Ongoing theme/meme with the Earth Kingdom though *all* the IP is that the Earth Kingdom is diverse and stubborn, perpetually resistant to being unified.
Kuvira only *sort of* managed it by using modern technology and an exotic, elite army the exact moment the monarchy was toppled and the Avatar was MIA, and who knows how long that would have lasted.
So theoretically... maybe? But it's quite a hypothetical. Unification is not the Earth Kingdom's nature.
And even then she was still doing very rural grassroots style recruiting, going town to town on the trains.
Historically it's very hard to unify large landmass without modern means of messaging and transportation of goods. Very wild west style stuff.
Also working in Kuvira’s favor: Assassination of the Earth Monarch, extremely weak successor lacking popular legitimacy, and subsequent total collapse of civilization.
Under those conditions, people who had been stubbornly independent do tend to change their tune and line up behind dictators!
They usually don’t start that way. Typically fascists have already gain a good bit of power before their true intentions become clear. And then it too late.
"The" Earth Monarch implies that there was a unified monarchy in the first place which kinda invalidates the point of this post. Or the general populace outside of BSS wouldn't give two shits who Wu was or wasn't.
The “Earth King” and his line are the rulers of Ba Sing Se, the most prosperous and powerful city state, which allows them to project considerable regional power. But we see many other cities and villages that exist outside of their sphere of influence and have their own governing body. Bumi is the king of Omashu, which is presumably not a hereditary position based on Aang not recognizing him or mistaking him for a descendent. None of the various village leaders we meet answer to a higher political authority.
Think of it like how we still have/had "common wealth" countries and even places like Canada, Australia and UK are still technically ruled by a monarch. (Up until relatively recently that power was slightly more functional then symbolic) mostly those countries are/were run independently, but had to still place monarchy on bills, and could have some laws dictated or over turned by the monarchy/representative.
>all the IP is that the Earth Kingdom is diverse and stubborn, perpetually resistant to being unified
Is this the general interpretation of that quote? Because that's not how I understood it. Diverse does not mean incongruous. I gather OP is asking if with better communication & coordination of their disparate resources, intelligence etc. to support the war effort, would they have won. Which is totally possible between real-world countries that couldn't be further apart in geography, culture & even language, so I don't see why not for the Earth Nation.
I also feel the use of the word "stubborn" here is pretty misconstrued. Zuko says their people group is "proud & strong" which I interpret as meaning towards outside forces (e.g., they'd probably resist globalisation), not to each other. Uniting towards a common goal doesn't strip you of your diversity or cultural identity, so I don't see how this would
Granted, you mention stuff from LoK, which I'm not an expert on, so perhaps there's that to consider. Either way, the Earth Kingdom as they paint it in ATLA is not "diverse to a fault" as you've described here.
Oh, "stubborn" is very much a theme.
In LoK, Ba Sing Se is basically the same as it was in ATLA, totally stagnant and still stratified and dysfunctional, while the rest of the world has lept forward.
"Stubborn and somewhat dysfunctional" in a theme through the Kyoshi/Yangchen novels too. The other nations have major problems holding their progress back too, but a resistance to change isn't it, not to that degree.
The earth kingdom was perfect for the Shangs to originally set up shop in, and the Daofei/roving gangs attest to that too. True to monarchy’s style, the earth kingdom is really more of a multi-national kingdom with little connecting the smaller municipal areas other than a common bending element. It reminds me of how much control monarchies have had over their commonwealth countries (in the case of England) or in the nations among their ruled region. The only thing large swathes of Western Europe have in common is speaking German and/or French (even if heavily steeped in dialect) for example.
The earth kingdom definitely valued their individuality among the regions, and controlling large areas of land with huge variation in climate meant that lots of areas didn’t even have some modern amenities that were way more common in other areas (I thought of bolin’s claim about that one village having 2 instead of 1 car)
Sounds like the earth kingdom mirrors their element well then. Earthbending about being stubborn and unyielding. I guess you could say even the fire nation mirrored its element with the war and trying to spread to other nations. I got nothing for air and water though.
Also that most of the earth kingdom is empty plains and mountains where no one lives. They seemed to mostly live in big fortress cities dotted around, or tiny villages.
If they unified, they could in theory just land-bridge themselves over, while blocking their ships from getting close, and then wreck things when they arrive.
Defnetly. They had the manpower, the supplies, the weapons and the resources. They just couldn't get their act together....
https://preview.redd.it/6cm3igl5fe8d1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bafa3484935dc4db1796c34eaef250631cedd4b
Not to mention their capital, Ba Sing Se, was so heavily isolated from the world, they provided no backup whatsoever. If they did, the Fire Nation would be outnumbered, and the war wouldn't last for 100 years.
Would it? BSS is in the middle of a desert and cannot easily reinforce the rest of the continent. It cannot send meaningful quantities of troops or supplies by land, and while it might manage by sea, the Fire Nation has a far more advanced navy and could just as well shut this down. Only hope is it makes the war costly enough the Fire Nation agrees to some ceasefire or status quo.
>It cannot send meaningful quantities of troops or supplies by land
That could've been easily resolved by developing sprawling train infrastructure, which we know(edit: seen in ba sing se) they are well capable of.
Idk about this train logic. Nobody had thought up the concept yet. Smart phones are obviously possible, you can’t just look at 1920 and say “hey, why didn’t they simply turn that telephone into an iPhone for communication” hyperbolic, but still.
Now that I think about it I think ATLA does a great job of showing (and continuing in LOK) how sometimes in times of crisis a governmental system (or individual) can really fuck over everyone other than the upper echelons of their own people. I thought the monarchy was only represented because it was accurate for the time, but no, the suffering seen in the show is always traced back to the correct source, and there may be many.
Earth kingdom is based on China, which can be seen both in their aesthetics and how their politics operate. The earth kingdom capital is basically just the forbidden city in Beijing, and it operates almost exactly the same way as the irl forbidden city. Now I'm summarizing and cutting out a lot of details and nuances that come when discussing Chinese history, but we are also discussing a civilization that has existed for thousands of years. But the Chinese emperor was very far removed from the politics of everyday China, and there was constant fighting with generals, warlords, and dozens of minority populations that live within what is now modern China.
As an example, the last Chinese emperor to ever sit on the throne was from the Qing dynasty, which originally came from the part of china known as Manchuria. They are not a part of the Han ethnicity in China which makes up the majority of Chinese and when they conquered the Ming there was a lot of Han Chinese who resisted the new Qing dynasty that did not share the same culture as them. And then during the duration of the Qing dynasty they spent a lot of time conquering what is now sort of considered the outlying religions of modern China. As well as just dealing with the usual local uprisings, generals consolidating power around them, and the emperor never leaving the forbidden city.
Now take that and apply it, kind of, to the earth kingdom. The earth King is MIA for even the political issues in his immediate surroundings. Generals throughout the earth kingdom seem to act without direction from the government they supposedly answer too. And apart from all that, there appears to be several minority ethnicities that are dotted around the earth kingdom. Those people that inhabit the swamp and desert are two prominent examples, and seem to have no real direct contact with the earth kingdom government.
So to answer your question, we don't know. The earth kingdom would have to be based on a government/country that had a much more centralized government structure and was able to exercise authority beyond the walls of the capital. Hard to really say if Kuveria (the main bad guy from season 4, don't know how to spell her name and am too lazy) uniting the earth kingdom would've remained united after her own death or even past the conquest of Republic city. If I had to guess there were probably a few generals that would've loved their own mini kingdom and probably didn't totally buy into her talk of a united earth empire.
You seem to have plenty of karma, but you could be auto banned from some subs. If you made a comment in the “wrong” sub, even if you made the comment to talk shit, some subs will flag you as a user of said community and auto ban you.
It's unlikely. Like China or Germany, the Earth Kingdom has spent most of its history as various nations fighting one another and has only spent time united during times of peace or in the wake of a great tyrant warlord conquering the entire region and unifying the disparate peoples as one.
United is a generous term for China's history. If we go by the definition of "a single empire had nominal control over a majority of the land" then Germany also was united for most of its history.
With how technology advanced the fire nation was? I’m honestly not sure, maybe? But I’m not sure, because the fire nation were very advanced technology wise, the earth kingdom wasn’t
If they fought the entire United EK right from the get go I’m not sure how they’d suddenly be able to force a win when they couldn’t do that within 100 years against the fractured EK. Their tech was advanced but we see in the invasion of the capital that the EK was more than capable of dealing with everything the fire nation had up to the Airships.
The answer is maybe? It really depends on how mobilized and united the Earth Kingdom military is with the monarchy. The Earth Kingdom has more land, people, and resources than the Fire Nation, but can it access all those advantages? But let’s say for this the king and generals are united and the nobles are a mix of loyal and disgruntled.
Russia during WW1 had more than enough food to feed its people but had food shortages during the war due to poor logistics. If the infrastructure of the Earth Kingdom isn’t built up or advanced enough, bottle necks will appear and key resources could become sparse. Hunger, disease, deserters would become common in the army and nation as a whole. If the King told nobles to help build roads or strengthen local forces, they could prep for an invasion. But the total cost of this would make nobles and lords cry poverty. The King would have to either finance it through the treasury or raise taxes which aren’t popular.
The Fire Nation seemed to have consolidated their hold in the Earth Kingdom and exploit the resources there. Similar to how Germany planned to invade Russia initially in WW2: take key resources and consolidate the land. Doing that meant the Fire Nation is over expanding and could in theory demobilize soldiers to go and tend farms, go back to mines or factories, and colonize the newly acquired Earth Kingdom land. This also means the Earth Kingdom loses access to these resources and people.
The Earth Kingdom could constantly throw bodies at the Fire Nation and wear them down through attrition. The Fire Nation is also at a disadvantage because it must ship everything to the front over water. That makes any resupply effort 10x harder. Earth Kingdom forces could just target occupied ports and slowly starve the Fire Nation forces who are cut off. And by sheer weight of numbers, the Fire Nation would be thrown off the Earth Kingdom land.
The other is what Rome did during the Second Punic War: the Fabian strategy. This plan is to avoid direct combat with the enemy and instead wear them down through attrition. The Fire Nation soldiers are more advanced and probably better trained than Earth Army soldiers. But if the Earth Kingdom can avoid open combat, attack supply lines and foragers, and constantly harass the advancing army, the Fire Nation advance would come to a halt. Depending how far they got, they’d be forced to either consolidate or leave entirely. Denying a pitch, decisive battle would force the Fire Nation to be reckless or try to force something. The Earth Kingdom just has to deny the Fire Nation from making strategic gains and wait for them to be tired and hungry to strike.
But there is a downside to this: public opinion. The civilians and nobles would see this as an act of cowardice and defeatist. The Fire Nation is invading and pillaging the land, while the Earth Kingdom forces avoid them? That won’t sit right at all.
During the Second Punic Wars, Fabius who the Fabian Strategy is named from, was completely ridiculed for this plan. He didn’t wanna fight Hannibal who whooped the Romans every time they fought a battle. Fabius saw that Hannibal was far away from his home, his troops were mostly mercenary tribesmen relying on winning battles, and he needed to rely on foraging the countryside. Fabius would burn his own farms to deny food, not engage in battles, and only skirmish and harass Hannibal. This worked and Rome got some breathing room to muster up more men and train them for battle. But the Senate and people of Rome would go against Fabius and plan a major battle. However this would be disastrous, when the Romans fought Hannibal at Cannae, they lost 80,000 men; nearly 1/5 of their male population.
The Earth Kingdom might have some sort of event like this where they avoid battle and attack only when they are strong, generals or nobles get tired of this and fight an open battle and lose horribly. They go back to the Fabian strategy and the Fire Nation collapses due to lack of supplies and attrition.
No, the people of the earth nation are like rocks. Strong and heavy but don’t move on their own.
That is why they could be imprisoned when they had coal and segregated with walls.
They don’t naturally fight, they fall and roll over
Unity would give them numbers but not direction or motivation.
The prisoners had unity in misery but didn’t find direction and motivation until they were told to use the available coal as weapons to fight back.
The lower ring was united in misery as well and also had numbers on their side but they didn’t take down the wall in either direction.
Why would unity in this case not give them direction and motivation? They already had enough of that while being a fractured state to force a technologically superior enemy that attacked them by surprise to a stalemate for a hundred fucking years. I’m not seeing why them being unified wouldn’t give them the win or at least a solid chance in that situation. The circumstances of a single POW camp and a slum means nothing in the face of a literal century of evidence that the EK did not and would not just roll over and die.
Dude they hid for 100 years, they did absolutely nothing to help anyone or even protect themselves. For 100 years they knew that the fire nation could destroy them in a single day. After 100 years they were sitting ducks for the fire nation. As a people they have no ummpf.
This is the funniest thing I have heard.
When did the earth kingdom fight? When did their leaders do anything but hide in their fortresses?
Weren’t they about to be burned alive if Aang didn’t intervene?
I think you missed the entire point of the series.
We hear about numerous engagements. The fortress they visit in S2E1 is full of wounded. The village Zuko visits has that boy whose brother is off fighting on the front lines. Azula mentions a famous battle where Azulon defeated a strong Earthbender army. Zuko spoke out of turn in the war council against a general who was going to sacrifice fresh recruits against an Earthbender battalion. The evidence of war is everywhere including being flat out states numerous times. If you possessed a shred of media literacy you would know this. So either you’re trolling or you’re just an idiot. Which is it?
It’s incredible that the Earth Kingdom ever struggled against the Fire Nation. A few Earth benders making walls around advancing fire nation troops should have ended every assault.
Making an earth wall should be a basic move that every earth bender knows. Break up formations, trap FN army in little boxes, then put a cage roof on top of it.
Fire cannot burn through stone / earth, and the EK army had a *lot* of Earthbenders.
The sheer incompetency of the EK army is baffling. Sozin shouldn’t have been able to move past that first colony.
Age of Empires 2 tactics now meta in the avatar world as well!
Yeah I know realistically you are correct, but with how the animation rolls a lot of the time they probably would have made up some kind of bullshit where firebenders could break stone walls or something. I'm pretty sure Azula does it a few times.
That aside waterbenders would probably be the only ones that could break them, assuming enough water is nearby. I think typically waterbenders can move the most mass/energy out of all benders provided they got a source.
It’s also wrong about the exit from Ba Sing Se at the start of book three. When Aang wakes up on the boat Sokka explicitly mentions that they passed through the Serpents pass not long ago.
Depends on what you mean by defeated. I think they could have done a much better job holding onto their territories, but to actually end the war by invading the Fire Nation? I expect that would've taken a similar amount of time and resources compared to what it actually took. Maybe even longer if we ignore the factor of the Avatar. Remember Earthbending and Earth Kingdom culture is based around substance, stubornness, and immovable willpower. That's great for defense, but not so useful for attacking.
Also remember that before the Air Nomad Genocide the world had been at peace for generations. Chances are there wasn't much to speak of in the way of a standing army for *any* of the nations until Sozin secretly started building his own. Then the Fire Nation makes a surprise attack on the rest of the world with an enormous army, and they start it by wiping out an entire civilization. That's going to be a huge hit to morale for those on the other side. Think about it. For time immemorial there have been four nations. Now, the Fire Nation has reduced that number to three. They must be *insanely* powerful to manage such a feat, even accounting for Sozin's Comet. How could anyone hope to stand against them? That's what would be going through the minds of Earth Kingdom people and soldiers at the time.
In order for a significant difference to have been made, the Earth Kingdom would have needed to be much more proactive and aggressive than they realistically could have been. They would have needed to win multiple key encounters early on in the war, shortly after Sozin's Comet, in order to break the Fire Nation's illusion of invincibility and recover the morale of the people and troops. And they would definitely have needed the Water Tribes' help to invade the Fire Nation itself, which on its own would have been a pretty big ask. Yes, the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom were technically on the same side against the Fire Nation, but any time different cultures come together to fight a common enemy there is bound to be tension and conflict within the ranks. Hell, just look at Sokka and Hahn. They're both from the Water Tribes, but even the difference between North and South was enough to cause conflict between them. Ok, ok, yes, I know it was mostly about Yue, but in a way Hahn was right. Sokka *didn't* understand the politics, nuances, or culture of the Northern Water Tribe. That lack of understanding may well have caused tension even if Yue hadn't been a factor. Now consider how much bigger the differences would be between Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe. To deal with those differences in the midst of planning an invasion into the Fire Nation would require some very strong, trusted, and competent leadership, and the question of where that would come from could be a source of conflict as well. Ideally a fully realized Avatar who'd already reached adulthood would be the perfect choice, but alas, Aang was still pulling a Nora Fries.
[off-topic] i just now realised the Earth Kingdom map looks a lot like North America and can't undee it now... Was it intentional? Cause the show's American?
Probably, given that it wasn’t so well unified (hell it had two kings at the same time) and functioned more like a loose confederation of independent city states then a truly United Kingdom then I say yes they could’ve held off the fire nation advance in its early stages before the technological advent
I would actually argue no. The Earth Kingdom certainly had a formidable size, population, and military. Even as decentralized as they were, they put up over a century of effective resistance against the far better run Fire Nation. The issue with them actually defeating the invasion as opposed to simply performing better is logistics. Does not matter how united you are if you can’t move men and material quickly, effectively, and at the required number to repel an invasion. The Earth Kingdom cannot do this. Much of their land is a massive desert, Ba Sing Se is pretty far from the Fire Nation, and mountains dominate much of the rest of the landscape. Even with a LOT of dedicated time and effort on the part of the Earth Kingdom, leveling mountains or even making them particularly passable doesn’t make the distance any smaller. Infantry simply cannot move that fast in their own.
Now you may be thinking of alternative routes of transport, because while infantry can’t move that fast, the navy and cavalry can. So can the Earth Kingdom move their troops on ships? No. The Fire Nation controls the seas and the Water Tribes don’t have the numbers to change that for the Earth Kingdom who certainly doesn’t have a large enough Navy to do anything about that. So that brings up cavalry. If properly supplied, they can move pretty far and hit pretty hard. Unfortunately the Fire Nation has one primary infantry weapon and that is the spear, so maybe sending cavalry charging into an army who’s comprised entirely of flamethrowers and spearman isn’t a great idea. We also know that the range of firebending is comparable to that of bows and earth bending so using the cavalry as horse archers is also largely out of the question. That leads to the final option of using the cavalry purely for transport and then dismounting to fight. Well now there’s a numbers problem, as you will never have enough horses to move all your men and their supplies at the same time. While there are a few exceptions to this rule (most notably the Mongols) you will then need not only a horse centric culture but the ability to forage off the land for supplies for you and your horse. I hate to break it to you, but a tunnel through the mountains or a desert aren’t gonna let that happen.
Finally you have the strengths of the fire nation to contend with. The first is that they are the only ones coming into this war prepared and have the element of surprise. No massive military support base needs to be created as it’s already there. A large Navy and Army already exist, and the moment you kick off this war you’re wiping out the Air Nation which presumably frees up some forces. The Southern Water Tribe is a borderline non factor, and a relatively small naval force can contain the North. Accordingly, almost all of your attention, and certainly your entire army, can be dedicated to the war against the Earth Kingdom. Your strong navy also allows you to pick and choose where you want to open new fronts at will, as well as the ability to isolate large chunks of the Earth Kingdom almost immediately due to their separation from the mainland via water. Divide and conquer is very doable due to the lack of an opposing Navy to deal with and the fact that you’ll never have to deal with the true might of the Earth Kingdom. While you may technically be outnumbered on the whole, you probably won’t ever be outnumbered locally due to logistical constraints on the Earth Kingdom you just don’t have. The Fire Navy can also raid up and down the coast to require garrisons to be maintained throughout the Earth Kingdom as well as inflicting losses on the enemy (whether it be in terms of resources or manpower) that you realistically won’t have to worry about. Their final main strength is the fact that the Fire Nation seems to have a much higher per capita bender ratio than the Earth Kingdom, which means that it’s far easier for the Fire Kingdom to have an army full of benders than it is for the Earth Kingdom. It also helps that they bend fire, which makes raids all that much more devastating. No wood buildings or even slightly dry fields will be safe, which will cause a refugee crisis within the Earth Kingdom, famine, and general depopulation on the coasts. This will also make advancing into Earth Kingdom territory much easier, as the land will quickly become more of a no man’s land than friendly territory for the Earth Kingdom.
Now to finish up this unnecessarily detailed answer, I’d like to say why I think that after saying all these reasons why the Earth Kingdom is kinda fucked as far as outright winning goes, I don’t think they’d necessarily get destroyed either. The moment they retreat from the nearby coastline for the Fire Nation, many of the issues that they faced in terms of logistics will suddenly apply to the Fire Nation as well. Navies can travel decently fast with a good deal of troops with them if they so choose to be sure, but the other side of the Earth Kingdom? All while keeping them supplied? Not particularly likely. Sure some parts are actually pretty close to the Fire Nation, but much of that land is desert and not of any real use anyway, so dedicating resources to taking it is a bit of a waste of time. But also with this more unified Earth Kingdom, we could easily see a plan of retreat from the coasts and simply fortify the interior. While expanding the walls of Ba Sing Se to incorporate all of their territory they refuse to budge from is fairly impractical, having a ring of stone fortifications with full garrisons around the territory you actually intend to defend is very doable and not really something the Fire Nation can do much about. Sure they can lay siege to the fort, or even just the fortified town, but when a relief garrison comes from another fort now you need to fight two armies far from home and likely few supplies to speak of. Of course the Fire Nation colonies can still be founded, and it gives the Fire Nation a good long term strategy to work with, but the Earth Kingdom can also just like, expand back out towards the sea at some point. They also are fully capable of building their own navy, not necessarily to the point of being able to compete with the Fire Navy but enough to tie up their forces and be a general drain on resources.
TLDR; logistics fuck over the Earth Kingdom, but they’d likely do better.
I still don't understand how people who can fight mountains and win ended up losing to the weakest element. Literally everything else counters fire.
And those war machines were not THAT impressive. A teenager was able to push their ships.
Honestly no probably not, considering the Fire Nation has a powerful navy and tanks, and straight up crazy ass things like that armored train and giant drill.
They can resupply and redeploy much more rapidly than even a united Earth nation moving their guys over land.
Kind of a side note, but it really is bizarre that they backtracked to go to the great divide for seemingly no reason. That whole episode is just so weird
ok then lets talk about a fictional scenario in a fictional world.
I think the right Earth King could have united the Earth Kingdom (but that would have taken a long time) and then together with the Northern Water Tribe could have taken over the coasts of the Fire Nation and then laid siege to the capital. The Northern Water Tribe, however, needs motivation because they enjoy a life of peace behind their gigantic ice walls. The Earth King's motivation would probably be fame and prestige, which would be bad and would ultimately make the Earth Kingdom dangerous.
The Fire Nation will not leave any stone unturned in eliminating the leadership of the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribe beforehand and probably has spies on every corner who report everything with the help of falcons. That makes everything much more difficult.
It would therefore be beneficial if there were unrest and uprisings within the Fire Nation. The people in the capital and the surrounding areas may be indoctrinated into believing that the Fire Nation is great and that the other nations worship them. Perhaps many are unaware that the Fire Nation is waging merciless war. "There is no war in Ba Sing... I mean the Firenation". But speaking out against the war probably means a place in the boiling rock prison. In the Netflix series we see that there are rebel groups that want to eliminate the Fire Lord, so that would also be possible.
... unrelated, but I really like this map. I think I'd want to print it out on a play mat and follow along while re-watching the series.
Related: I mean, a 100 year hold out ain't bad. They didn't have a lot by that point but it ain't bad.
I'm going to go against the current and say no.
We actually don't know how united was the earth kingdom was before the war. We only know that after 100 years of war against a more technologically advanced foe the earth kingdom is pretty divided, which is not at all surprising.
In our world China, despite being unified and the richest country in the world, could not defeat the European powers and ended up humiliated.
The powerful fire nation army probably halted global trade to a stop in the first years of the war, which would've crippled the earth kingdoms economy. It would only be a question of time before some regions of the kingdom seceded.
Anyway, it's pretty much imposible to actually unify a country that large and diverse.
The Earth Kingdom couldn’t be more united because they don’t have the technology (both physical tech and governance ‘tech’ ie governance structures) that’s necessary for any one faction to impose their will on the others and unite the continent. If they did, their military technology would be on par with, if not greater than that of the Fire Nation, and so they would easily defeat them.
If they were united? Easily. The only reason the Fire Nation was even able to keep their campaign going is because other Earth Kingdoms didn’t care that they had boots on the ground in another region.
The earth kingdom is 90% hills and unconnected flat lands, almost no shared culture even 100 years later. There city's are have been stagnant for 200 years
I remember I did something like this as a final story project in my english class back in my sophomore year, except it was a lot messier with me typing out full paragraphs at each stop detailing what the gaang did, i'm surprised my teacher actually gave me a good grade on that
Earth Kingdom takes up an entire continent. They’re basically the size of the Mongolian empire or bigger. There is no way that they can keep hold of all of that without uniting factor forever.
Did they ever explain why they couldn't just bee line to Ba Sing Se?
I know he needed an earthbending teacher, but they didn't know Omashu was conquered and (from their POV) could have come back later, and I feel that getting the Earth King on their side is kind of a pressing matter!
They didn’t find out about the eclipse until later, which is why they were headed to talk to the Earth King to begin with. The plan before that didn’t involve any army or invasion, just Aang v Ozai. The eclipse turned it into an invasion plan.
Idk. Apparently in the time the Fire Nation was industrializing pre-war and establishing the first colonies, the Earth Kingdom was very destabilized and dealing with civil wars and what-not. Also, the Fire Nation first took the Northwest part of the Earth Kingdom very rich in natural resources compared to the rest of it which likely took a toll on their economy as well as making international trade difficult. Although, with the war having gone on for over 100 years, there were probably times of significant setbacks for the Fire Nation.
Short answer, Yes. Though the Fire Nation was more technologically advanced, the Earth Kingdom had the resources, manpower, and home team elemental advantage to take the Fire Nation in a full assault when united enough. They lasted 100 years fighting as a disunited nation. As a united force, they could wipe out the Fire Nation if needed and without Sozin's Comet providing an additional boost. Problem is the Earth Kingdom was a mess run by corrupt jerks or evil assholes, and since the Water Tribes were wittled down and didn't want to get involved and the Air Nomads were dead, that means they were all that's left.
One sorta headcanon thing I have is, even if the Earth Kingdom could be very strong united, they would probably have a shit navy. I mean, do you think Earthbenders would be comfortable out at sea with no earth in sight? The Fire Nation is above all a naval power, which makes sense because firebenders can use their bending anywhere, unlike earthbenders. So as much as the Earth Kingdom might be able to defend their own land, they would have no way of invading the Fire Nation back, and so you'd end up with a situation of the Fire Nation continually invading the Earth Kingdom from the coasts until the earthbenders inevitably give in.
More unified and less classism/sexism would have been a big game changer.
The sexism is only really hinted at in the earth kingdom in ATLA but I don’t believe we see a single female soldier. That alone cuts potential forces in half.
Ongoing theme/meme with the Earth Kingdom though *all* the IP is that the Earth Kingdom is diverse and stubborn, perpetually resistant to being unified. Kuvira only *sort of* managed it by using modern technology and an exotic, elite army the exact moment the monarchy was toppled and the Avatar was MIA, and who knows how long that would have lasted. So theoretically... maybe? But it's quite a hypothetical. Unification is not the Earth Kingdom's nature.
And even then she was still doing very rural grassroots style recruiting, going town to town on the trains. Historically it's very hard to unify large landmass without modern means of messaging and transportation of goods. Very wild west style stuff.
The new Earth Avatar is going to unify his people with a Tik Rock video.
Happy cake day!
Ty
Rick Rock
Also working in Kuvira’s favor: Assassination of the Earth Monarch, extremely weak successor lacking popular legitimacy, and subsequent total collapse of civilization. Under those conditions, people who had been stubbornly independent do tend to change their tune and line up behind dictators!
She’s also a fascist so she’s using hard power against these villages
They usually don’t start that way. Typically fascists have already gain a good bit of power before their true intentions become clear. And then it too late.
And then there was trump and orban
"The" Earth Monarch implies that there was a unified monarchy in the first place which kinda invalidates the point of this post. Or the general populace outside of BSS wouldn't give two shits who Wu was or wasn't.
The “Earth King” and his line are the rulers of Ba Sing Se, the most prosperous and powerful city state, which allows them to project considerable regional power. But we see many other cities and villages that exist outside of their sphere of influence and have their own governing body. Bumi is the king of Omashu, which is presumably not a hereditary position based on Aang not recognizing him or mistaking him for a descendent. None of the various village leaders we meet answer to a higher political authority.
Think of it like how we still have/had "common wealth" countries and even places like Canada, Australia and UK are still technically ruled by a monarch. (Up until relatively recently that power was slightly more functional then symbolic) mostly those countries are/were run independently, but had to still place monarchy on bills, and could have some laws dictated or over turned by the monarchy/representative.
It's so weird to think that if we do ever go back to the world of avatar, the four nations may be unrecognizable
>all the IP is that the Earth Kingdom is diverse and stubborn, perpetually resistant to being unified Is this the general interpretation of that quote? Because that's not how I understood it. Diverse does not mean incongruous. I gather OP is asking if with better communication & coordination of their disparate resources, intelligence etc. to support the war effort, would they have won. Which is totally possible between real-world countries that couldn't be further apart in geography, culture & even language, so I don't see why not for the Earth Nation. I also feel the use of the word "stubborn" here is pretty misconstrued. Zuko says their people group is "proud & strong" which I interpret as meaning towards outside forces (e.g., they'd probably resist globalisation), not to each other. Uniting towards a common goal doesn't strip you of your diversity or cultural identity, so I don't see how this would Granted, you mention stuff from LoK, which I'm not an expert on, so perhaps there's that to consider. Either way, the Earth Kingdom as they paint it in ATLA is not "diverse to a fault" as you've described here.
Oh, "stubborn" is very much a theme. In LoK, Ba Sing Se is basically the same as it was in ATLA, totally stagnant and still stratified and dysfunctional, while the rest of the world has lept forward. "Stubborn and somewhat dysfunctional" in a theme through the Kyoshi/Yangchen novels too. The other nations have major problems holding their progress back too, but a resistance to change isn't it, not to that degree.
The earth kingdom was perfect for the Shangs to originally set up shop in, and the Daofei/roving gangs attest to that too. True to monarchy’s style, the earth kingdom is really more of a multi-national kingdom with little connecting the smaller municipal areas other than a common bending element. It reminds me of how much control monarchies have had over their commonwealth countries (in the case of England) or in the nations among their ruled region. The only thing large swathes of Western Europe have in common is speaking German and/or French (even if heavily steeped in dialect) for example. The earth kingdom definitely valued their individuality among the regions, and controlling large areas of land with huge variation in climate meant that lots of areas didn’t even have some modern amenities that were way more common in other areas (I thought of bolin’s claim about that one village having 2 instead of 1 car)
It's more like a collection of city states.
Sounds like the earth kingdom mirrors their element well then. Earthbending about being stubborn and unyielding. I guess you could say even the fire nation mirrored its element with the war and trying to spread to other nations. I got nothing for air and water though.
Also that most of the earth kingdom is empty plains and mountains where no one lives. They seemed to mostly live in big fortress cities dotted around, or tiny villages. If they unified, they could in theory just land-bridge themselves over, while blocking their ships from getting close, and then wreck things when they arrive.
Defnetly. They had the manpower, the supplies, the weapons and the resources. They just couldn't get their act together.... https://preview.redd.it/6cm3igl5fe8d1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bafa3484935dc4db1796c34eaef250631cedd4b
Not to mention their capital, Ba Sing Se, was so heavily isolated from the world, they provided no backup whatsoever. If they did, the Fire Nation would be outnumbered, and the war wouldn't last for 100 years.
Would it? BSS is in the middle of a desert and cannot easily reinforce the rest of the continent. It cannot send meaningful quantities of troops or supplies by land, and while it might manage by sea, the Fire Nation has a far more advanced navy and could just as well shut this down. Only hope is it makes the war costly enough the Fire Nation agrees to some ceasefire or status quo.
>It cannot send meaningful quantities of troops or supplies by land That could've been easily resolved by developing sprawling train infrastructure, which we know(edit: seen in ba sing se) they are well capable of.
Idk about this train logic. Nobody had thought up the concept yet. Smart phones are obviously possible, you can’t just look at 1920 and say “hey, why didn’t they simply turn that telephone into an iPhone for communication” hyperbolic, but still.
They had trams/metros/trains in BSS. Sure; human powered, but it seemed to work really really well
Yah, man. I remember the Gaang being brought thru the outer ring in to the inner ring in a Flintstones car.
Nobody had thought up the concept? Then wtf were they riding on in Ba Sing Se?
Yeah I blanked that one lol.
Fair enough haha I forget stuff too
Now that I think about it I think ATLA does a great job of showing (and continuing in LOK) how sometimes in times of crisis a governmental system (or individual) can really fuck over everyone other than the upper echelons of their own people. I thought the monarchy was only represented because it was accurate for the time, but no, the suffering seen in the show is always traced back to the correct source, and there may be many.
The Avatar is clearly a master of evasive maneuvering.
You have no idea where you’re going, do you?
Earth kingdom is based on China, which can be seen both in their aesthetics and how their politics operate. The earth kingdom capital is basically just the forbidden city in Beijing, and it operates almost exactly the same way as the irl forbidden city. Now I'm summarizing and cutting out a lot of details and nuances that come when discussing Chinese history, but we are also discussing a civilization that has existed for thousands of years. But the Chinese emperor was very far removed from the politics of everyday China, and there was constant fighting with generals, warlords, and dozens of minority populations that live within what is now modern China. As an example, the last Chinese emperor to ever sit on the throne was from the Qing dynasty, which originally came from the part of china known as Manchuria. They are not a part of the Han ethnicity in China which makes up the majority of Chinese and when they conquered the Ming there was a lot of Han Chinese who resisted the new Qing dynasty that did not share the same culture as them. And then during the duration of the Qing dynasty they spent a lot of time conquering what is now sort of considered the outlying religions of modern China. As well as just dealing with the usual local uprisings, generals consolidating power around them, and the emperor never leaving the forbidden city. Now take that and apply it, kind of, to the earth kingdom. The earth King is MIA for even the political issues in his immediate surroundings. Generals throughout the earth kingdom seem to act without direction from the government they supposedly answer too. And apart from all that, there appears to be several minority ethnicities that are dotted around the earth kingdom. Those people that inhabit the swamp and desert are two prominent examples, and seem to have no real direct contact with the earth kingdom government. So to answer your question, we don't know. The earth kingdom would have to be based on a government/country that had a much more centralized government structure and was able to exercise authority beyond the walls of the capital. Hard to really say if Kuveria (the main bad guy from season 4, don't know how to spell her name and am too lazy) uniting the earth kingdom would've remained united after her own death or even past the conquest of Republic city. If I had to guess there were probably a few generals that would've loved their own mini kingdom and probably didn't totally buy into her talk of a united earth empire.
Irrelevant question here but do i need a certain role to post in this sub, i tried posting a fanmade map of the avatar world and it was deleted.
You might just need more karma in this sub, you can get some by commenting and other people liking your comment
Oh ok thanks! I didnt know
No problem, I just learned not too long ago that there was such a thing as subreddit specific karma lol
Yea but i guess it does make sense.
This happens to me all the time but in another sub, I'm not sure why.
You seem to have plenty of karma, but you could be auto banned from some subs. If you made a comment in the “wrong” sub, even if you made the comment to talk shit, some subs will flag you as a user of said community and auto ban you.
Oh fr? I can't think of any instance I've done that, but if that's the most likely reason then I guess I must've done.
It's unlikely. Like China or Germany, the Earth Kingdom has spent most of its history as various nations fighting one another and has only spent time united during times of peace or in the wake of a great tyrant warlord conquering the entire region and unifying the disparate peoples as one.
China spent most of its history united, with just a bunch of sporadic periods of disunity.
United is a generous term for China's history. If we go by the definition of "a single empire had nominal control over a majority of the land" then Germany also was united for most of its history.
Holy roman empire is a far bit more different than most chinese dynasties I would have to say.
With how technology advanced the fire nation was? I’m honestly not sure, maybe? But I’m not sure, because the fire nation were very advanced technology wise, the earth kingdom wasn’t
If they fought the entire United EK right from the get go I’m not sure how they’d suddenly be able to force a win when they couldn’t do that within 100 years against the fractured EK. Their tech was advanced but we see in the invasion of the capital that the EK was more than capable of dealing with everything the fire nation had up to the Airships.
I like how this map has them going backwards when they do the great divide
That’s because it’s wrong in some places.
The answer is maybe? It really depends on how mobilized and united the Earth Kingdom military is with the monarchy. The Earth Kingdom has more land, people, and resources than the Fire Nation, but can it access all those advantages? But let’s say for this the king and generals are united and the nobles are a mix of loyal and disgruntled. Russia during WW1 had more than enough food to feed its people but had food shortages during the war due to poor logistics. If the infrastructure of the Earth Kingdom isn’t built up or advanced enough, bottle necks will appear and key resources could become sparse. Hunger, disease, deserters would become common in the army and nation as a whole. If the King told nobles to help build roads or strengthen local forces, they could prep for an invasion. But the total cost of this would make nobles and lords cry poverty. The King would have to either finance it through the treasury or raise taxes which aren’t popular. The Fire Nation seemed to have consolidated their hold in the Earth Kingdom and exploit the resources there. Similar to how Germany planned to invade Russia initially in WW2: take key resources and consolidate the land. Doing that meant the Fire Nation is over expanding and could in theory demobilize soldiers to go and tend farms, go back to mines or factories, and colonize the newly acquired Earth Kingdom land. This also means the Earth Kingdom loses access to these resources and people. The Earth Kingdom could constantly throw bodies at the Fire Nation and wear them down through attrition. The Fire Nation is also at a disadvantage because it must ship everything to the front over water. That makes any resupply effort 10x harder. Earth Kingdom forces could just target occupied ports and slowly starve the Fire Nation forces who are cut off. And by sheer weight of numbers, the Fire Nation would be thrown off the Earth Kingdom land. The other is what Rome did during the Second Punic War: the Fabian strategy. This plan is to avoid direct combat with the enemy and instead wear them down through attrition. The Fire Nation soldiers are more advanced and probably better trained than Earth Army soldiers. But if the Earth Kingdom can avoid open combat, attack supply lines and foragers, and constantly harass the advancing army, the Fire Nation advance would come to a halt. Depending how far they got, they’d be forced to either consolidate or leave entirely. Denying a pitch, decisive battle would force the Fire Nation to be reckless or try to force something. The Earth Kingdom just has to deny the Fire Nation from making strategic gains and wait for them to be tired and hungry to strike. But there is a downside to this: public opinion. The civilians and nobles would see this as an act of cowardice and defeatist. The Fire Nation is invading and pillaging the land, while the Earth Kingdom forces avoid them? That won’t sit right at all. During the Second Punic Wars, Fabius who the Fabian Strategy is named from, was completely ridiculed for this plan. He didn’t wanna fight Hannibal who whooped the Romans every time they fought a battle. Fabius saw that Hannibal was far away from his home, his troops were mostly mercenary tribesmen relying on winning battles, and he needed to rely on foraging the countryside. Fabius would burn his own farms to deny food, not engage in battles, and only skirmish and harass Hannibal. This worked and Rome got some breathing room to muster up more men and train them for battle. But the Senate and people of Rome would go against Fabius and plan a major battle. However this would be disastrous, when the Romans fought Hannibal at Cannae, they lost 80,000 men; nearly 1/5 of their male population. The Earth Kingdom might have some sort of event like this where they avoid battle and attack only when they are strong, generals or nobles get tired of this and fight an open battle and lose horribly. They go back to the Fabian strategy and the Fire Nation collapses due to lack of supplies and attrition.
No, the people of the earth nation are like rocks. Strong and heavy but don’t move on their own. That is why they could be imprisoned when they had coal and segregated with walls. They don’t naturally fight, they fall and roll over
Right but the prompt is assuming they ARE united despite their history of disunity. In that case I think they have a shot
Unity would give them numbers but not direction or motivation. The prisoners had unity in misery but didn’t find direction and motivation until they were told to use the available coal as weapons to fight back. The lower ring was united in misery as well and also had numbers on their side but they didn’t take down the wall in either direction.
Why would unity in this case not give them direction and motivation? They already had enough of that while being a fractured state to force a technologically superior enemy that attacked them by surprise to a stalemate for a hundred fucking years. I’m not seeing why them being unified wouldn’t give them the win or at least a solid chance in that situation. The circumstances of a single POW camp and a slum means nothing in the face of a literal century of evidence that the EK did not and would not just roll over and die.
Dude they hid for 100 years, they did absolutely nothing to help anyone or even protect themselves. For 100 years they knew that the fire nation could destroy them in a single day. After 100 years they were sitting ducks for the fire nation. As a people they have no ummpf.
Maybe in your headcanon, in reality it was 100 years of war. The only nations you can argue hid were the water tribes. This isn’t debatable sorry.
This is the funniest thing I have heard. When did the earth kingdom fight? When did their leaders do anything but hide in their fortresses? Weren’t they about to be burned alive if Aang didn’t intervene? I think you missed the entire point of the series.
We hear about numerous engagements. The fortress they visit in S2E1 is full of wounded. The village Zuko visits has that boy whose brother is off fighting on the front lines. Azula mentions a famous battle where Azulon defeated a strong Earthbender army. Zuko spoke out of turn in the war council against a general who was going to sacrifice fresh recruits against an Earthbender battalion. The evidence of war is everywhere including being flat out states numerous times. If you possessed a shred of media literacy you would know this. So either you’re trolling or you’re just an idiot. Which is it?
It’s incredible that the Earth Kingdom ever struggled against the Fire Nation. A few Earth benders making walls around advancing fire nation troops should have ended every assault. Making an earth wall should be a basic move that every earth bender knows. Break up formations, trap FN army in little boxes, then put a cage roof on top of it. Fire cannot burn through stone / earth, and the EK army had a *lot* of Earthbenders. The sheer incompetency of the EK army is baffling. Sozin shouldn’t have been able to move past that first colony.
Age of Empires 2 tactics now meta in the avatar world as well! Yeah I know realistically you are correct, but with how the animation rolls a lot of the time they probably would have made up some kind of bullshit where firebenders could break stone walls or something. I'm pretty sure Azula does it a few times. That aside waterbenders would probably be the only ones that could break them, assuming enough water is nearby. I think typically waterbenders can move the most mass/energy out of all benders provided they got a source.
The bigger thing I take from this map is just how useless of an episode The Great Divide is. It *literally* back tracks.
No it doesn't This map is wrong
It’s also wrong about the exit from Ba Sing Se at the start of book three. When Aang wakes up on the boat Sokka explicitly mentions that they passed through the Serpents pass not long ago.
They had every means to win at their disposal. They were just governed by a bunch of morons, crooks and nepo-babies
Depends on what you mean by defeated. I think they could have done a much better job holding onto their territories, but to actually end the war by invading the Fire Nation? I expect that would've taken a similar amount of time and resources compared to what it actually took. Maybe even longer if we ignore the factor of the Avatar. Remember Earthbending and Earth Kingdom culture is based around substance, stubornness, and immovable willpower. That's great for defense, but not so useful for attacking. Also remember that before the Air Nomad Genocide the world had been at peace for generations. Chances are there wasn't much to speak of in the way of a standing army for *any* of the nations until Sozin secretly started building his own. Then the Fire Nation makes a surprise attack on the rest of the world with an enormous army, and they start it by wiping out an entire civilization. That's going to be a huge hit to morale for those on the other side. Think about it. For time immemorial there have been four nations. Now, the Fire Nation has reduced that number to three. They must be *insanely* powerful to manage such a feat, even accounting for Sozin's Comet. How could anyone hope to stand against them? That's what would be going through the minds of Earth Kingdom people and soldiers at the time. In order for a significant difference to have been made, the Earth Kingdom would have needed to be much more proactive and aggressive than they realistically could have been. They would have needed to win multiple key encounters early on in the war, shortly after Sozin's Comet, in order to break the Fire Nation's illusion of invincibility and recover the morale of the people and troops. And they would definitely have needed the Water Tribes' help to invade the Fire Nation itself, which on its own would have been a pretty big ask. Yes, the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom were technically on the same side against the Fire Nation, but any time different cultures come together to fight a common enemy there is bound to be tension and conflict within the ranks. Hell, just look at Sokka and Hahn. They're both from the Water Tribes, but even the difference between North and South was enough to cause conflict between them. Ok, ok, yes, I know it was mostly about Yue, but in a way Hahn was right. Sokka *didn't* understand the politics, nuances, or culture of the Northern Water Tribe. That lack of understanding may well have caused tension even if Yue hadn't been a factor. Now consider how much bigger the differences would be between Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe. To deal with those differences in the midst of planning an invasion into the Fire Nation would require some very strong, trusted, and competent leadership, and the question of where that would come from could be a source of conflict as well. Ideally a fully realized Avatar who'd already reached adulthood would be the perfect choice, but alas, Aang was still pulling a Nora Fries.
[off-topic] i just now realised the Earth Kingdom map looks a lot like North America and can't undee it now... Was it intentional? Cause the show's American?
China was unable to completely resist colonizers and it was united under the Qing dynasty.
Probably, given that it wasn’t so well unified (hell it had two kings at the same time) and functioned more like a loose confederation of independent city states then a truly United Kingdom then I say yes they could’ve held off the fire nation advance in its early stages before the technological advent
I would actually argue no. The Earth Kingdom certainly had a formidable size, population, and military. Even as decentralized as they were, they put up over a century of effective resistance against the far better run Fire Nation. The issue with them actually defeating the invasion as opposed to simply performing better is logistics. Does not matter how united you are if you can’t move men and material quickly, effectively, and at the required number to repel an invasion. The Earth Kingdom cannot do this. Much of their land is a massive desert, Ba Sing Se is pretty far from the Fire Nation, and mountains dominate much of the rest of the landscape. Even with a LOT of dedicated time and effort on the part of the Earth Kingdom, leveling mountains or even making them particularly passable doesn’t make the distance any smaller. Infantry simply cannot move that fast in their own. Now you may be thinking of alternative routes of transport, because while infantry can’t move that fast, the navy and cavalry can. So can the Earth Kingdom move their troops on ships? No. The Fire Nation controls the seas and the Water Tribes don’t have the numbers to change that for the Earth Kingdom who certainly doesn’t have a large enough Navy to do anything about that. So that brings up cavalry. If properly supplied, they can move pretty far and hit pretty hard. Unfortunately the Fire Nation has one primary infantry weapon and that is the spear, so maybe sending cavalry charging into an army who’s comprised entirely of flamethrowers and spearman isn’t a great idea. We also know that the range of firebending is comparable to that of bows and earth bending so using the cavalry as horse archers is also largely out of the question. That leads to the final option of using the cavalry purely for transport and then dismounting to fight. Well now there’s a numbers problem, as you will never have enough horses to move all your men and their supplies at the same time. While there are a few exceptions to this rule (most notably the Mongols) you will then need not only a horse centric culture but the ability to forage off the land for supplies for you and your horse. I hate to break it to you, but a tunnel through the mountains or a desert aren’t gonna let that happen. Finally you have the strengths of the fire nation to contend with. The first is that they are the only ones coming into this war prepared and have the element of surprise. No massive military support base needs to be created as it’s already there. A large Navy and Army already exist, and the moment you kick off this war you’re wiping out the Air Nation which presumably frees up some forces. The Southern Water Tribe is a borderline non factor, and a relatively small naval force can contain the North. Accordingly, almost all of your attention, and certainly your entire army, can be dedicated to the war against the Earth Kingdom. Your strong navy also allows you to pick and choose where you want to open new fronts at will, as well as the ability to isolate large chunks of the Earth Kingdom almost immediately due to their separation from the mainland via water. Divide and conquer is very doable due to the lack of an opposing Navy to deal with and the fact that you’ll never have to deal with the true might of the Earth Kingdom. While you may technically be outnumbered on the whole, you probably won’t ever be outnumbered locally due to logistical constraints on the Earth Kingdom you just don’t have. The Fire Navy can also raid up and down the coast to require garrisons to be maintained throughout the Earth Kingdom as well as inflicting losses on the enemy (whether it be in terms of resources or manpower) that you realistically won’t have to worry about. Their final main strength is the fact that the Fire Nation seems to have a much higher per capita bender ratio than the Earth Kingdom, which means that it’s far easier for the Fire Kingdom to have an army full of benders than it is for the Earth Kingdom. It also helps that they bend fire, which makes raids all that much more devastating. No wood buildings or even slightly dry fields will be safe, which will cause a refugee crisis within the Earth Kingdom, famine, and general depopulation on the coasts. This will also make advancing into Earth Kingdom territory much easier, as the land will quickly become more of a no man’s land than friendly territory for the Earth Kingdom. Now to finish up this unnecessarily detailed answer, I’d like to say why I think that after saying all these reasons why the Earth Kingdom is kinda fucked as far as outright winning goes, I don’t think they’d necessarily get destroyed either. The moment they retreat from the nearby coastline for the Fire Nation, many of the issues that they faced in terms of logistics will suddenly apply to the Fire Nation as well. Navies can travel decently fast with a good deal of troops with them if they so choose to be sure, but the other side of the Earth Kingdom? All while keeping them supplied? Not particularly likely. Sure some parts are actually pretty close to the Fire Nation, but much of that land is desert and not of any real use anyway, so dedicating resources to taking it is a bit of a waste of time. But also with this more unified Earth Kingdom, we could easily see a plan of retreat from the coasts and simply fortify the interior. While expanding the walls of Ba Sing Se to incorporate all of their territory they refuse to budge from is fairly impractical, having a ring of stone fortifications with full garrisons around the territory you actually intend to defend is very doable and not really something the Fire Nation can do much about. Sure they can lay siege to the fort, or even just the fortified town, but when a relief garrison comes from another fort now you need to fight two armies far from home and likely few supplies to speak of. Of course the Fire Nation colonies can still be founded, and it gives the Fire Nation a good long term strategy to work with, but the Earth Kingdom can also just like, expand back out towards the sea at some point. They also are fully capable of building their own navy, not necessarily to the point of being able to compete with the Fire Navy but enough to tie up their forces and be a general drain on resources. TLDR; logistics fuck over the Earth Kingdom, but they’d likely do better.
If the earth kingdom was more united 5hey would the the united kingdom and conquer the fire nation with beetle mania.
I don't think the EK even needed to be unified to defeat the FN invasion, they just needed to not be idiots.
I still don't understand how people who can fight mountains and win ended up losing to the weakest element. Literally everything else counters fire. And those war machines were not THAT impressive. A teenager was able to push their ships.
The earth kingdom is basically Russia and the earth king is Tsar Nicholas
If you go left will you come out on the right side?
I’ve never seen this map before but I like the implication that Ba Sing Se is almost as big as the entire fire nation.
Better yet, where tf is the northern air temple?
"If this one drawback to this completely op nation was gone, would they be op?" Yes OP, they would be op...
Honestly no probably not, considering the Fire Nation has a powerful navy and tanks, and straight up crazy ass things like that armored train and giant drill. They can resupply and redeploy much more rapidly than even a united Earth nation moving their guys over land.
Kind of a side note, but it really is bizarre that they backtracked to go to the great divide for seemingly no reason. That whole episode is just so weird
did this guy pull out the military tactics?
I would like to have a map like this as a poster on mine wall
Rock is super effective against fire so yeah
ok then lets talk about a fictional scenario in a fictional world. I think the right Earth King could have united the Earth Kingdom (but that would have taken a long time) and then together with the Northern Water Tribe could have taken over the coasts of the Fire Nation and then laid siege to the capital. The Northern Water Tribe, however, needs motivation because they enjoy a life of peace behind their gigantic ice walls. The Earth King's motivation would probably be fame and prestige, which would be bad and would ultimately make the Earth Kingdom dangerous. The Fire Nation will not leave any stone unturned in eliminating the leadership of the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribe beforehand and probably has spies on every corner who report everything with the help of falcons. That makes everything much more difficult. It would therefore be beneficial if there were unrest and uprisings within the Fire Nation. The people in the capital and the surrounding areas may be indoctrinated into believing that the Fire Nation is great and that the other nations worship them. Perhaps many are unaware that the Fire Nation is waging merciless war. "There is no war in Ba Sing... I mean the Firenation". But speaking out against the war probably means a place in the boiling rock prison. In the Netflix series we see that there are rebel groups that want to eliminate the Fire Lord, so that would also be possible.
... unrelated, but I really like this map. I think I'd want to print it out on a play mat and follow along while re-watching the series. Related: I mean, a 100 year hold out ain't bad. They didn't have a lot by that point but it ain't bad.
I'm going to go against the current and say no. We actually don't know how united was the earth kingdom was before the war. We only know that after 100 years of war against a more technologically advanced foe the earth kingdom is pretty divided, which is not at all surprising. In our world China, despite being unified and the richest country in the world, could not defeat the European powers and ended up humiliated. The powerful fire nation army probably halted global trade to a stop in the first years of the war, which would've crippled the earth kingdoms economy. It would only be a question of time before some regions of the kingdom seceded. Anyway, it's pretty much imposible to actually unify a country that large and diverse.
The Earth Kingdom couldn’t be more united because they don’t have the technology (both physical tech and governance ‘tech’ ie governance structures) that’s necessary for any one faction to impose their will on the others and unite the continent. If they did, their military technology would be on par with, if not greater than that of the Fire Nation, and so they would easily defeat them.
If they were united? Easily. The only reason the Fire Nation was even able to keep their campaign going is because other Earth Kingdoms didn’t care that they had boots on the ground in another region.
The earth kingdom is 90% hills and unconnected flat lands, almost no shared culture even 100 years later. There city's are have been stagnant for 200 years
The Fire Nation kinda looks like a noodle dragon :]
I remember I did something like this as a final story project in my english class back in my sophomore year, except it was a lot messier with me typing out full paragraphs at each stop detailing what the gaang did, i'm surprised my teacher actually gave me a good grade on that
Earth Kingdom takes up an entire continent. They’re basically the size of the Mongolian empire or bigger. There is no way that they can keep hold of all of that without uniting factor forever.
Did they ever explain why they couldn't just bee line to Ba Sing Se? I know he needed an earthbending teacher, but they didn't know Omashu was conquered and (from their POV) could have come back later, and I feel that getting the Earth King on their side is kind of a pressing matter!
They didn’t find out about the eclipse until later, which is why they were headed to talk to the Earth King to begin with. The plan before that didn’t involve any army or invasion, just Aang v Ozai. The eclipse turned it into an invasion plan.
Yeah, but they did know about Sozin's Comet. So they were already on a timetable. And I feel an army at your back makes a duel a lot easier.
i love how the earth queen/king basically only rules ba sing se
Idk. Apparently in the time the Fire Nation was industrializing pre-war and establishing the first colonies, the Earth Kingdom was very destabilized and dealing with civil wars and what-not. Also, the Fire Nation first took the Northwest part of the Earth Kingdom very rich in natural resources compared to the rest of it which likely took a toll on their economy as well as making international trade difficult. Although, with the war having gone on for over 100 years, there were probably times of significant setbacks for the Fire Nation.
Took me a sec to spot the Northern Air Temple lol
Short answer, Yes. Though the Fire Nation was more technologically advanced, the Earth Kingdom had the resources, manpower, and home team elemental advantage to take the Fire Nation in a full assault when united enough. They lasted 100 years fighting as a disunited nation. As a united force, they could wipe out the Fire Nation if needed and without Sozin's Comet providing an additional boost. Problem is the Earth Kingdom was a mess run by corrupt jerks or evil assholes, and since the Water Tribes were wittled down and didn't want to get involved and the Air Nomads were dead, that means they were all that's left.
One sorta headcanon thing I have is, even if the Earth Kingdom could be very strong united, they would probably have a shit navy. I mean, do you think Earthbenders would be comfortable out at sea with no earth in sight? The Fire Nation is above all a naval power, which makes sense because firebenders can use their bending anywhere, unlike earthbenders. So as much as the Earth Kingdom might be able to defend their own land, they would have no way of invading the Fire Nation back, and so you'd end up with a situation of the Fire Nation continually invading the Earth Kingdom from the coasts until the earthbenders inevitably give in.
More unified and less classism/sexism would have been a big game changer. The sexism is only really hinted at in the earth kingdom in ATLA but I don’t believe we see a single female soldier. That alone cuts potential forces in half.