5 more Headcanons on Fire Prince Sokka and Water Tribe Azula?

attackfish:

Also known as the Akanna and Prince Sozin AU, continued from here: [Link], [Link], and [Link].

1. Culturally, the current climate of the Fire Nation is one of transition. Until recently, arranged marriages were the norm for the nobility, but more and more the ideal is becoming marriages that the parties choose themselves… provided both parties are still a good political match. This is the Royal Fire Academy for Girls’ primary selling point. They will take the girls of your acceptably noble family, educate them in arts, culture, battle tactics, the managing of a noble house, etiquette, etc., but most of all, they will be invited with her class to gatherings where she will meet young men of their own social standing in a sheltered, chaperoned, curated setting. It’s at one of these gatherings that six year old roommates Mai and Ty Lee first meet the princes.

2. Zuko and Mai are both grave and polite, and uncomfortable, and they do not click. Ty Lee and Sozin on the other hand… This is a tremendous coup for the young Ty Lee, though of course she doesn’t see it that way. Ty Lee and Sozin quickly become fast friends, and all the adults assume that one day the two will marry. Inevitably, they will eventually try to date, break up, and remain close. When they first meet Suki and abruptly find themselves falling for the same girl, many things become clear for Ty Lee. Anyway, this friendship keeps Mai and Zuko in the same orbit, and someday the Academy will get to say that the Firelord and Firelady met at one of their gatherings.

3. With Ozai favoring neither of his children, and blatantly attempting to produce another attempted heir, politics in the Fire Nation court is more of a life-threatening gamble than ever. Cozying up to the princes risks angering Ozai, and Ozai… Of course there are still women and their families willing to marry the Firelord, but many women and their families have realized what should be obvious to all, that the Firelord is dangerous, deadly, and unpleasable. His first wife bore him two healthy sons, one a bending prodigy, and he had her banished. He has killed two wives for miscarriages. At the time the Avatar awakens, he is married to a twenty year old, less than half his age.

4. Incidentally, she survives the war, probably because Zuko and Sozin conquer Ba Sing Se, causing Ozai to focus his attention on them as possibly worthy heirs after all.

5. Sozin hits something of a firebending block when he’s twelve. Suddenly the fear of failure, the idea that he even could fail with regards to bending, that Zuko has known his whole life, catches up to him. It takes him years to regain his inventiveness and confidence, and willingness to experiment, and his joy in bending.