Talk:Azula/@comment-152.229.223.100-20120425232223

First off, I just want to say that I love Azula. She was the perfect antagonist. She was fierce, cunning, and just plain cool. I really think the thing that makes a good hero really shine, is an even better villan. She as so ruthless but at the same time a lil misunderstood and complicated. She is defintely my favorite villan in the series and probably my favorite female character (I do really like Toph to tho lol).

So I can honestly say I agree with you to an "extent". Ursa probably should have given Azula a little bit more attention. There were just too many signs that her daughter had some sort of blossoming personality diorder, and as parent, that is something you should try to nip at the butt when a child is younger and inccouragable. So I admit, their father's emotional abuse and her mother's neglect might have played a hand in Azula's twisted personality not being corrected or catered to.

Now what I don't agree with is that Ursa is a bad mother.Sure she left them with their father, but that was better than letting her son be killed. Saying she abandoned them is pretty harsh. I'm sure it was a really hard choice for her to leave her kids, but she did it believing that she was at least giving Zuko a fighting chance, and hey I think in the long run he took that oppurtunity, fought tooth and nail, and turned out pretty well.

Also, calling her a horrible mother for showing a little favortism is kind of ridiculous. Sure they are parents, but they are still people, and nobody is perfect. Im pretty sure she "loved" both her kids the same, but its near impossible to "like" two completely different people the same way. I mean think about your own friends and family. I can honestly say I am closer to my mom than my dad and get along better with my brother than my sister. Doesn't mean I don't love them any less. We just have more in common, and it's only natural to get along better with people you can relate to more.

Plus it was pretty obvious Zuko was a momma's boy and Azula was a daddy's girl. There is a reason that kind of terminoloty exisist too; because these kind of relationships happen eeryday in both normal and dysfunctional familes. Just like kids sometimes favor one parent over another, parents tend to favor one kid to the other, but favortism and love are two different things, and it wasn't like she treated Azula badly.

Plus Zuko just seemed a little less tough and mature than his sister earlier in life, so Ursa was probably catering to that, and by the time she realized her daughter might have an issue, she was exiled. Plus thet two kind of issues and personlties that Zuko and Azula had were very different, and usually have to be treated differently.

But yeah, I agree, Azula did seem like she was always seeking her mother's approval and Zuko his father's, and parent's showing favoritism is usulaly the to blame, but that doesn't make the parent bad. That just makes them human. You think parents don't get jealous when their kids do the same? As far as Iroh goes, Azula just didn't respect him, and I doubt she would have given him a chance. How can someone mentor a person who doesn't even respect them? Zuko was a little brat to Iroh, but you could tell he at least valued his opinion and cared about him, even if he didn't want to admit it earlier in the series.Azula obviously give a flip about Iroh.

And as far a Zuko goes, I don't blame him for not liking his siter. She was always cruel to him and manipulated him, and they never seemed to develop any kind of sibling bond. I think it's safe to say that neither one of them really liked the other. Even strangers and enemies were nicer to him. So just because they are family, if someone was always verbally, emotionally, and physically abusing you, why do you have to like them? At least he didn't kill her, and it seemed that by the end of the series he didn't really harbor any real hatred for her. He may still not have trusted or liked her, but he at least valued both her and their father because they were family. Otherwise he would have just let them both rot in prison.