ABSTRACT

By giving his cousin Wang Sing-ny m the task of rebuilding Pyongyang, encouraging the refugees from Parhae to settle in the area, and bringing in discharged veterans from Paekche, he created a loyal force in the north and, for the rest, he built up an extraordinary network of kinship ties by accepting as wives daughters from the heads of all the more powerful clans, giving them what was the traditional high status of a royal father-in-law. In this way he would have taken, by the time of his death, 29 wives, of whom six ranked as Queens. At the same time, to avoid unduly ambitious sons-in-law, he married all of his daughters, apart from the Nangnang Princess and one of her younger sisters given to Ky ngsun, to one of their many half-brothers. It must have done much to restore the sense of national identity that had grown up in the 200 years of unity under Silla, though it did bring in a few powerful men with ambitions to put their grandsons on the throne.