Avatar:Feishan

Feishan

Nationality	Ba Sing Se, Earth Kingdom
Ethnicity	Earth Kingdom
Age	28 in The Dawn of Yangchen
Born	Late era of Szeto
Position	Earth King
Affiliation	Earth Kingdom government
Allies	Gu
Enemies	Nong, shang merchants, Gonryu, Oyaluk
Predecessor	Unknown, eventually Zhoulai (as Earth Monarch)
Successor	Unknown, eventually Yi Ming (as Earth Monarch)
First appearance	"The Earth King"
Last appearance	"The Path Forward"

Feishan was an Earth King who ruled during the childhood and adolescence of Avatar Yangchen. Feishan was one of the more competent Earth Monarchs in history, being both a capable soldier who smashed those who militarily opposed him, and a capable politician who was able to transform his ideas into reality. While he had little affection for his country's nobility, Feishan cared for the welfare of the common people.

Despite these positive traits, however, Feishan was also a brutal, often arbitrary, and extremely paranoid monarch who was infamous for massacring perceived enemies and his willingness to plunge the four nations into chaos if his authority was threatened. His response to foreign intervention during a rebellion directly led to a fundamental shift in international relations during the Platinum Affair, resulting in great tensions and the emergence of the shang system.

History

Crushing Nong's rebellion and Platinum Affair

Feishan was born in the late era of Szeto. After ascending the throne, he quickly displayed an aggressive disposition and iron will to enforce his views; the rulers of the Fire Nation and Water Tribes considered him difficult to work with. When Feishan was still a quite young monarch, he faced a rebellion from General Nong, who sought to depose him and become the next Earth King. Neither side wanted to throw away their chances for success in a single moment, and so their forces danced around each other, prolonging the war. At this time, Avatar Yangchen was still a young child in the care of the nuns at the Western Air Temple.

Possibly influenced by the Order of the White Lotus, the leadership of the Fire Nation and Water Tribes lost patience, and conspired in secret to back Nong over Feishan, while keeping up a pretense of friendliness toward both sides. They loaned funds to the Earth King in the form of paper banknotes, hoping the loyalist soldiers would lose confidence in the king's ability to pay them with only written promises. Meanwhile, they sent Nong ingots of platinum, an extremely valuable currency. However, Feishan found the strategic moment he had been waiting for, and fell upon Nong at Llamapaca's Crossing, wiping his enemy off the face of the map. In the same battle, he captured the platinum treasury, as well as a number of foreign agents. He had the prisoners brutally tortured, and publicly revealed that the Fire Nation and Water Tribes had aided his enemies.

In an infamous act, Feishan used the platinum captured from his enemies to plate the giant badgermole statue behind his throne.

Though Feishan would have liked to wage war against the Fire Nation and Water Tribes for their involvement in Nong's rebellion, he recognized that his military was weak due to the civil war. He thus opted for another form of vengeance: In retribution for what his fellow heads of state had done, he closed his nation's ports, cut off diplomatic communication, and expelled ambassadors from his land. He kept the captured platinum, melting it down and using it to plate the giant badgermole statue behind his throne, declaring that diplomatic relations would return to normal once the entire surface fully tarnished and appeared as stone, which would be approximately a century or even longer. The Fire Nation and Water Tribes responded by announcing their own states of isolation. However, Feishan and his court still desired luxury goods from abroad, and there was money to be made from Earth Kingdom exports. As a result, the Earth King, Fire Lord Gonryu, and Chief Oyaluk of the Water Tribes agreed to restrict trade to four cities to handle controlled amounts of international trade. The overall incident had become known as the Platinum Affair.

Crises at Bin-Er and Taku

After the Platinum Affair, Feishan purged many highborn traitors and spies from court. Even after this bloodletting, he continued to occasionally purge Ba Sing Se of his perceived enemies; in one infamous case, he had the corpses of his victims strung up at the walls of his capital. Feishan enjoyed the revenue that the shang cities brought him, but started to get somewhat suspicious of the shangs over the years. Shortly before Feishan was due for an audience with a fully-realized Avatar Yangchen, he received a "rude and cryptic" message from Zongdu Henshe of Bin-Er, informing the monarch that the shangs had something to show him, and a new deal to strike in Bin-Er. Feishan correctly interpreted this message as a de facto declaration of rebellion by Henshe, and sent several Earth Kingdom Army divisions to crush the potential rebels at Bin-Er. However, his troops were confronted by a series of mysterious explosions. Yangchen ultimately convinced the military to halt its advance by declaring the unrest at Bin-Er to be related to spirit issues.

When Avatar Yangchen later arrived at the palace in Ba Sing Se, she was told that the Earth King was busy, but given a passphrase to let her know that the Earth King actually wanted to speak to her somewhere without the possibility of people spying on them. He wore rough laborer's clothes and came to a wine shop in the Middle Ring, where a disguised Yangchen was waiting for him. Having heard reports about fireballs in the skies of Bin-Er, Feishan asked her what had happened, and she lied to him that human suffering had begotten turmoil in the Spirit World, and that Bin-Er fell out of balance, causing dark entities to manifest above the city. She told him that she did what she could to appease them, but that she could not placate them on her own, and had to enlist her brothers from the Northern Air Temple.

Feishan told her that he had lost a lot of face, as well as a lot of revenue, but Yangchen told him that the incident was his own fault for letting the shangs to mismanage the city until neither human nor spirit could thrive. Although he was angered by the accusation, she told him that there was a better way, and that she could devise a plan that could ease the burden of Bin-Er's residents, while bringing him more revenue than any zongdu had done. While Feishan questioned an Air Nomad's knowledge of administration, Yangchen responded that she personally knew very little, Avatar Szeto knew a great deal about it. Feishan was hooked, asking if she could consult Szeto on every decision she would make in Bin-Er, and she lied that she indeed could. She told him that if he withdrew his troops, she could endeavor to restore balance, to which he agreed to support. Yangchen asked if the reformed city could serve as a model for the Lower Ring, and he said he may consider it. However, he said he would continue his investigations, due to Henshe's cryptic message. While he said his investigations would be at a more leisurely rate after Yangchen's promises, he noted that he would likely do something terrible to the four nations if he discovered that the lights above Bin-Er were actually the work of a man. However, the Earth King clinked his glass of wine to the Avatar's, toasting to a brighter tomorrow, and expecting that Yangchen would come through on her side of the bargain.

Despite Yangchen's claims and the Avatar subsequently working hard to maintain the facade, Feishan never fully believed that the Bin-Er incident had been the work of the spirits. Over the next months, he learned of Unanimity project's existence, possibly thanks to a leak by the Order of the White Lotus. Though not aware of the project's details and backers, the Earth King subsequently began to mobilize his armies, pondering his next moves but perfectly willing to start a world war in case he felt threatened.

Before any nation made the first move, however, a regular international meeting at Taku was supposed to take place. The event, attended by the Earth King, the Fire Lord, the Water Tribe Chief, and the zongdus, was supposed to reconfirm the terms of the shang system. As he was extremely paranoid about the possibility that his enemies could use the Taku meeting for an attack, Feishan scouted the city in disguise for several days before he was officially supposed to arrive. Feishan, still in disguise, was also among the crowd which witnessed the destruction of Taku's convocation hall by Avatar Yangchen. Unlike the others, he saw Yangchen fighting a combustionbender. After the fight, the monarch stared furiously at the Avatar as she tried to leave the scene. Instead of acknowledging him or trying to talk, Yangchen just bumped past him.

Feishan later agreed to meet the Avatar, both disguised as sailors, and to board a small sailing ship together at the Taku docks. After sailing in silence into the ocean, Feishan spoke first, demanding that Yangchen explain herself. The Avatar did so, roughly outlining the Unanimity project and revealing that Zongdus Chaisee and Henshe had overseen it. As Henshe was dead, the monarch did not care about him, but was angry upon learning that Chaisee had been able to flee Taku. As the king pondered on how to capture Chaisee to torture the secrets of Unanimity out of her and create his own human weapons, Yangchen asked the monarch to support her in adapting the shang system: By putting herself in power of all shang cities. Though he was not opposed to the proposal per se, as the Avatar would be more reliable than the zongdus, Feishan voiced his belief that this was an attempt by Yangchen to shield the Fire Nation and Water Tribes from his wrath. As he mused about his ability to use his strengthened military to invade the other nations, Yangchen stated that in this case she would deliver the secrets of Unanimity to his enemies. To support this threat, she then ordered an allied combustionbender on a nearby ship to open fire on the area around their boat. This demonstration scared the monarch into calling off his invasion plans and to support Yangchen's proposal for the shang system reform.

Personality

Feishan could be an extremely wrathful individual, and would act with severity against those who opposed or slighted him. His prisons were infamous for their cruel torture methods, and he was willing to mutilate or murder entire families when it suited his goals. Exceedingly paranoid, Feishan saw enemies everywhere and trusted no one. Accordingly, he often disguised himself to conduct his own investigations, as he did not want to rely on his spies' knowledge.

However, he was also a patient listener and embodied the principle of neutral jing. Furthermore, Feishan was one of the few Earth Monarchs who actually cared about the poorest citizens of Ba Sing Se's Lower Ring, either because it appealed to his authority, or because he was aware of the strategic importance of the Lower Ring forming a siege line around the Middle and Upper Rings. Despite his dark personality traits, Yangchen believed that the monarch truly did wish to be loved by his subjects.

Appearances

Chronicles of the Avatar

The Legacy of Yangchen

Preceded by Unknown, eventually Zhoulai

Earth King Years unknown

Succeeded by Unknown, eventually Yi Ming

Trivia

• According to Iroh, Pakku, and Bumi's retelling of Team Avatar's adventures during the Hundred Year War, one room in the Earth Kingdom Royal Palace was named in Feishan's honor.
• Feishan showcases a number of parallels with real-world King Matthias Corvinus. Both monarchs were crowned at a rather young age and had to deal with much internal as well as external resistance, including open rebellion. They were also perceived as fairly effective leaders who disguised themselves to travel among commoners to learn about the realities of their realm. Furthermore, both kings were infamous for brutally torturing and killing those who tried to topple their rule.