WI: Huayna Capac doesn’t die - Surviving Inca?

The defeat of the Incas was primarily based on luck/poor decision making in OTL. Pizarro invaded just after a massive plague (probably smallpox) and in the middle of a civil war. At multiple points the Inca could have defeated the Spanish but didn’t because of strategic or tactical blunders.

The easiest way to solve these problems is to have Huayna Capac or his eldest son and designated heir, Ninan Cuyochic, survive the 1528 plague. No succession war means the Inca show a united front and likely annihilate Pizarro on the shore or when he can’t use his horses on the steep Inca roads.

Would this be enough to secure Inca survival?
 
If Huayna Capac never catches the disease I think he'd be belligerent enough to the Spanish(remember, he was on the warpath in Colombia when he died) that the early Spanish settlements in Colombia are razed, sets up a sizable buffer zone for Atahualpa's expanded Kingdom of Quito(Atahualpa was due to inherit the Kingdom of Quito as the son of the last Queen of the Kingdom before it was joined to the Inca Empire and was also Huayna Capac's favorite), and properly militarizes the Kingdom of Quito as a splinter Quechua state in alliance with Ninan Cuyochi's Tawantinsuyu upon Huayna Capac's eventual death. Think something akin to the Western and Eastern Roman Emperors. Huayna Capac's final decade of his life was pretty much spent creating a nest egg for Atahualpa and interconnecting the north and south via road systems. If the Inca are aware of Spanish hostility after a failed first encounter, then the Inca will be more than ready to repel them. At which point you can go for whatever scenario for Inca survival you favor albeit with a Northern and Southern Inca Empire instead of one united Empire. Probably a good thing in the short and long term as it'll allow the northern Empire to act as the bulwark against Spanish aggression while the South is able to continue it's OTL adventures into Chile and Argentina. Long term, there's always the possibility of reunification so long as the two Empires remain in unison and the Northern Empire remains weaker due to the continued need for Quechua settlers to assimilate the North, soldiers to hold off the Spanish, and internal trade to maintain the cohesion of the realm as plagues inevitably spread, albeit far slower than OTL.
 
A big challenge is that Pizarro was purposefully following the playbook set down by Cortez against the Aztec. While it's convenient that the Spanish walked into a dynastic struggle they had every intention of befriending then capturing, puppeting, and murdering the Inca leadership from the start. Pizarro wasn't winging it, he had a plan. In that context it doesn't seem unlikely to me that if Huayna Capac doesn't die of disease he receives much the same treatment that Atahualpa and Moctezuma did of a Spanish coup. Considering the apparent ease at which the Spanish captured Atahualpa I'm not sure that Huayna Capac escapes the same trap and I can certainly see him getting captured in the first encounter since that was probably the Spanish intention from the start.

Huayna Capac surviving is a big step in the direction of Inca survival but a major challenge is that the Spanish went there with a plan and Huayna Capac has no idea what to expect.
 
If Huayna Capac never catches the disease I think he'd be belligerent enough to the Spanish(remember, he was on the warpath in Colombia when he died) that the early Spanish settlements in Colombia are razed, sets up a sizable buffer zone for Atahualpa's expanded Kingdom of Quito(Atahualpa was due to inherit the Kingdom of Quito as the son of the last Queen of the Kingdom before it was joined to the Inca Empire and was also Huayna Capac's favorite), and properly militarizes the Kingdom of Quito as a splinter Quechua state in alliance with Ninan Cuyochi's Tawantinsuyu upon Huayna Capac's eventual death. Think something akin to the Western and Eastern Roman Emperors. Huayna Capac's final decade of his life was pretty much spent creating a nest egg for Atahualpa and interconnecting the north and south via road systems. If the Inca are aware of Spanish hostility after a failed first encounter, then the Inca will be more than ready to repel them. At which point you can go for whatever scenario for Inca survival you favor albeit with a Northern and Southern Inca Empire instead of one united Empire. Probably a good thing in the short and long term as it'll allow the northern Empire to act as the bulwark against Spanish aggression while the South is able to continue it's OTL adventures into Chile and Argentina. Long term, there's always the possibility of reunification so long as the two Empires remain in unison and the Northern Empire remains weaker due to the continued need for Quechua settlers to assimilate the North, soldiers to hold off the Spanish, and internal trade to maintain the cohesion of the realm as plagues inevitably spread, albeit far slower than OTL.
How would the Spanish react to these powerful native states in the south? It might change the OTL reaction to the ‘black legend’. I don’t know if the Spanish would recognise the emperors as legitimate or whether the unrestrained conquistador period would be extended.
 
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