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