I've posted variations of this post on two different threads currently - both of them concerned with Azula's menatl breakdown. The purpose of this thread is basically general charcter discussion of Azula - specifically the questions of how she became the way she is, what went wrong with her, and what you believe will happen to her post-finale. Here's my general impression of Azula:
Have you ever had the experience of falling in love with a character of a story? I don't know how it happened, but somehow, it happened to me with Azula. I did not become an Avatar fanatic the first time I saw the show, in fact I had seen several episodes before I fell in love with it. Why did I fall in love with it? Because I saw an episode with Azula in it. To be precise, it was 208, 'The Chase'. Up until that point, I had only seen a couple of episodes from Book 1, and the first ten minutes of "The Blind Bandit", and so when Azula first appeared during this episode I had no idea who she was, how she could shoot lightning, or how the heck anyone, no matter how awesome their character could be capable of easily beating the good guys, actually hurting one of them, on what I had previously taken to be just another Nickelodeon cartoon. I was fascinated, and it was this fascination that drove me to keep watching Avatar, ultimately becoming hopelessly addicted. Azula remained my favorite character (although Aang soon became a close second), and throughout book two, whenever she appeared in a fight, I found myself subconsciously cheering for her. I don't know what it was about her character that appealed to me at this point. Perhaps it was her sheer defiant will, her iron spirit, her refusal to submit. Perhaps it was her cunning, the cold calculation that made her such a good villain. Perhaps it was that she appeared to be an avid student of history (I love history, and am always willing to give anyone who takes an interest in it a chance). Perhaps it was the fact that she kicked butt. Perhaps it was simply the fact that she was hot (you can't deny it!). Either way, she continued to hold my interest.
I approached the finale of book two therefore, with a great sense of trepidation. I was certain that Azula was heading towards a similar fate to Zhao, and while I knew that I would always remain loyal to Avatar, I had a gut feeling that I simply would never enjoy it the same way. But I was in for a big surprise. As the credits flashed across the screen (I was watching it on DVD) I simply sat on the couch, frozen, with so many different emotions racing through me that I think it was some time before I actually got up. As much as I had wanted Aang to win, I found myself glad that Azula had survived.
Season three began to air not long afterwards, and before long the first four episodes had come and gone, and "The Beach" was on. And it was in this episode that for the first time we began to get the vague hints that Azula was something more than a cold-blooded villain.
I think that Azula's chief problem is the fact that in addition to believing that her mother hated her, and thought that she was a monster, she also knew that her mother was right - she wasa monster, in many senses of the word. And she believed that she could never be anything else, indeed, she did not want to be anything else, and so she simply did her best to convince herself that being a monster was acceptable and that her she did not really want her mother's love anyway (at heart she knew that she was wrong on both counts). She did her best to to emotionally sever ties with her mother, and everyone else, reasoning that if her mother didn't love her, then nobody else could ever love her either. Her solution to the problem was to effectively cut herself off from all such emotions as love, friendship, etc. Treating everyone around her as mere tools/toys, she had developed a habit of manipulation by a young age. Ultimately, she came to live in a world of cold logic and ruthlessness, fashioning herself into her own concept of a perfect being, with a persona that was somewhat artificial. She believed that everyone else thought the same way as she did - for all her brilliance at reading and manipulating people and their emotions she had no concept of other people's feelings.
She did have one saving grace however; namely her friendship with Mai and Ty Lee. For all Azula's manipulations and domination of her friends, I feel that there was a friendship there, at some level, perhaps with the part of Azula that had originally been devastated by her mother's rejection. It was in the beach that we saw the this side of Azula for perhaps the only time, when she made a genuine effort to apologize to and comfort Ty Lee. It didn't last long, and it never showed itself again, but it was definitely there.
It was Azula's insensitivity to other's feelings, as well as her natural assumption that everyone thought the way she did, that lead to her "miscalculation" at the Boiling Rock. Had she been in Mai's position, Azula would have forgotten all about Zuko, and done the "smart thing", AKA "You should have feared me more!". She had no idea that anyone was capable of loving someone else to the extent of dying for them.
When Mai, and soon after, Ty Lee, betrayed her, Azula's devastation was most likely due to the fact that for her, this was a blatent repeat of what had happend with her mother. Memories that she had no doubt been attempting to squash for years were suddenly brought back in the most painful manner possible. Her friends had most likely been the only people other than her mother who she had ever felt close to, or wanted to feel close to. Her immediate reaction was to go straight after the person she perceived as having been the cause of her friends betrayal - Zuko, but he evaded her.
Azula was left alone with the knowledgethat her closest friends had betrayed her. Azula had thrived previously on controlling the people around her, but was now forced to acknowledge that she had somehow lost control of the two people who had been closest to her of all, and if she couldn't even control them, what hope did she have of controlling others? her self-confidence took a serious hit. We got the first hint of her new vulnerability in "The Phoenix King", during her conversation with Ozai. As soon as she heard that Ozai intended to leave her behind, Azula immediately jumped to the conclusion that her father was also turning on her - "You can't treat me like Zuko!". She was soon reassured by his decision to make her firelord, but the damage was done. Azula was left twitchy, jumpy, and constantly analyzing everyone and everything around her for the tiniest little sign that the betrayal that she now believed almost inevitable was coming. Soon, her paranoia had grown to such a level that she ordered everyone to depart believing that the only person she could count on was herself. As it turned out, she could no longer even trust herself, and the final straw was when she found even her hair betraying her.
Azula herself was no exception to her rule of rigidly controlling everyone and everything around her. Everything about her being was carefully maintained in a state of perfection. Having utterly lost her confidence in her ability to control other people, she believed that she could at least maintain control of herself. She was wrong. When she finally realized that she could no longer even control her hair, let alone the people around her, she recognized at some level that she had lost control of her own life. And with the careful, perfect, rigidly controlled artificial being that she had fashioned herself into gone, the tiny remaining want and need for companionship, love, that remained in her came out in the form of Ursa, the person whose apparent rejection had originally decided Azula in what she would make of her life. What Azula had never allowed herself to admit before was that her mother may have thought her a monster, but still loved her, still had hope for her. Azula could never allow herself to admit this, because the moment she did so, she admitted that she had been wrong, had made more incorrect life choices than you could poke a stick at, and that but for her own stubborn arrogance, she could have lead a very different life. It was with this that Azula finally gave in and admitted to herself that she had indeed been wrong, that if she had realized earlier that her mother had actually loved her, then she could have returned that love, and lived a life in which she would have maintained the ability to trust and be comforted by the people around her, instead of being forced to acknowledge that it was she herself who had driven them all away and left herself alone and confused. The revelation was too much for her, and she attempt to banish it, shattering the mirror in which she saw Ursa's image. But it was too late. All of her concepts of life had been shattered as surely as the mirror. All she could think of to do was to go through with what she had originally intended to do, and be crowned firelord.
But as the coronation was taking place, she had an apparent stroke of luck, in the form of the arrival of Zuko. Here at last for Azula was something she could fight, something she could blame all of her problems on. It had been Zuko who been the center of their mother's love. It had been Zuko who had caused Mai and Ty lee to betray her. It had been Zuko who had exposed her for lying to Ozai, potentially lessening his favor of her. It is a natural urge of human beings to find someone to blame everything on, and it is also natural for them to assume that if the source of that balme can be removed, then the problems usually solve themselves (an inncorrect notion). But even more than that, Zuko was someone she could take out her feelings on - an object on whom she could press everything that she desired to get rid of. She entered their Agni Kai eager in the knowledge that she might have finally found a way out of her predicament.
The type of firebending Azula and Ozai favored was fueled by strong emotions such as anger, rage, etc, and Azula had plenty of that to call upon. A strong drive also helped, and Azula's drive to kill Zuko in the hope of finally gaining some emasure of peace was beyond strong - it was deranged. Zuko's original firebending would still have been stronger, but Azula's intensified blue fire was its match, and even though she might be tottering on the brink of utter insanity, Azula's prodigal mental abilities, her cunning and tactical genius, were intact. After a hard fought battle, Azula had defeated her brother once again. To her, Zuko had come to represent everything that had set itself in opposition to her, the person trying to rob her of the one thing she had left - the crown that was the symbol of her father's approval (which was all that she had had to persuade herself previously that being a monster was acceptable), and she rejoiced at the sight of him falling. But there was one small problem. Some pesky water tribe peasant girl was attempting to get to Zuko, heal him, bring him back to ruin Azula's life again. This could not be allowed. The waterbender was obviously inferior power-wise, so Azula most likely wasn't even thinking as she blindly barged after her, looking for the person who was trying to ruin things just as they seemed to be getting better, so she could burn her alive. The next thing Azula knew, she had been frozen in a block of ice, her hands had been chained, and moments later she saw Zuko, alive, and looking like he was going to live, going to survive to claim his supremacy over her. For Azula, it was the end.
That is my interpretation of what went wrong with Azula. My only authority is as a person who has been fascinated with Azula for about a year and a half, and who continues to be fascinated by her, and what will happen to her now. Something that keeps coming up is; what will happen to Azula now?
I say that she will heal. Everything about her life has changed, and I think that she has come to some fairly major revelations about that life. I personally think Azula will be the one (in the imaginary future of Avatar) who finds Ursa. What happens to Azula and where Ursa is are the two major gaps at the end of the story, and as such, I believe that they are related somehow. Whether Azula would be capable of the same type of redemption as her brother is very questionable, but it should be remembered that what originally shaped Azula's belief that she was always going to be a "monster", was her belief that her mother thought her so. If Ursa were to reassure Azula that she had hope, that would be a huge step towards her starting a new to life to replace the old one that she has now lost forever. The brief conversation Azula had with her hallucination of ursa was telling:
Ursa: "You're not a monster Azula... you're confused. All your life you've used fear to control the people around you - like those friends of yours; Mai and Ty lee".
Azula: "Well, what choice do I have?!!! Trust is for fools - fear is the only reliable way." *glares at Ursa* "Even you fear me".
Ursa: "I don't fear you Azula - I love you".
If Azula can learn to return the love that other people feel for her, she may yet have hope.
A point I would like to bring up to answer the people who will inevitably claim that Azula is beyond redemption and doesn't deserve it is Iroh. Although we never saw that side of him, we know that early in his life, Iroh was the Fire nation's greatest general. He lead a campaign against the Earth Kingdom that no doubt resulted in death of thousands, if not millions - a far greater body count than Azula ever achieved. During the brief flash-back we saw of him in "Zuko Alone", he casually joked about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground, presumably after killing everyone who lived there, an act of evil that almost rivals Ozai's decision to burn the entire Earth Kingdom. And yet after his life was turned upside down by the death of his beloved son (to the point that he apparently entered the Spirit World), there can be no questioning that Iroh was eventually able to find his way to redemption, after which he lost all desire for power, replaced with a desire for peace and atonement for what he had done (as well as plenty of good tea). It would be the ultimate irony if Azula were to follow a simlar path to her uncle, the one person whom she feels a hatred towards that rivals her feelings towards Zuko. But if there is one thing that we have seen plenty of in the world of Avatar, it is irony.
Do you agree with my theory? Do you think it is absurd? Do you have one of your own?
Discuss.
Edited 3 total times.
