Azula

"fire"

- Maybe you should worry less about the tides, who've already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who's still mulling it over.

Azula is the princess of the Fire Nation, daughter of Fire Lord Ozai and Princess Ursa, and the younger sister and archenemy to Prince Zuko. She was a key enemy of Team Avatar, chasing Avatar Aang and her banished brother far across the Earth Kingdom accompanied by her two best "friends" Mai and Ty Lee.

A Firebending prodigy, Azula is sadistic, manipulative and obsessed with power. She is a skilled tactician who orchestrated the Fire Nation victory over the Earth Kingdom capital Ba Sing Se and halted the invasion on Day of Black Sun.

Azula harbored deep mental instabilities, believing her mother favored Zuko over her. Raised by her father in an environment devoid of a mother-figure, Azula had to be nothing less than perfect in her father's eyes. After the betrayal of her two closest friends Mai and Ty Lee, these instabilities were brought up to the surface. Upon the arrival of Sozin's Comet, Azula was soon to be crowned Fire Lord; however, her defeat at the hands of her brother Zuko and Katara caused her to suffer a complete mental breakdown.

Background


Princess Azula was born to Prince Ozai and Princess Ursa about two years after her brother, Prince Zuko. She is named for her paternal grandfather, Fire Lord Azulon. Azula grew up in the riches, splendor, and privileges of being royalty in the Fire Nation. Her sharp wits and the fact that she is a Firebending prodigy gained her great attention, acclaim and quickly made her Ozai's favorite child. Her father began raising her as his true heir from an early stage, taking her into his confidence and grooming her in politics, while on the other hand ignoring Zuko. She later attended the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, where she befriended Mai and Ty Lee, two daughters of Fire Nation noblemen.

Even when she was only eight years old, Azula displayed her natural talents, along with her tendency for malice and perfection. When Ty Lee succeeded in performing a cartwheel after Azula had failed when attempting to do her own, Azula responded by shoving her friend to the ground and laughing gleefully. When she saw nine-year-old Mai attempting to hide her crush on her brother Zuko, Azula used her acting and cunning to convince her mother to make Zuko play with them. During their game, she proceeded to place an apple on Mai's head and set it on fire, forcing Zuko to tackle her into a fountain to put out the fire. She took great pleasure in embarrassing the two.

A true megalomaniac, Azula desired power from a young age, suggesting that her father would make a better Fire Lord than the heir apparent, her Uncle Iroh. She is shown destroying a doll that her uncle had sent her as a gift from the Earth Kingdom. Not long after this, her cousin Lu Ten was killed, causing Iroh to abandon his legendary 600 day siege at Ba Sing Se, which in turn prompted Azula to dub him "a quitter and a loser".



Shortly after receiving this news, Azula and the rest of her family went before Fire Lord Azulon, and she put on a spectacular display of her Firebending prowess. She then smugly watched Zuko try the same performance and fail. When Azulon sent everyone but Ozai out of the room, Azula took her brother and hid behind the curtains. From there, she watched her father request that he be made Fire Lord instead of Iroh. When Zuko fled in fear from the Fire Lord's anger, Azula stayed to watch with amusement. Azula then supposedly heard her grandfather sentence her brother to death, a fact that she wasted no time in gleefully reporting to the brother in question. She taunted him until her mother angrily pulled her away for a private talk. What happened after this is unknown, but Azula was next seen playing with the knife that Zuko had received from Iroh, and coolly announcing that their grandfather had passed away and their mother had vanished. Soon after, she was watching her father's coronation with glee. No love developed between her and Zuko throughout the next few years, as Ozai apparently began to favor her more and more over her brother during this period.

Azula, alongside Iroh and Zhao, watched Zuko's Agni Kai with his father. When Ozai burns her brother's face, she is seen smiling in triumph. When Zuko was banished from the Fire Nation, Azula officially became Ozai's heir. For the next three years, she would continue her relentless training in Firebending, strategy and combat, until she refined herself enough to serve her father. By this time, her Firebending advances to the level where her fire is blue, thus increasing her overall bending power and intensity.

A New Mission
Shortly after Zhao's failed attack on the Northern Water Tribe, Azula is summoned by her father to his throne room. As she kneels before Fire Lord Ozai, he comments that Zuko is a failure and Iroh is a traitor and charges her with a mission: to find and capture her uncle and brother.

Personality
Azula relentlessly drills herself towards perfection and settles for nothing less from herself or those that serve her. She believes that power and domination are what makes a person strong. She has absolute confidence in her "divine right to rule" which she believes she was born with. She has neither pity nor mercy towards those she marks as treasonous or inferior.



Azula is marked by a distinct lack of empathy. Even as a child, she was seen to react with hostility when outdone, when she shoved Ty Lee to the ground after Ty Lee had ousted her in gymnastics. This behavior would characterize her relationship with her friends for many years. Although she could show sympathy towards them, she never cared for their feelings and manipulated them as she saw fit, such as when she threatened Ty Lee into leaving the circus and joining her cause. She is prone to asserting herself and her authority in a grandiose way, such as when she humiliated Long Feng in front of his former henchmen, or when she threatened the captain of her ship. She also shows a need for admiration from her father, whom she emulates to a great degree, and to a lesser extent from everyone else around her. She is shown reacting with despair and rage when she learned her father was going to the Earth Kingdom without her. She also becomes very violent (burning down a house) when rejected romantically by Chan. These are all traits of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder while her lack of empathy as a child and purposeful harming of animals is a sign of Conduct disorder.

Azula is marked as one of the cruelest characters in the series. From a very young age, Azula demonstrated sadistic aggression and a near total lack of remorse to friends, servants, family, and animals which suggests that she could be suffering from an antisocial personality disorder. Her own mother, Princess Ursa once remarked, "What is wrong with that child?” after observing her casual cruelties. Her first reaction to hearing of Iroh's son's death was to wonder whether this now makes her father the heir to the throne. She later dismisses her uncle as a quitter and a loser when learning he had ended his two year siege of Ba Sing Se to grieve for Lu Ten. She eagerly watches Azulon proclaim Ozai's punishment for trying to claim the throne and grins maliciously when Zuko is burned and scarred by their father. She also did not seem to care when her mother disappeared or her grandfather died. Her cruelty is apparently infamous and extreme; when Iroh accidentally ingests the poisonous White Jade flower, both he and Zuko quickly decide that they would rather go seek help from the Earth Kingdom and face certain death than deal with the Fire Nation and be handed over to Azula.



Azula's characteristic blue flames symbolize the power she possesses and constantly seeks to increase. Her apathy also accounts for her ability to create and direct lightning, the "cold-blooded fire". According to Iroh, the skill requires complete control of all emotion, which would not prove difficult for Azula with her one-track mentality. Because of these skills, she is also an excellent tactician, regularly displaying cunning, perception, and resourcefulness that allows her to take advantage of almost any situation. She possesses good self control, facing down Long Feng and deceiving him when held captive, and can lie with a straight face and no physical reactions.

Ironically, for all her refinement and self-confidence, Azula does retain some insecurity. As a result of her sequestered life of royalty, she has developed a considerable amount of social ineptitude, particularly in her uncertainty of how to act around boys, and she frequently intimidates them during conversation. Her overly competitive nature surfaces during a Kuai Ball game, and she later admits her jealously over how much attention Ty Lee receives from others.

However, in "The Boiling Rock, Part 2", Azula begins to show signs of a fragile mentality. As stated above, for all of her self-assurance, she is, for a moment, driven into rage when Mai betrayed her by helping Zuko to escape, and admitted to loving him more than she feared Azula. As Azula moved to strike her down, she was in turn temporarily paralyzed by Ty Lee. The enraged princess then orders both her former friends to be locked away and "left to rot". While it was apparent that Azula held herself in high regard above her friends, their sudden betrayal drove her to the edge for an instant, hinting just how unstable she might be.



Azula's mentality continued to crumble as the series progressed. When she attacked Zuko and the gang at the Western Air Temple during "The Southern Raiders", Azula is evidently losing her sanity, as her attacks become far more vicious and she is shown to be now obsessed with killing Zuko.

The obvious tipping point occurs during her father's coronation as Phoenix King during "Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King", where Azula is told she will not assist in the attack on the Earth Kingdom. Azula seems distraught at this and takes this decision as an offense to her and her honor. For her, Ozai always represented absolute power and perfection, qualities which she desired to acquire. His refusal to bring her along on a mission where the two of them would serve essentially as equals makes her realize that due to her lust for power she not only frightened her enemies, but her father as well. Though Azula accepts the Fire Lord title, she is unable to cope with the fact that the only human being who ever loved her is indeed ashamed and afraid of her, but still possesses power over her. Knowing that her father will neither submit to her will nor love her, Azula's grip on reality begins to steadily plummet.

In the day preceding her coronation, Azula became excessively paranoid, banishing all of her subjects for minor or suspected offenses. When she styles her hair for the coronation, she is so frustrated by her inability to tie up her hair bun that she cuts away her trademark bangs, leaving her hair a tattered mess. She then sees her mother in her mirror in an apparent hallucination. Her mother compliments her, saying that she always had beautiful hair. Azula then asks her mother why she was there, and Ursa tells her that she wouldn't miss her daughter's coronation. Azula tells her not to pretend to act proud, stating that she knew her mother thought she was a monster. The hallucination of her mother then tells her that she doesn't think that, that Azula is just confused, and that she loves her. Azula then goes deeper into insanity, throws her brush at the mirror, breaking it, and breaks down crying. She didn't seem surprised by her hallucination, implying it might not have been the first one.



This incident exposes a complex facet to Azula's persona. Although outwardly maintaining a cold and dismissive opinion of her mother as witnessed in the episode "The Beach", Ursa's banishment ultimately had a devastating impact upon Azula's fragile psyche, possibly even more so than it did her brother Zuko. As Azula's sanity began slipping away from her, this inability to reconcile her perceived belief that Ursa considered her a monster with the truer (though idealized) maternal feelings of love and support that Ursa demonstrated in the hallucination created an inescapable conflict in her mind that furthered Azula's eventual mental collapse. Another thread of this argument explores the possibility that Azula may have harbored a guilt-ridden conscience, long suppressed or held at bay for many years by her indominable will. Her conscience, in the form of her mother Ursa (whose love and guidance she secretly longed for but could never have) reared itself stronger than before. Ursa's gentle, motherly concerns over Azula's use of fear and cruelty as her only means of maintaining relationships with friends and family alike induces a violent mental breakdown prior to her coronation.

It would also seem that in her ever increasing insanity, Azula gave into her fear of being killed. She accused her servant of purposely leaving a pit in her cherry so that she'll choke. She gets mad at the Dai Li when they arrive five minutes late, suggesting an assassin could sneak in, kill her, and "be on his merry way". She then suggests that the Dai Li could betray and kill her ("just like Mai and Ty Lee"), and banishes them. She then begins keeping her back against one of the throne's canopy poles, probably out of fear of being attacked or killed from behind.

It also appears that she wasn't sleeping well as she had dark circles under her eyes, implying that she might have feared someone killing her in her sleep. Upon Lo and Li's arrival to counsel her, Azula's fear of disappointing her father is clear and becomes so enraged when her old mentors' question her wishes that she momentarily forgets that they are not Firebenders.

Azula shows up at her coronation impatient and with her hair still a mess. Katara and Zuko then arrive to fight her, and she constantly provokes the duo as she attacks them. When Katara finally defeats Azula and chains her to the ground, Azula screams in anger and breathes fire uncontrollably, struggling to break herself free in extreme rage, falling into complete insanity. She drags herself along the ground helplessly, as Zuko and Katara look on in pity and horror. Throughout the series, Azula appeared to be unaffected by her failure to kill the Avatar, but her failed relationship with her mother (and her jealousy towards Zuko for receiving more of their mother's affection) coupled with the betrayal she suffered at the hands of Mai and Ty Lee (who were the closest persons in her entourage) and her subsequent defeat by Zuko and Katara, finally sends Azula over the edge as she cracks, screaming and crying uncontrollably. Azula is currently in a mental health facility on a nearby island in the Fire Nation where she is closely monitored.

Firebending
Azula is one of the most skilled Firebenders in the series, and has been described as a "prodigy" by both Ozai and Zuko. Azula is likely the youngest master of Firebending, considering her obvious surpassing of the standard red and orange flames and near perfection of the lightning generation technique at age 14 when she was first introduced.



The most noticeable feature of Princess Azula's bending is her ability to create her characteristic blue flames, which are much more intense than the red, orange and yellow fire normally used by Firebenders. Azula is only seen bending normal fire during her childhood and in the opening sequence. In "Return to Omashu", Azula was seen using flames in previously unseen ways, such as jets of flames, whirling disks, and blades of fire. Also notable is her ability to produce a greater amount of flames than most Firebenders without tiring, as she is shown to be able to maintain successive assaults for long durations of time.

She has also demonstrated the skill to condense her flames, enabling her fire to cut clean through various objects. When formed into fireballs, the flames serve to be rather concussive, able to firmly pulverize objects such as stone. Azula is able to generate powerful shields of swirling flames which can withstand the full force of four simultaneous elemental attacks (and a boomerang). She is even able to charge up her fire before releasing it, as was seen during her fight with Aang in "The Drill". In "Appa's Lost Days", Azula fights off multiple Kyoshi Warriors, using both Firebending and hand-to-hand techniques, and duels Suki. The outcome of this fight is not shown, but the fact that Azula, Mai and Ty Lee infiltrated Ba Sing Se posing as the Kyoshi Warriors reveals that Azula won.



The depth of Azula's potential seen thus far came in "The Crossroads of Destiny", where she is shown using very advanced techniques, creating large blasts of flame, evaporating a wave of water that Katara threw at her, using her flames to propel herself forward like a jet and minutes later produce and guide lightning. While little of her Firebending was seen in in the earlier stages of Book 3, she does demonstrate her powers a few times. In "The Beach", she uses Firebending to give extra propulsion in a game of Kuai Ball, creating an explosion and burning the net. In "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse", she uses her Firebending to break free of her shackles, and briefly attacking Sokka, Aang and Toph. In "The Boiling Rock, Part 2" Azula engages a pitched battle with Zuko and Sokka, where she was still able to battle on equal footing with them despite her being outnumbered. In addition to creating her usual powerful fire balls, she is able to shoot her flames behind her in order to propel herself through the air onto the gondola.

Azula is one of the most powerful Firebenders in the entire series. Only Iroh and Ozai are clearly more powerful than she is, although Zuko is shown to be on approximately equal footing with her towards the end of the series and it is unknown how well Aang would have compared to her, but it is thought once Aang masters Firebending, he would overpower for he is the Avatar. It is also unknown how Jeong Jeong would've compared to her. Azula's Firebending powers and prodigious skill allow her to fend off many attackers with little effort, and, as is seen in "The Crossroads of Destiny", defeat a single talented bender, like Aang.

Azula is proficient in the highly difficult technique of creating and guiding lightning, a sub-skill of Firebending, and was the first character within the series to demonstrate the ability.



As Azula gradually lost her sanity prior to the arrival of Sozin's Comet, her firebending became unfocused and wild, making her all the more dangerous, however it also resulted in her becoming exhausted more easily then usual. Despite her state of mind, her attacks on Zuko and Katara during her final duel proved ferocious and destructive, and was still able to fire lightning accurately. However, her mental instability still weakened her battlefield prowess, and this ultimately resulted in her defeat at the hands of Katara. She displayed the ability to breathe fire as she struggled against her chains, but this was only brought about by her madness and rage in her defeat. She can also make fire come out of her nose and mouth, but this was most likely due to the power of the comet and her complete mental breakdown.

Other Skills
Azula's skills in unarmed combat are displayed several times during the series, most prominently in "The Avatar State", "Appa's Lost Days", and "The Day of Black Sun". She easily avoided Zuko's frenzied knife attacks without the use of Firebending, guiding his hands off course. Later, she proceeded to disarm Suki, and knocked her off her feet without bending. She also has some skill with hidden weaponry, as she has shown the intent to use them during the eclipse. Her acrobatics and use of a hidden shuriken knife are apparently skills she picked up from Ty Lee and Mai, respectively. Azula is very agile and in "The Day of Black Sun", she has been shown to run up walls and do mid-air twirls. She dodged Aang and Toph's bending attacks with little to no effort using high jumps like Ty Lee. Her physical strength is also surprising as she can support her body in a horizontal position with just her arms with little effort.



Azula has been shown to be an extremely cunning strategist. When she was a child, she demonstrated her military knowledge by successfully recounting Fire Lord Sozin's strategy in an old battle. In "The Avatar State", she plans a trap for Iroh and Zuko, which is only accidentally foiled by the captain of her ship. In "The Chase", she immediately discerns the Avatar's plan to mislead her with a false trail. In "The Guru" and "The Crossroads of Destiny", she plans and carries out a coup against the Earth King, winning Ba Sing Se for the Fire Nation. In "Nightmares and Daydreams", she participates in a war meeting with her father and brother. During The Day of Black Sun, she lays a trap for Aang and his friends using Dai Li agents in the Fire Lord's throne room, ensuring that the Eclipse time is used up. She also displays the ability to be so extremely capable of lying effectively that even Toph can't sense it regardless of how blatant the lie is, showing that Azula doesn't feel remorse for lying or many of her other actions. In "The Boiling Rock, Part 2" she also displayed an innate ability to tell whether someone was telling the truth or not (almost like Toph), stating simply that she was a "people person".

Azula's intelligence makes her very skillful in manipulating people. She has used this skill on many people, including her brother Zuko, her mother Ursa, Long Feng, the Dai Li, Sokka and even her father.

Trivia

 * Summer Bishil will continue to play Azula in the The Last Airbender 2 and The Last Airbender 3.
 * When Ozai crowned himself Phoenix King, he deemed Azula as his replacement; however, she was never formally crowned, and never actually became Fire Lord, though had she been crowned, she would have been known as the first known female Fire Lord.
 * Despite being younger than her brother, Azula sometimes calls Zuko "Little Zuzu".
 * Azula is the first person to be seen creating lightning.
 * Forms of the word azul appear in several languages, having the meaning of blue. The fact that Azula's name is so similar is a possible reference to her characteristic blue flames. However, before it had been decided that she would be a girl, Azula's character was drafted as a boy named Zula, so this could just be coincidence.
 * Her name may also come from the Sanskrit word Asura, a Hindu term for demon.
 * During one of Iroh's flashbacks in "The Storm", Azula can briefly be seen within the audience observing the Agni Kai in which Prince Zuko receives his facial scar from his father. As Iroh narrates, he looks away when his nephew is burned, but at Iroh's sides are the then Captain Zhao and a then unknown girl who both look on eagerly. Online speculation on who she was erupted as soon as the episode aired, and her identity was revealed a month later at the 2005 San Diego Comic Con.
 * Azula's voice actress, Grey DeLisle, once stated in an interview that Azula is her favorite character of all those she has voiced. DeLisle also voiced Katara and Sokka's mother, Kya, in "The Southern Raiders", as well as Azula's great grandmother Ta Min, wife of Avatar Roku, in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord".
 * Azula was nicknamed Crazula by part of the fandom after she went insane following her defeat at the end of the series. Also, due to the release of The Dark Knight the same week of the finale, the fandom also nicknamed her Jozula because of how her insanity fit well with Heath Ledger's character, Joker. It was so popular that pictures of Azula in Joker make-up sprouted up.
 * In her first, single-shot appearance at the end of "The Siege of the North, Part 2", Azula is drawn slightly different than in all her later appearances. Her hair is lighter, her lipstick is orange instead of red and her face has different features, looking more chubby. At this time, it was likely that her character was still in the works and was finished in the pause between seasons or possibly because of the lighting in the Fire Lord's chamber, causing the color difference in her hair and lipstick.
 * In "The Crossroads of Destiny", had she killed Aang with her lightning, she would have been the first and only person to have broken the Avatar Cycle.
 * Azula is one of the few characters to have theme music that plays when she enters a scene.
 * It is strange that although Azula is a prodigy in Firebending, her masters, Lo and Li, aren't Firebenders at all. However, it is possible that teaching someone else does not require the ability to do so when the necessary knowledge is already possessed.
 * Azula says Sokka's name while taunting him in the Day of Black Sun. This is the only time she has ever said the name of a member of Team Avatar out loud, apart from Zuko.
 * Azula has only been seen apologizing to one person. This was to Ty Lee for hurting her feelings.
 * In "The Guru", Azula remarks to the Earth King, "It's terrible when you can't trust the people who are closest to you," which seems a precursor to Mai and Ty Lee's betrayal in "The Boiling Rock, Part 2".
 * Azula was originally supposed to have an arranged marriage in the third book, but the idea was scrapped.
 * Azula's last line of the series was, "There you are, filthy peasant."
 * Azula is the only known female member of the royal family by blood.

Relationships

 * See "Azula's Relationships"

Relatives
See Fire Nation Royal Family Tree
 * Ozai (father)
 * Ursa (mother)
 * Zuko (older brother)
 * Iroh (uncle)
 * Lu Ten (older cousin)
 * Azulon (paternal grandfather)
 * Sozin (paternal great grandfather)
 * Ilah (paternal grandmother)
 * Roku (maternal great grandfather)
 * Ta Min (maternal great grandmother)
 * Aang (spiritually)