short reign, he improved the efficiency of state administration and expanded on the policies of religious toleration and diversity championed by his grandfather. However, in his family life, he was easily influenced and adverse to conflict; he refused to remove his eighth son Kuazha as Crown Prince even when it became clear that the young man was unfit for the throne. While participating in the Imperial Hunt in Yonggan country with his nomadic vassals and courtiers, Isangga suffered a severe head injury and was left permanently disabled; while still alive he was succeeded as Emperor by Kuazha. His wife, and later widow, the Empress Dowager Lolha, continued to be a powerful influence on the court. Isangga himself lived another 24 years before succumbing to an infection.
Early Life
Born in 741 BG, Isangga was the second son of Niohuru-Nara Gagai. He was born during the reign of his grandfather the Renxian Emperor Arjin, usually considered the greatest Earth Monarch of their dynasty. After the Banner Armies defeated a Hao-loyalist warlord who had fled to the Malachite Archipelago, Gagai had accompanied a state visit to the newly annexed lands. While visiting, Gagai contracted a fever and was close to death; his life was saved by Air Nomad herbalists. Gagai had a religious experience subsequently, and thence hewed more closely to Angjiao than the Yonggan traditional religion of his fore-bearers.
In 736, Isangga's older brother Atai died of illness at the age of seven. Gagai's religious predilections colored Isangga's upbringing as time went on. As a young prince, he studied with both Earth Kingdom and Air Nomad teachers, with the expectation that he would eventually be given a fief in the territories gained by the Empire's southern expansion under Arjin.
In early 720, Isangga married his first wife, a third cousin named Aisin-Nara Ilha, and had twin boys within the year. In 713, Isangga married an Air Nomad woman, Lolha, the daughter of one of his teachers. This was with the blessing of his parents and grandfather; the Veritable Records report that the incumbent emperor, Arjin, felt this would improve perceptions of the dynasty in South, and decisively overruled objections from some of the Yonggan conquest elite about miscegenation. The dynastic ordinances were explicitly amended to confirm that imperial princes could have a non-earthbender as a wife rather than limiting them to concubine status, provided they had some other bending. There was some concern among the conservative faction because the crown prince, Isangga's uncle Tuhai, was still childless despite being well into adulthood, and it seemed quite possible already that the imperial line might be passed to Gagai and then Isangga.
When Isangga was 29, the Renxian Emperor died of apparently natural causes, leaving the throne to Isangga's uncle Tuhai, who was forty years old but still childless. His younger brother, Isangga's father Gagai, was accordingly appointed Imperial Crown Prince. Although Tuhai's reign was otherwise off to a promising start, and the vigorous monarch showed every indication of a prosperous reign, Tuhai died in a hunting accident while participating in the Imperial Hunt of 710 BG, bringing an end to his brief Yongguang Era - a tragedy that would ironically prefigure Issanga's own accident years later.
Gagai ascended the throne in 710 as Shenxing Emperor of the Great Ri. He established close relations with the Air Nomads and reformed the relations between the Northern Air Temple and the Earth Kingdom, mainly in their favor. During his reign, he built many temples and endowed monasteries. Gagai enjoyed a good working relationship with the Avatar Sangye, though some of the elite - both Yonggan and natives of Ba Sing Se - thought Gagai was too yielding in international affairs, in rather sharp contrast to his father and brother who had sometimes come into conflict with the Avatar over their imperialistic tendencies.
In 701, when he was forty years old and during the reign of Gagai, a son was born to Isangga, his eventual successor Kuazha. This was his first son from Lolha, who had previously had three daughters, but Issanga already had seven other sons by his other wives, of whom some were adults and showing signs of merit as leaders. However, Lolha, always politically shrewed and enjoying the favor of her imperial father-in-law, was able to convince Isangga to groom Kuazha as a potential crown prince anyway.
Ascension to the Throne
Isangga's father, the Shenxing Emperor Gagai, died of natural causes in 691. Issanga ascended the throne as Jianshun Emperor, and instituted moderate reforms of state administration. He took a more aggressive stance in international relations than his father, but did not seek to expand the territorial extent of the Earth Kingdom or wage aggressive war. He accepted the mediation of the Avatar in a conflict with the Northern Water Tribes over fishing rights in the North Sea, and abolished the category of Mean People (賤民) altogether, and allowed certain ethnic groups such as the Heke to sit for the civil service exams and become officials, such people having been previously excluded.
In 689, in obedience to a purported letter of the late Emperor (possibly forged by Lolha's court faction) Isangga deposed his oldest surviving son from his position as crown prince, sending him and two other adult sons to their fiefs outside of the capital. He then named the 12-year-old Kuazha as Imperial Crown Prince. This was a controversial decision, as Kuazha had not given much indication of ability and the provenance of Gagai's letter instructing Issanga on the matter was questioned. However, Isangga was not interested in dissenting opinions; it had to be acknowledged furthermore that Gagai had shown favor to Kuazha as a boy. Issanga continued to deflect criticism of his crown prince's conduct for the rest of his reign, even as serious concerns about Kuazha arose amongst the grandees of the Empire.
Accident and Retirement
The annual Imperial Hunt was an important ritual of the Ri Dynasty; it was prescribed as a sacred tradition by the dynastic founder Niohuru Nara who wished the Yonggan conquerors to remember their roots and maintain enduring cultural bonds with the nomadic peoples of the West despite the pressures of assimilation to elite cultural life in Ba Sing Se. In the hunt of the year 685, Isangga sustained a devastating head injury when an animal trap he was earthbending unexpectedly collapsed. His skull fractured, he fell into unconsciousness immediately. The Emperor regained lucidity later in the day, and there were hopes for his recovery, but he lost consciousness again and the court physicians accompanying the hunt warned that the injury was surely mortal. However, Isangga unexpectedly survived the night and appeared to stabilize. There was little hope, though, as he could not swallow anything. One of the physicians, the Ganjinese Naiku (奈刳) proposed that he could be sustained long enough to recover from the injury by the insertion of a silver tube through his abdominal wall into his stomach. Using this tube to instill liquids, Isangga's life was sustained, and he gradually regained some degree of consciousness.
To what extent he was aware of his environment and surroundings was controversial, as improvement quickly plateaued. The disabled Emperor was returned to the capital and subjected to various treatments in the hope of restoring his condition, but none appeared to be effective. Eventually, the Imperial Ri Council of Dynastic Succession was convened because of Isangga's inability to discharge his duties as Emperor. This body, dominated by the Yonggan conquest elite descending from Nara Jaikan, bypassed the designated crown prince Kuazha because of his reputation as a reprobate, and named Issanga's fourth-oldest surviving son, NIOHURU-NARA Boosi, a child of empress Aisin-Nara Ilha, as emperor. The Earth Sages refused to seal the council's edict, issued in the name of Issanga, ostensibly because it was against the stated wishes of the technically still-living Emperor - it is thought that the Earth Sages, being largely in the camp and court faction of the pre-conquest Ba Sing Se elite, wished to have the pliable Kuazha rather than another politically active emperor on the throne. The brief constitutional crisis was resolved by bringing the matter before Issanga, with Lolha interpreting Issanga's subtle gestures to indicate rejection of Boosi as emperor, and confirmation of Kuazha. Unsurprisingly this was controversial, but Lolha was popular and her court faction strong. Further, Ilha's family (the Aisin) were considered potential rivals by many of the other Yonggan conquest elite, who were not so enthusiastic about having Ilha as an Aisin-Nara empress dowager leading their faction; though older than Kuazha and by far the better student of statecraft, Boosi was still a young man who would need much guidance to rule.
In any event, Kuazha succeeded Isangga on the Badgermole Throne, and Isangga was given the title of "retired Emperor." Isangga himself lived for another 24 years before expiring at the impressive age of 80, due to complications of an infected bedsore.
Historical Appraisal and Legacy
Most historians take a mixed to positive view of Isangga's reign. He showed definite interest and concern for good governance, and putting aside the glaring lack of judgement he showed for his choice of crown prince, his temperate foreign relations and protections of the Empire's minorities are often praised. He helped to reduce perceptions of Yonggan ethno-nationalism and confirm the identity of the Great Ri Empire as a multiethnic state-of-states. However, he did not manage his court well, yielding alternately to various factions and avoiding difficult discussions to a fault, especially when it came to his family. In the end, his reign was cut short by a tragic accident, and the reign of his unworthy successor is often considered to have marked the beginning of the end for the Great Ri and the Nara ascendancy.