I do not in fact.
1. The first thing to do with an AU like this is to decide which of the Fire sibs I am going to base everybody else’s ages and certain key events on. And the answer is Zuko’s, which means the war comes to an end when Azula is only six years old.
2. Azula is a newborn when her mother is banished, and for the first six years of her life, she is fed her father’s subtle insinuations that Ursa never understood him, and she never would have understood what a prize, what a treasure Azula is. Yet in spite of Ozai’s efforts, Azula is acutely aware of the loss of her mother, and that it’s Zuko’s fault, that for the sake of her worthless brother, her mother left her as a baby. She bitterly resents him for this, even after he is banished too and she finds herself missing him with an unexpected vehemence.
3. Speaking of Zuko’s banishment, three year old Azula is in the audience that day, and she watches her father set fire to her brother’s face. She is close enough to smell the cooking flesh. She screams and buries her face in her uncle’s chest, and sobs, not even sure why she’s crying. Isn’t it just Zuko? Isn’t it just her worthless failure of a brother? Part of it is the shock of course, at the violence, and the sheer horror of it, but underneath that is the sudden instinctive knowledge that if Ozai is willing to do that to his son, then he would be willing to do it to his daughter. Any sense of safety she had before vanishes with her brother.
4. for weeks, Azula refuses to leave her room. She refuses to speak to her father, and she hides from her nannies. They have to force her into the bathtub and pin her down to brush her hair, and when they pick her up and carry her out of the room to her father, she bites the hand of one of her nannies hard enough to draw blood. Ozai snaps at her that if she wants her brother back that much, when she’s Firelord she can allow him home, but her brother will just disappoint her. Eventually though, Azula calms down. Ozai’s patience and hope is rewarded when Azula reveals herself to be a firebending protegy, and as she begins to show the first glimmers of the cunning and strategic ruthlessness her father if anything prizes more highly than simple firebending.
5. And then her world collapses around her again. Somehow Zuko sneaks into the royal palace of Ba Sing Se, and used the confusion of the Avatar’s visit to conquer the city and capture the Avatar, and he’s coming home.
Tag: azula
Continuation on Regent Ursa AU?
Continued from here: [Link]
1. As I alluded to in the previous Regent Ursa post, Ursa is an imperialist. As kind and loving a mother as she is, she was raised in the imperial Fire Nation system and has never really had a reason to question it. She has never met a non-Fire person, and it doesn’t occur to her to wonder how the war affects the conquered. So the war continues apace. And Zuko and Azula are educated to continue the war in their turn. Many of Azula’s lessons focus on getting her to aim her cruelty at acceptable targets. This is something Iroh quietly seeks to rectify with only marginal success.
2. Iroh sneaks both Zuko and Azula into the war meeting when they are thirteen and eleven. He hopes it will be instructive for them. He intends for them to see and be horrified by the tactics used. And Zuko at least is. He still stands up for the Fire Nation soldiers. Only it’s not Zuko who is punished. Ursa has Iroh banished, while Iroh insists that the young Firelord had every right to be there anyway. In truth, it’s just an excuse to get him and his meddling away from her children.
3. This is of course a miscalculation. And Iroh not at court is an Iroh out from under her eye, and an Iroh sufficiently recovered from his crushing grief to plot, at that. He heads straight to the Order of the White Lotus with a plan to kidnap the young Firelord and his sister.
4. As Zuko reaches his fourteenth birthday, Ursa focuses more and more attention on educating him in the skills he will need soon when he takes power. He now has his own invitation to the war meetings, and she expects him to spend time with her as she conducts royal business, and as he receives lessons in governence, Ursa becomes ever more painfully aware that these are lessons she never received, and skills she as a ruler does not possess. She intends to see Azula educated in these skills as well, but Azula is younger and doesn’t have a looming deadline upon which she will have a nation to run. So Ursa doesn’t rush her ahead of Zuko as Ozai might. Go on. Guess how Azula perceives this.
5. Yeah this is when Ursa proposes that the Earth Kingdom, an exciting and exotic land, might be a fitting place for Azula to rule in her brother’s name someday. She never wants Azula to feel like she is less loved or less worthy, even if her brother is already Firelord.
Could you do another 5 headcanons of the universe where Sokka and Azula swap places? I am kind of curious to see what would happen with Jet in this universe and I wonder how Ozai would react to siblings that are harder to pit against each other.
Continued from here: [Link] and here: [Link].
1. Ozai scorns both his children for being weak and pathetic. Much as he does in canon, he projects much of what he hates about himself onto Zuko. He also sees his hated older brother in Sozin’s attempts at cheerfulness and his flirtatiousness. While he does make some cursory attempts to set them against each other, to compete for his affection, these attempts are half-hearted at best, as he considers both his sons to be worthless.
2. Ozai instead focuses his attentions on remarrying and trying to produce an heir that way. The results are less than impressive, leading to a string of miscarriages, murders, and divorces. Yes, he is the Henry VIII of the Avatar world.
3. Meeting Jet is dicey. See Katara might be much more wary of Jet because he and Akanna’s styles of manipulation are fairly similar, or Akanna may have weakened her resistance to such manipulation. Akanna doesn’t trust him, but she also doesn’t care enough about her sister to try to protect her like Sokka does. My guess though is that Jet puts Katara’s guard up and it takes a lot more to persuade her to help. Akanna by the way doesn’t trust Jet, but she likes him, and wonders if she can use him.
4. After the fiasco at the North Pole, and with Ozai making noises about marrying again, Zuko and Sozin slip away to try their hand at capturing the Avatar themselves. They meet up with friends and make it all the way to Ba Sing Se. The four of them disguise themselves as Earth Kingdom country nobility, and run into a refugee street kid named Jet, who tries to pick their pockets. They catch him and have him arrested.
5. Look, all I’m saying is, Sozin and Zuko have a really good time conquering Ba Sing Se together with Mai and Ty Lee. It’s a bonding experience.
Then I’m asking for long term Regent Ursa!
I… It’s not like I didn’t predict this ask.
1. So first things first. how does Ursa get into a position to become regent? The answer is that Ozai dies. The poisoning does not go to plan. Ozai can’t help but gloat over his father’s intended demise, and with his last breath, Azulon fries his son with lightning. Ursa has to think fast. She claims that the second prince was assassanated, and Firelord Azulon died of the shock of seeing him like that. Frantically she writes to Iroh. but he does not answer. She is forced to consolidate power on her own. She claims to be ruling in his stead until he returns, and indeed she intends to step down. She just neglects to mention he never appointed her.
2. And then Iroh does return home a wreck. He has no interest in the throne she so capably kept warm for him, and sinks deeper and deeper into grief fueled mysticism and attempts to journey to the Spirit World. Ruling on Iroh’s behalf while he is right there in the palace is growing old fast, and Ursa’s position is becoming increasingly tenuous. This is something she tells to Iroh. Rather than pull himself out of his grief. Iroh abdicates in favor of his nephew and appoints Ursa his regent.
3. Ursa is furious. This is not what she wanted, and Ursa sees it as Iroh abdicating not only the throne but his responsibilities, and his duty. This is not something she will forgive easily.
4. This does mean she now has near complete freedom over her children’s education, and that Zuko is suddenly officially Firelord. Azula can stop scheming now. She has no path through the throne that doesn’t go directly through her brother. She doesn’t stop scheming of course, but she adopts the dream of conquering the Earth Kingdom and ruling the colonies as Zuko’s viceroy. This is a dream that Ursa encourages, being an imperialist. Azula’s dreams, motives, and insecurities change under her mother’s careful guidance, as she builds a more resilient sense of self and learns to stop using others for her own gratification.
5. Iroh meanwhile is nursing his newfound anti-imperialism, which given how he decided he would rather dump the responsibility of ruling on somebody else in Ursa’s eyes… She disagrees with him, and she doesn’t see why he should get a say now.
Cheloneuniverse 