No Xuanwu Gate Incident

As it say, what if Crown Prince Li Jiancheng and Prince Li Yuanji are not kill by Prince Li Shimin?

Then Li Shimin got executed for treason if nothing else happened and his brother took the throne, however, given his personality, he would use coup, rebellion, assasination or anything that makes him emperor.

Unlike his brothers, Li Shimin was rather active well before his father was emperor and was the very person to convince his father to rebel in the first place, while his brothers were less recorded, but that may be the result of Li Shimin's tampering of historical records, still he didn't seem to care about industrial-scale kinslaying of his nephews, he might not have tampered records at all.

To take a guess, Li Yuanji might be some sort of generic emperor who is more internally focused.
 
Then Li Shimin got executed for treason if nothing else happened and his brother took the throne, however, given his personality, he would use coup, rebellion, assasination or anything that makes him emperor.

Unlike his brothers, Li Shimin was rather active well before his father was emperor and was the very person to convince his father to rebel in the first place, while his brothers were less recorded, but that may be the result of Li Shimin's tampering of historical records, still he didn't seem to care about industrial-scale kinslaying of his nephews, he might not have tampered records at all.

To take a guess, Li Yuanji might be some sort of generic emperor who is more internally focused.

Agreed.

One thing to be sure : Li Yuanji seems to be quite competent but unfortunately still far below Li Shimin's capability.

Quite a number of Tang victories up to there-unification of China under Tang are due to Li Shimin's capability and not of his father - the founding emperor of Tang dynasty.

Aside from moralistic issue (killing your own brother, etc), Li Shimin is obviously the better choice to lead the Tang dynasty.

IOTL, Tang did reach its peak under his reign.
 
As it say, what if Crown Prince Li Jiancheng and Prince Li Yuanji are not kill by Prince Li Shimin?

Li Jiancheng becomes Emperor later; Li Yuan continues his reign maybe for around 5 years more until he croaks.

It could be a bit of Li Shimin propaganda to say that Li Jiancheng was necessarily worse than his brother. Li Yuan would disagree - when he was invading the Sui, Li Jiancheng was sent to guard Tong Pass, which was the crucial area where Sui armies were likely to pass through. Li Shimin, on the other hand, was sent to do some conquering in the north - hardly on the same level of strategic importance.

It's difficult to see Tang not rising under any Emperor's reign, save a really disastrous Sui Yangdi-esque type. The Tang had the great fortune of inheriting the Sui's projects (Grand Canal, Luoyang-Changan reconstruction) without paying the political price for it.
 
Li Jiancheng becomes Emperor later; Li Yuan continues his reign maybe for around 5 years more until he croaks.

It could be a bit of Li Shimin propaganda to say that Li Jiancheng was necessarily worse than his brother. Li Yuan would disagree - when he was invading the Sui, Li Jiancheng was sent to guard Tong Pass, which was the crucial area where Sui armies were likely to pass through. Li Shimin, on the other hand, was sent to do some conquering in the north - hardly on the same level of strategic importance.

It's difficult to see Tang not rising under any Emperor's reign, save a really disastrous Sui Yangdi-esque type. The Tang had the great fortune of inheriting the Sui's projects (Grand Canal, Luoyang-Changan reconstruction) without paying the political price for it.
But really? I think both are extremely important areas. Some of Li Yuan's biggest threats, like Liang Shidu or Liu Wuzhou, were linked to northern nomads, not to mention there was the later thing where the Khan of the Tujue forced Li Shimin to an agreement. When Li Yuan divided the responsibilities, keeping Li Jiancheng in the west and sending Li Shimin east, the Tong pass may have had more immediate importance, but after that, Li Shimin's victories were more important to the Tang. At least that's the way I remember it.
 
But really? I think both are extremely important areas. Some of Li Yuan's biggest threats, like Liang Shidu or Liu Wuzhou, were linked to northern nomads, not to mention there was the later thing where the Khan of the Tujue forced Li Shimin to an agreement. When Li Yuan divided the responsibilities, keeping Li Jiancheng in the west and sending Li Shimin east, the Tong pass may have had more immediate importance, but after that, Li Shimin's victories were more important to the Tang. At least that's the way I remember it.

Agreed.

It is likely to be some propaganda from Li Shimin to discredit Li Jiancheng (that's why I think he's actually quite competent), and so what ?

It is Li Shimin who scored important victories to Tang and not Li Jiancheng.

It's difficult to see Tang not rising under any Emperor's reign, save a really disastrous Sui Yangdi-esque type. The Tang had the great fortune of inheriting the Sui's projects (Grand Canal, Luoyang-Changan reconstruction) without paying the political price for it.

Why should Tang settle on "any" emperors and not excellent ones like Li Shimin which is proven in OTL ? That does not make any sense at all.
 
But really? I think both are extremely important areas. Some of Li Yuan's biggest threats, like Liang Shidu or Liu Wuzhou, were linked to northern nomads, not to mention there was the later thing where the Khan of the Tujue forced Li Shimin to an agreement. When Li Yuan divided the responsibilities, keeping Li Jiancheng in the west and sending Li Shimin east, the Tong pass may have had more immediate importance, but after that, Li Shimin's victories were more important to the Tang. At least that's the way I remember it.

That's certainly true, which is why I said it could have been Li Shimin propaganda, but certainly at that point of the campaign the crucial issue was getting rid of the Sui, not so much the fellow contenders to the Sui.

Re: 06294086, I was responding to your statement that Li Shimin was the better choice to lead the Tang, because OTL Tang reached its peak during his reign. That implies that Li Shimin had a big contribution to Tang's greatness. And I'm saying that the fundamentals of Tang were such that any competent Emperor was going to have it easy - this is *not to say* that Li Shimin was incompetent, but that a Li Jiancheng Tang would probably have gone similarly.

A bit off-topic, but I would argue that truly transformative Emperors, whose replacement would generate drastically different results, would be the likes of Zhao Kuangyin or the Hongwu Emperor.
 
That's certainly true, which is why I said it could have been Li Shimin propaganda, but certainly at that point of the campaign the crucial issue was getting rid of the Sui, not so much the fellow contenders to the Sui.
But Li Yuan hadn't publicly declared the end of the Sui until a year after he split up. Before then, Sui loyalists probably would have seen him as a Sui general jockeying for power in the absence of any real leadership (Emperor Yang of Sui still being alive in Jiangdu). There's certainly a threat from Sui generals, such as Song Laosheng who opposed Li Yuan earlier, but I think there's more of a threat from the other direction, from the north. For example, Liu Wuzhou was in Shuozhou in Shanxi, Xue Ju is in Lanzhou in Gansu, Guo Zihe is in Yulin in Shaanxi, Liang Shidu in Baotaou in Inner Mongolia, and so forth. And after the Tang forces under Li Shimin went north, they gained the surrender of Qiu Shili, Liu Zhongwen, and He Panren, so it seems Li Yuan was very much concerned with anti-Sui peasant rebels and not just Sui remnants. If anything, he should have known that the Yuan Wendu and Wang Shichong in Luoyang would be too busy with Li Mi, Zhu Can, and other rebels, and would be even less of a threat.

Li Jiancheng was assisted by the very able Liu Wenjing when he was sent to the Tong pass, but Li Shimin was assisted by several notables such as the Princess Pingyang and Li Shentong. It doesn't look to me like Li Yuan thought that both Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin were equally capable, because he gave Li Shimin important tasks that actually saw action (especially after he captured Chang'an, as mentioned before). So I suspect that Li Yuan at least considered Li Shimin to be more capable, which explains why he saw considerably more military action than his older brother.
 
Top