Hey um what. What goddamn business did Omashu have having a King?? Like I never really questioned it since it came from such an early Book One still-world-building episode but. Omashu is a city, for starters, and it’s a city in the Earth Kingdom. Which. You know. HAS a king.

You know I bet, honestly, Omashu doesn’t have a king. And NEVER had a king. Omashu had a succession of Governors or some shit and on the day that Bumi took the mantle he said “Fuck this ‘Governor Bumi’ stuff that’s lame. Call me King.” and when his advisors said they can’t legally do that Bumi passed a law changing his title from Governor to King, stuck a crown on his head, and called it macaroni.

And the citizens of Omashu were probably just like “alright” cuz like. Bumi strikes me as the kind of Local Town Eccentric who has a working personal relationship with pretty much everyone so all 100,000 people of Omashu heard this decree of Kingship and went “yeah that tracks” and got on with their day.

Outside of Omashu though? Good god. That’s gotta be a fucking look. At this point 112-year-old Bumi has been ‘King’ for a lifetime longer than the actual Earth King. What a look. How much sleep do you think Long Feng loses about this??? How many assassination attempts do you think he tried to carry out, only to have the Dai Lee come crawling home with the imprint of Bumi’s face smashed into their armor and some rock candy stuffed into their socks?

Ba Sing Se adores its appearance of order and structure and hierarchy and I cannot even begin to imagine their Daily Hell of dealing with Omashu’s centenarian feast-loving candy-munching batshit unhinged and utterly unkillable pseudo-King.

The Fire Nation taking over Omashu was probably the happiest goddamn day of Long Feng’s life.