Twenty years after Bumin, the khaganate was the largest state on earth and could not decide who should rule it. This path follows the quarrel from the assembly of 581 to the exile of Tardush in 603: the khan who submitted to China, the cousin who would not yield, the son of Istemi who reached for everything, the brother who marched into Persia, and then the western realm that came out of it, from Suyab to the walls of Tiflis, told from Yavuz 2025 and Golden 1992 where they agree and marked where they do not.
- Succession crisis of 581 The assembly that overrode a dying khan's wish, and the two candidates it made enemies.
- Ishbara Khan The khan who won the throne, lost the war and wrote to the Sui that two suns do not shine in the heavens.
- Töremen Apa The cousin passed over twice, whose mother Ishbara killed, and whose line may have ruled the west.
- Tardush Istemi's son: the yabgu who moved the seat to Suyab, backed Apa, and for three years held the whole khaganate.
- Civil war, 584–603 The twenty years as one event, with what each source says and where the two books this work follows part.
- Bagha Khan The lesser khan who crossed the Oxus, or did not: the Bagha of the operator and the Šāba of Golden.
- Göktürk–Persian war, 588–589 Balkh, Herat, the Hyrcanian rock, and Bahram Chobin, who won this war and then lost his own.
- Tulan Khan The eastern khan of the divided realm, killed by his own men in 603.
- Tong Yabgu The high point of the west: Suyab, Xuanzang, Derbent, Tiflis, and the emperor's diadem.
- Western Göktürk Khaganate The realm entire, from Istemi to the Ten Arrows and the Türgesh.