Sometimes I think about the fact that there is exactly one time that we hear someone express surprise at the fact that Aang–the Avatar– and his companions are children. And it’s in the second episode, from Zuko:
From an out-of-universe perspective, this makes sense. And it wasn’t something that surprised me when I was a ten-year-old in 2005 when A:tLA first aired. One of the tenants, I think, of adventure children’s television is that there is a degree of wish fulfillment. Children want to be taken seriously as agents, and so it makes sense from that vantage point, that everyone takes the Gaang seriously as agents except the person portrayed as an antagonist.
But, I think this also makes sense, heart-breakingly and unlike other children’s adventure television, from an in-universe perspective. This is a world ravaged by bloody, bloody war for a hundred years. A world in which child soldiers are commonplace. We see countless examples of this throughout the series:
When we meet Sokka–fifteen-years-old and in-charge of security for his village–he is training small children to be soldiers. This is played off as something of a laugh, but if Aang hadn’t returned in the second episode, I think we’re supposed to think that Sokka very much would have tried to lead these little boys into battle.
Jet and the Freedom Fighters, who practice guerrilla warfare (fairly successfully) and regularly raid Fire Nation outposts, are children. Jet, who I think we are supposed to assume is one of the eldest of the group, is sixteen when he dies (according to the Avatar wiki).
The Kyoshi Warriors are one of the elite-most fighting force in Avatar World, eventually taken seriously by the Earth Kingdom military and given military jobs. And the general of the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki, and the eldest member of the group (again according to the Avatar wiki) is fifteen. She can’t have always been the eldest member. I’m willing to bet the older women are sent off to war, and Suki becomes the eldest member and the leader by default. (Much like Sokka–probably why they connect so well).
In Zuko, Alone, the soldiers in the village threaten to send Lee off to join the army at the front, and based on the mother’s reaction, and what we see of him when he’s tied up, this doesn’t seem like an empty threat, and it’s probably not the first time this has happened to children in the Earth Kingdom in villages like these.
I could go on.
So of course, after living in a world of child soldiers like these, no one is going to bat an eyelash to learn that the Avatar–perhaps the ultimate non-Fire Nation soldier–is twelve-years old, and his companions aren’t much older. When Aang starts to bring this up himself to Yue, for instance, Yue doesn’t seem to understand. He’s the Avatar, he has to save them, she insists. Who cares if he’s a child?
But the Fire Nation Army isn’t filled with child soldiers. It doesn’t need them. Fire Nation children are in school. It is adults that make up the Fire Nation Army.
And, (with the exception of Azula and her gang), when we do see a Fire Nation child attempting to take on the role of an adult member of the military, he isn’t taken seriously. (E.g. Zuko, and the way Zhao brushes him off.)
So of course it is only Zuko, who grew up in the absolute center of the Fire Nation, and, though he is banished, hasn’t really seen much of the reality of the war until he meets Aang, that looks at the Avatar and remarks in surprise that he is a child.
(If anyone is interested, I wrote a fic that deals with a lot of these themes. It can be found here.)
1. I mentioned in the first installment of this AU that Zuko never went through the kind of transformation of thinking that he did in canon, and so has never been forced to acknowledge what an abusive monster his father was and how the Fire Nation’s war of conquest has hurt the world. This is a major source of conflict between Zuko and both Toph and Iroh early on. With Iroh, this is similar to canon, in that after Lu Ten’s death, Iroh took a long hard look at the ideology his son died fighting for and began to believe the conquest was wrong, while with Toph, this is somewhat more complex. Toph is from the Earth Kingdom, but Gaoling was mostly isolated from the war, and her wealthy family kept her further isolated from the effects of the conquest. That doesn’t mean that Toph didn’t hear and see some things on the way to the Fire Nation. She knows the Fire Nation tried to conquer the world. She knows her country was invaded, and she knows that the Fire Nation lost the war. The Fire Nation was in the wrong here, obviously. Meanwhile Zuko is a boy who lost his father, was forced to take the throne as a puppet, and then after he got free from that, forced to marry a thirteen year old girl. He feels like the wronged party here, thanks.
2. Their early marriage, with Zuko’s long-term affair not yet an official thing, and Toph much too young to consummate any kind of marriage, with both of them feeling like the wronged party, and with Zuko unwilling to acknowledge that the conquest was wrong (and therefore possibly going to restart it once he has some leverage) is near nonstop fighting. When Toph isn’t running away, she’s running to Iroh, something Zuko bitterly resents. Iroh is many things to Zuko, the man who tries to convince him that Ozai was not the father Zuko wants to pretend he was, the man who tries to teach Zuko that the war of conquest was wrong and tries to force Zuko to acknowledge painful truths, sure, but also another father for Zuko for the three years of his exile, and Zuko is jealous of their closeness. It’s an ugly tangle of emotions there for a while.
3. Ozai and Azula are both dead at the hands of the Earth Kingdom, which makes it much harder for Zuko to find Ursa. In a desperate bid to try to make Zuko see some sense about his father, Iroh tries to find out what he can about Ursa’s disappearance. He discovers that she is banished, and her marriage to Ozai severed, but she was never executed. He gives this information to Zuko, and Zuko takes Mai to find her. They do find her, and Ursa is able to get her memory back, and she is able to tell Zuko exactly what Ozai was willing to do to get power, and just how little he loved his son. This breaks through some of Zuko’s denial. The war is harder for Zuko to come to terms with, since it ended so badly for him personally, but slowly, ruling the Fire Nation and seeing the damage the war did just to the Fire Nation, and how the promise of helping the Earth Kingdom came to nothing, and how this was all to bring the world under the control of men like his father and grandfather, Zuko slowly comes around.
4. One of the real barriers to Zuko acknowledging the Fire Nation’s fault for the war is just how terrible his year as a puppet was. His father was killed, he was captured, he was dragged home as a prisoner, and surrounded by Dai Li and Northern Water Tribe soldiers, he was crowned and kept imprisoned in the Firelord’s rooms, hauled out and placed on display whenever something needed to be signed or any kind of official function was held. When his sister tried for the crown, he had to watch her be killed in front of him, before he had to escape his own palace to find his uncle and fight his way back in with the support of the surviving remnants of the Fire Nation army. None of this is an experience that inclines Zuko to listen to anyone.
5. The end of the war did not involve the Southern Water Tribe. Hakoda was
left out of the invasion, so the puppet government was entirely run by
the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe. The Southern Water
Tribe has languished since in a state of isolation and poverty.
1. Toph is, much to Zuko and Mai’s utter chagrin, the Fun Parent/Step-Parent to all of their combined children, and by this I mean she is one of those irresponsible adults that all the other adults tell kids don’t count as adult, and it doesn’t matter if she gives permission. Why Toph, why do you have to be this way, Zuko and Mai (and every single servant in the palace) ask after she helps Izumi and Lin build a mud slip and slide in the hall with the Firelords’ portraits.
2. She adores her daughter and step-daughter, and when the girls are young, the feeling is mutual. But as Lin and Izumi grow up… They are very different from Toph, and both feel the pressure of their position acutely. Lin is the Firelord’s oldest legitimate child, and Izumi… Izumi is the heir presumptive, and being groomed to take the throne. Both on some level bitterly resent Toph’s refusal to act the part that the Firelady should, as both of them have been forced, along with Mai, to take on that role themselves because of it.
3. Suyin is much younger than her sisters (or step-sister in Izumi’s case, but she is supposed to be Izumi’s sister) and both too little and too much like them. She is stubborn and willful, like both her sisters and her mother, but also defiant and enjoys breaking the rules, like her mother, but not like her sisters. And then, unlike any of them, she is sneakier and charming. It drives Lin especially up a wall.
And Toph… Toph thinks it’s funny.
4. The fact that Toph isn’t very good with Lin and Izumi doesn’t change the fact that she loves them and they love her. It just makes it much much more difficult.
5. Aside from the woes of mutual parenting, Mai and Toph get along very well. They bond over their similarly awful families, and anyway they’ve known each other since Toph was thirteen. Mai is the older, cooler sister figure that Toph both loves and is jealous of.
1. The avatar did not awaken. Instead, the Earth Kingdom army and the Northern Water Tribe invaded on the Day of Black Sun and overthrew Ozai. Zuko’s ship was captured soon after, and Iroh put in prison. Zuko was put on the throne as a puppet monarch. Zuko has not had his redemption/recovery arc, so he is still a hostile snarly, anxious unhappy twerp, only now Ozai is dead, and Zuko is free to lionize him without having to face the reality of who Ozai really was. Also Iroh is in prison in the Earth Kingdom awaiting execution, and Azula is running around making everything about a hundred times more difficult.
2. Azula makes a bid for the throne, persuading a group of Dai Li and disgruntled Fire nobles to back her. At the same time, Iroh escapes and makes his way home. Somehow this ends with Zuko still on the throne, Iroh safe, and the Dai Li at least out of Zuko’s court. But the other upshot is that Zuko needs to marry an Earth Kingdom noble in order to prevent another invasion. The Bei Fongs manage to luck out as the family to garner the most backers in he Earth Kingdom, so their thirteen-year-old daughter is escorted to the Fire Nation by her mother and several regiments of the Earth Kingdom army.
3. Zuko takes one look at her and marries her just to get her away from the people who are willing to marry her off at thirteen. Consummation of this marriage is not going to happen for a looooong time. But Toph might be a frightened child, but she would never let that show. She keeps running away. Not back to her parents as might be expected, just away, to the wilds of the Fire Nation, to the inner city, anywhere she can get to. She bends the glass out of her windows, she tears up Zuko’s mother’s garden, the only person who can really get her to do anything is Iroh, and now he has two intractable, bad tempered teens to look after, and Zuko is now even less willing to listen to him now that he’s got a crown.
4. Eventually, the two of them settle into a siblingish relationship, and Toph eventually grows up to realize no body here really has a choice, so she’s going to have to just deal. She still absolutely despises everything involved with being Firelady. Also Zuko resurrected the prewar custom of official concubinage when Mai accidentally got pregnant, and Toph is careful only to take firebenders as lovers.
5. Doesn’t matter. Both her children are earthbenders, even Lin, who is actually Zuko’s. Izumi, his acknowledged bastard, has to take the throne. The mess that is the royal inheritance at this time very nearly touches off a civil war, and a couple of islands do break away and declare Lin their queen. Lin has to go down there to knock some sense into them.
Genderswap AUs, AKA the many many many possibilities for girl!Zuko’s name. Today we are going with Kazuko.
1. When Kazuko is thirteen, her uncle helps her sneak into a war meeting, and she speaks out in defense of newly recruited Fire Nation soldiers being used to bait a trap for the Earth Kingdom. She is told she must fight an Agni Kai for the insult, and when the opponent turns out to be her own father, the kneels down and refuses to fight. He burns her for the disgrace.
Instead of banishing her, he takes advantage of the customs of the enemy. He tells her thst if she loves the Earth Kingdom so much, she can marry into it. The fact that she was defending Fire Nation soldiers goes unnoticed, and as soon as she is reasonably healed, she is packed in a boat and sent to the Earth King.
2. She is of course much too young for Kuei, and their marriage is never consumated. It was expected that it would be when she was older, but instead, for three years she lives the cloistered life of a queen in Ba Sing Se, and if she thought her mother’s life was restrictive, it’s got nothing on this. She figures out pretty quickly it’s Long Feng who is really in charge, and she isn’t sure her husband, who she sees only rarely, actually understands why he married a scarred child other than the vague word “politics”. She doesn’t think he understands the treaty he signed, or why she is here, or any of the things that even as Ozai’s despised and disregarded daughter, she knows.
3. The treaty Kazuko’s father signed with the Earth King (or more accurately with Long Feng) is that the Fire Nation will leave Ba Sing Se and its surrounding territories alone and instead continue their campaigns of conquest in Earth territory not within the Earth King’s dominion, and Ba Sing Se’s forces will not be used to defend those territories. This suits Ozai fine. He has no intention of tackling Ba Sing Se just yet, and in the meantime, he can scoop up some suddenly much easier conquests. It is however a treaty he intends to break, and Kazuko walks into her marriage knowing this. The only question is what is she supposed to do when the Fire Nation does attack. Is she to be killed as a useless hostage, will she die at the hands of her father’s forces? Does he expect her to be a double agent for him? In the end, she keeps Azula’s presence secret for her and sides with her to conquer the city. For her pains, she is named governor of Ba Sing Se.
It’s there in the city that Mai and Kazuko kindle their child crushes into romance, and Mai chooses to stay behind with her in Ba Sing Se. Azula, who has suffered far fewer defeats without an interfering sibling around, says okay.
4. Governing Ba Sing Se is no easy task. Azula may see it as a suitable job for an idiot unwanted sister, but it actually takes a lot of skill and hard work to disentangle th Dai Li, keep the peace, and cement the Fire Nation conquest. And then there is managing the occupation. Kazuko, who has spent the last three years banging her head against the brick wall that is Long Feng and the Dai Li does not appreciate the Fire Nation officers and officials who try to treat her and her city the same way. She and Mai work hard, long hours trying to make it work. But they are women from a conquering empire, and they are not well loved. Much of the underground critisism is extremely misogynistic in nature, and some of the writers even manage to guess the nature of her and Mai’s relationship, or at least post lurid accusations to that effect. It’s lots of fun.
5. It’s Iroh who teaches the Avatar how to firebend, Iroh who warns them what Ozai intends to use the comet for, and Katara and Toph who go to take Azula on together. Iroh goes to liberate Ba Sing Se and also his neice, who he hasn’t seen in more than three years. He has a crown princessship to offer her if she wants it. Kuei, who shows up not long after the White Lotus retake the city is like, “You can’t go? We’re married? In the Earth Kingdom we don’t do divorce?” and Kazuko is like, “In the Fire Nation, we totally do, get fucked, Kuei, our marriage wasn’t consumated anyway.” She leaves it to Mai and Iroh to put this in more diplomatic language.
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.
1. Zuko is not stupid. He has known for years what his father wants from him. He has known that if he goes along with it, in a decade or so, he could become head Fire Sage, and that someday, he would be the one to crown his sister Firelord. He understands this.
2. He doesn’t know what to do now. He has been captured and he knows there is no hope of rescue. He has no idea what to do with the life and the choices he has right now. It wouldn’t be so bad, he supposes, asking Chief Arnook for asylum, as Arnook has told him over and over he can. He could build a life here. It’s not like he has a life back home in the Fire Nation waiting for him. He wouldn’t have to worry about going home and trying to fight, and figure out what he should become, and if he even wants out of the trap his father has set for him. It could be so easy. But instead he’s just frozen and silent.
3. Back in the Fire Nation Ozai reacts to his brother’s disappearance with rage. He orders his brother’s apprehension and return to the Fire Nation. His brother is not well, he tells the nation through gritted teeth. He should have been in a hospital, but Ozai softheartedly tried to have him treated in the palace. Sadly his condition makes him dangerous. Fire Nation soldiers should take no risks when attempting to capture him and return him home.
4. Pakku fills Iroh in on how his nephew has been doing. He tells him that Zuko is well cared for and safe, and Iroh tells him to his shame that he is unable to ensure the same for him. But he also tells Iroh about Zuko’s total silence and blank expression, and about the way that Arnook says he just sits there. He doesn’t tell Iroh that Arnook tries to dote on the boy as a way to stave off mourning for his daughter, or the lost look the Chief has described in his eyes sometimes when he thinks no one is looking at him.
5. Pakku also tells Iroh that Zuko is not well guarded. He has made no attempts to escape, so there is no real point, especially since Arnook is reluctant to keep him prisoner at all. Iroh goes to his nephew’s room, wakes him up, takes him by the hand and leads him down to his boat, and they set a course for the open sea.
1. Iroh hasn’t seen his nephew since he left to lead the siege of Ba Sing Se more than eight years ago, more than half of Zuko’s life. Zuko disappeared from court to train as a combustion bender before Iroh returned. He has no idea what the boy even looks like anymore. But still when Pakku sends word to him asking if he knows who the young man captured by the Northern Water Tribe who tried to defend the moon could be, Iroh knows it has to be Zuko and he sneaks away from court to go find his nephew and rescue him.
2. Zuko is well treated in the North, kept in a pleasant room with good food and a comfortable bed, much more comfortable than his own quarters back in the Fire Temple, or on Zhao’s ship. He stood against his own people to defend the moon, and if he had succeeded, the Northern Princess would have lived. If he were to ask for asylum, he would have it without question. But he doesn’t speak. He has a vow of silence, but he knows that’s only an excuse. He can’t even begin the process of finding the words to say, or any words at all.
3. He is visited often by the Avatar and his companions. At first Arnook hopes that children his own age will draw the strange young man out of his shell and get him talking, but to no avail. He remains stubbornly silent.
4.Yet Aang continues to come. With his shaved head and third eye tattoo, he reminds the young Avatar of his own people, and even though he knows this resemblance is illusory, that the firebender is no more an Air Nomad than Katara or Sokka, or any of the other fragments of family he will gather to himself, he can’t help it. He still goes to see him every day, to talk to him, and try to make him laugh. Last week he made him smile. That’s something. A small victory. but a victory none the less.
5. A small steamboat slips past the Northern Water Tribe defenses and docks in a hidden harbor outside the fortress. The old man who enters the fortress under the cover of darkness goes straight for the home of Master Pakku, who wakes with an old friend’s hand on his shoulder, and a finger to his lips.
Not going to lie, I read this as “Constitution bender” at first and am now terribly disappointed I don’t get to write some kind of ridiculous lawyers AU with elderly LoK era Zuko as a Supreme Court Justice.
1. So combustion bending is heavily implied to be a learned skill, and one typically associated with a certain amount of ritual. So how does a prince end up in this kind of ritualized training? He doesn’t discover a proclivity for edged weapons. Maybe Iroh sent him something other than a knife. Instead, as Zuko’s life after his mother’s sudden disappearance grew bleaker, he searched for some other useful, worthwhile skill to make up for his complete inadequacy in comparison to his sister in standard firebending. He hits on combustion bending almost by accident.
2. Ozai is overjoyed. Sending Zuko off to study a specialized form of bending is a handy way to get rid of him for a while, and with any luck, he’ll discover a vocation, or be manipulated into discovering a vocation and become a combustion monk or a Fire Sage. So this is what happens to Zuko instead of scarring and banishment.
3. Zhao holds the honor of being the first Fire Nation officer to be tasked with hunting the Avatar, and he gets all the toys. He asks for a combustion bender, and he gets one. Unfortunately, or probably very fortunately, Zuko is under a vow of silence at the time, so he spends a lot of time glaring at Zhao’s back instead of shouting exactly what he thinks of his new commander to the man’s face, and getting himself in a duel.
4. Zuko is still a prince, and at least half the reason Zhao wants him around is to have a baby royal as witness to his exploits. So he brings Zuko with him to the North Pole, and takes him on the land expedition to kill the moon. Effectively this means he takes Iroh’s place. In the lessons he has taken from the Fire Sages in the hopes that he could be persuaded become one himself, he got to hear a lot about balance and the spirits, and how doing something like destroying the moon is a terrible idea and also blasphemy, and he turns on Zhao, breaking his vow of silence to stumble his way through explaining this.
5. After Zhao kills the moon spirit and the Avatar joins with the ocean spirit, Zuko takes on Zhao and is winning when the ocean spirit hauls Zhao away. This very public fight gets Zuko captured and taken before Chief Arnook and the Avatar. They try to piece together his identity, and figure out what to do with him, but Zuko isn’t saying a word. Literally. He’s back to that whole vow of silence thing.
Cheloneuniverse 