<<Card: execution failed [local variable 'page' referenced before assignment] (see also the log)>>
Overview
Niohuru-Nara Turusi was the Taigai Emperor of the Great Ri, the Yonggan conquest dynasty that ruled in Ba Sing Se. He was the twenty-second Earth Monarch and the last of his dynasty. Coming to power after his father was assassinated by nomadic vassal rulers for profaning the sacred Imperial Hunt, Turusi attempted to reform the governance of the kingdom and end the corruption that had taken root during his father's long reign. However, his reforms threatened the entrenched power of the indigenous scholar-officials controlling the Ba Sing Se bureaucracy; they staged a coup that killed Turusi and many members of the imperial family, and overthrew the Great Ri. Turusi's legacy as an Earth Monarch remains controversial among historians.
Early Life
Turusi was born in 679 BG to Niohuru-Nara Kuazha, the Huowang Emperor. His father, 22 years old at that time, had already been on the throne for the better part of six years as he had come to power as a teenager. Kuazha had several daughters by his Air Nomad paramount wife, Asa, but Turusi was the first son. His mother was Aisin-Nara Huiru (愛新納喇·蕙如 699-620), a distant cousin of Kuazha and one of his secondary wives. Huiru was the youngest daughter of the Prince of Jin, AISIN-NARA Wailan (愛新納喇·外兰, 739-669 BG), a leader in the conservative Yonggan court faction that opposed the power of the dowager empress Lolha. The Prince of Jin's faction resented the expanding power of the native bureaucracy, which they considered a threat to the power of the Yonggan conquest elite.
Although recognizing Turusi promptly as his heir apparent in accordance with the dynastic ordinances of the Great Ri, Kuazha was no more engaged with the instruction of the boy in statecraft than he was in interested in such matters himself. Turusi's education was a contentious matter between the Yonggan faction and the Empress Dowager's faction, and had the likely-beneficial response that he was exposed to a variety of views. A compromise Grand Tutor was appointed from among the Ang Pastoralists of Poshan, the controversial Tigerdillo Great Sage, HONG Norbu. Although the Empress Dowager died in 675, and the power of her court faction waned, Kuazha refused to be bothered with appointing a new Grand Tutor for his son and left Hong in his post. The grandmaster of the Great Northern Way tutored Turusi in Earthbending, for which he had only a modest natural talent. She noted, however, that he was a very hard-working pupil with high expectations of himself despite his father's disinterest.
In many ways, Turusi was the opposite of his father; as a young man he was disciplined and restrained in his personal behavior. Although eager to please his teachers, he was also willful and decisive. He came to privately resent his father's mistreatment of his subjects and neglect of the affairs of state. When Turusi came of age in 659, some of the Yonggan court faction tried to persuade Kuazha to retire in favor of his crown prince, who would then manage the daily affairs of state and leave Kuazha to his harem, but the emperor would hear nothing of it and expelled the presenter of the memorial from court.
In 659 BG, Turusi married a Ganjinese noblewoman of mixed Yonggan and Ganjinese descent, GAN Fenfen (乾芬芬, 676-620), as his first wife and empress. In 658 he married GIORO-JALA Youlan (682-620 BG), a daughter of the khan of the Jala clan of Yonggan, as a secondary wife; this was considered a gesture of political rehabilitation toward the Jala clan which had a long animosity with the Nara. He took a concubine in 654, but decided that this would be the extent of his harem, somewhat pointedly declaring to his friends that as three women had been enough for the dynastic founder, then three would be enough for him. It was interpreted as a veiled criticism of his father's notorious libertinism.
In religious matters, Turusi honored the State Religion of the Great Ri, a syncretic faith blending traditional Yonggan shamanism with the spiritual practices of the central Earth Kingdom. He was influenced by Air Nomad thought as well, via the teachings of the Grand Tutor. After recovering from a fever in 646, he took a vow of partial vegetarianism, swearing to abstain from the flesh of any animal not taken in the annual Imperial Hunt. As imperial crown prince (and later emperor) he continued to patronize the Angjiao shrines established in Ba Sing Se during the reign of his great-grandfather the Shenxing emperor.
Turusi's first child was born in 657, a daughter. His first son was born later in 657, to his secondary wife, but in accordance with the dynastic ordinances, this son was replaced as heir apparent when his paramount wife Fenfen gave birth to her own son in 655. He had three more daughters, notably Jinglian (静兰, 654-587 BG) by Fenfen, and an additional son. This youngest son died in infancy, but all of his other children survived to adulthood.
Ascension to the Throne
in 640 BG, when Turusi was 39, his father Kuazha was slain during the annual Imperial Hunt in Yonggan country. Witnesses to the incident agreed that the emperor made a brazen sexual advance on one of the celibate female shamans leading the ritual blessings of the leaders of the hunt. This blessing ritual, involving the emperor and twenty nomadic vassal rulers of the Yonggan, Abka and Nogai, was otherwise attended only by the ritual specialists; bodyguards and attendants were notably excluded. The vassals claimed that the killing had been an unpremeditated reaction to the desecration of the sacred hunt, and in accordance with the ancient tribal law governing the sacred hunt. Though such lecherous conduct was indisputably within Kuazha's general character, those who question this account believe he would have known better than to do this, and that he was simply assassinated as the fruition of a conspiracy originating in the Yonggan court faction, who found the ritual an opportune time in which Kuazha would be predictably isolated from impartial witnesses and guards. Whether or not the crown prince was involved in any conspiracy that may have existed is also lost to history, though he always firmly condemned the assassination and denied any prior knowledge of it. He himself was absent from the ritual because his procession to the Imperial Hunting Lodge had been delayed on its way from Ba Sing Se.
Turusi ascended the throne, proclaiming the era name Taigai despite being told it was inauspicious by some of his advisors. He aligned himself with the conservative Yonggan court faction, which included the new Empress Dowager Huiru and the energetic and powerful Prince of Jin, AISIN NARA Bugan (愛新納喇·布干, 687-607 BG). Upon Turusi's ascension, his second son NIOHURU-NARA Agu (鈕祜祿納喇·阿古, 655-620) became imperial crown prince. The vassals who killed his father were relatively lightly punished: their lives were spared, but they were deprived of their fiefs. Turusi's mercy may have been variously influenced by a religious belief that taking life was to be avoided, by a desire to repudiate his father's actions that had provoked the incident, or by the existence of a conspiracy of which he was supportive - no conclusive evidence has emerged.
Turusi set about a vigorous campaign of reform. At first he avoided overtly antagonizing the indigenous elite of scholar-officials in Ba Sing Se, focusing his reformist zeal on rectifying the administration of the provinces and constituent states. He purged corrupt officials and elevated the power of the imperial bondservants within the apparatus of state administration outside the capital; he also made controversial changes to the imperial examinations to make them more accessible to the ethno-linguistic minorities of the Empire.
Of note, Turusi rehabilitated many of his father's assassins, some overtly for their public contrition. Although Turusi never swerved from condemning the assassination, these actions did nothing to suppress rumors of a conspiracy.
Turusi's second daughter Jinglian was married to YULU-Nara Asan (660-595 BG), the Yonggan Prince of Wa. His eldest daughter was married into an old Ba Sing Se family, but her husband died young and she became a nun at the Angjiao shrine before having any children.
Later Life and Death
Turusi's crown prince, Agu, married in 634 and had three sons and a daughter in quick succession, appearing to secure the dynastic succession. Turusi's reforms had significantly increased tax revenue and reduced disaffection in the remote parts of his realm. Riding high on this success and with the support of the powerful Yonggan conservative court faction and indigenous moderate-reformists among the scholarly elite, Turusi attempted to bring his anti-corruption campaign to Ba Sing Se.
Turusi also tried to secure the support of the Ruming Avatar, Gun, for his reforms, but the avatar was preoccupied with a personal loss at the time and did not respond to the invitation. Turusi proceeded anyway with his plans in 630, formally introducing them on his tenth year on the throne.
The reaction to the reforms built up over time. Turusi alienated many former allies among the moderate-reformists because some of his later reforms appeared to be motivated by a desire to centralize power with the throne and the imperial clan. Turusi replaced many scholar-officials in the imperial administration with imperial bondservants, reducing opportunities for the classically-educated elite and fomenting discontent within the Upper Ring.
Eventually, in 620 BG, native officials orchestrated a coup against Turusi with the support of several Earth Kingdom generals and the covert financial backing of the pre-Ri-Dynasty nobility in the capital. The emperor himself was mortally wounded by one of the traitorous generals, in an attack that also took the lives of his two adult sons who had been attending morning court with him. The Yonggan court faction attempted to resist the coup, but the banner guards of the imperial crown prince's Agu's mansion were overcome and the imperial grandchildren slain, extinguishing the direct line of the Niohuru-Nara. After learning of this, the Aisin-Nara Prince of Jin, entrusted with the imperial seals, abandoned the capital with the forces of the Azure Banner (of which he was hereditary commander) and retreated to his fief in the Nemuland, far away in Yonggan country.
The Hao-Ting dynasty was founded in Ba Sing Se by the Tailong Earth King; the Hao-Ting rejected the concept of the Earth Kingdom as part of a multi-ethnic empire, and abolished the title of emperor. Members of the banner armies and ethnic Yonggan who remained in Ba Sing Se were expelled or killed by the new dynasty.
After a brief interregnum, Turusi's daughter Jinglian, married to the Prince of Wa, was proclaimed the Tiansheng Empress, ruling from the Imperial Hunting Lodge in Eastern Yonggan country. She ruled a rump regime, the Northern Ri, and was a pretender to the throne of Ba Sing Se, but never actually ruled there. The Northern Ri fought a protracted war with the Hao Ting that lasted until 579 BG, fighting over the Eastern Yonggan lands (including some in what is today Shanbei and the Western Shuizu State). On the other hand, the Aisin-Nara under the Prince of Jin made peace with the Hao Ting and retained their lands and authority over the Western Yonggan.
Historical Appraisal and Legacy
Although admired by both historians of the Yonggan and Hao-Ting for his rejection of his father's decadence and immorality, Turusi's legacy as a reformist has often been appraised according to the dynastic sympathies of his biographers. The Hao-Ting official history of the Ri criticized his attempts to concentrate power, and threatening the cultural integrity of the Earth Kingdom by his "reversion" to Yonggan customs at the expense of the the central Earth Kingdom culture. On the other hand, Yonggan historians and those with sympathies to the peoples of the West, including the Ganjinese school of historiography, appraise Turusi more positively, regarding him as an overeager reformer of considerable personal virtue, who pushed too hard and too fast against entrenched corruption, making an "overcorrection" and living up to his chosen era name.
Although the ancestral temple of the Niohuru-Nara was burned during the fall of the Great Ri in Ba Sing Se, Turusi was secretly enshrined in the Angjiao temple there and honored with the posthumous title 蓮宗 Liánzōng, the "Lotus Ancestor" who rose from the spiritual muck of his father's court.