The Great Ri Dynasty (alt. Great Nara Dynasty) was an Earth Kingdom dynasty ruling from Ba Sing Se after supplanting the 15th Earth Monarch and his Former Ting dynasty in 789 BG. It was a conquest dynasty founded by Northern semi-nomadic people under the rule of the Yonggan khagans. The Great Ri expanded the boundaries of the Earth Kingdom to their modern extent and ruled as emperors of a multi-ethnic empire. However, they were ultimately overthrown by their own indigenous officials and replaced with the native Hou-Ting dynasty in 620 BG.

Origins

Unification of the Yonggan

Relations with the Earth Kingdom

Founding a Conquest Dynasty

in 790 BG, The Yonggan khagan, NARA Jaikan (納喇·界堪), a nominal vassal of the 15th Earth King, was asked by the king to help suppress a peasant uprising in Ba Sing Se. This involved letting the Yonggan armies into the city to suppress the rebellion. The King was not naive to the risk this posed to his dynasty (The Former Ting), but his diviners assured him that neither Jaikan nor any of his heirs would ever be Earth King. At first, this plan seemed to be successful as the well-trained Yonggan armies swiftly crushed the rebels. However, they were reluctant to leave Ba Sing Se despite the King's increasingly explicit insinuations that now would be an appropriate time for them to return to their own lands. in 789, the 15th Earth King was assassinated (very definitely by the a surviving peasant rebel, according to the Veritable Records of the Great Ri) and Jaikan declared a regency under himself. This offended the Ba Sing Se elite, despite the affirmation of diviners that Jaikan would not ascend the Badgermole Throne. An attempted palace coup tried to overthrow the Yonggan regency and install the teenage son of the 15th Earth King as 16th Earth King, but it was defeated and the plotters were killed; the son of the Earth King and several of his brothers were taken to Yonggan lands "for their protection." Jaikan installed his eldest son, Niohuru (鈕祜祿) as Emperor of the Greater Nara State; the Former Ting royal family in exile in Yonggan lands were treated comfortably but imprisoned and ultimately died out.

Unsurprisingly, many polities of the Earth Kingdom did not approve of the regime change; Jaikan and his sons fought them in the Nara-Ting campaigns under the banner of the "Great Nara."

When Jaikan died in 761 BG, Niohuru, now the Jìanēn (建恩, Establishing Grace) Emperor, became khagan as well and consolidated the offices. He completed the conquest of the Earth Kingdom in 755 BG, directly incorporating many polities that had previously only been tributaries or vassals of the Earth Monarch. He enfeoffed his brothers, one of his sisters, and many of his generals as a new feudal aristocracy, replacing the native Earth Kingdom elite in the regions that had opposed him; in areas that had submitted peacefully, he left the indigenous aristocracy and structures of power largely intact. The Jianen emperor also organized the Yonggan, their Abka allies from the West, and the lineages of some Central Earth Kingdom supporters into a banner army system, to promote the continuing development of martial skills and a separate "Great Ri" cultural identity.

Although the new dynasty

The Great Ri

Collapse of the Dynasty

The Ri were ultimately overthrown in 620 BG in a coup orchestrated by native Earth Kingdom officials, who installed a descendant of a cadet branch of the Ting dynasty as the first Hou-Ting Earth King.

The Later Ri - The Nara after the loss of Ba Sing Se

The Earth Kingdom Civil War

The Nara in Exile