Why I Like Azula

Hey guys. I finally finished my character analysis of the Fire Nation princess. I won’t lie, I agonized over whether to keep this as one piece or to split it up into several, because its length got…a little out of hand. I tried to cut it back, and tried to split it up in so many ways. But in the end I decided you know what, I’m going to keep all my thoughts and run with it, and hope the web pages won’t take an eon to load.

So it's in two pieces. The first part mainly focuses on book 2 Azula and her more villainous attributes. The second part deals more with book 3 and Azula as a character.

I figured Azula is a complex character who is worthy of a lengthy breakdown anyway (heh), since in the words of Ty Lee, she is “the most beautiful smartest perfect girl in the world.”

Maybe that wasn’t entirely true, but she certainly succeeded in being a near-perfect villain for our story. So here it is.

A few months back I sat down to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. I decided to do so because I had seen so much about Zuko in pop culture and knew that he apparently has one of the best redemption arcs of all time. Unfortunately, the show didn’t look like my cup of tea.

More like hot leaf juice tbh.

But after years of stalling, I finally sat down to watch it and see if the rumors about Zuko were true.

And my verdict: I would say they are. Zuko’s character is a magnificent piece of writing and a quintessential example of how to write a compelling character. His arc is like Mary Poppins: practically perfect in every way. He and Iroh are by far the best part of season one and the only reason I got through it. (No, I’m not here to say this show was the second coming or something. I struggled at times. I tried to watch the episode “The Great Divide” twice and tapped out both times).

 Not that the other characters aren’t interesting also. But when it came to Zuko and his story…I was gripped. His character was resonate in a way that the other characters usually weren’t. The moment he finally sees the truth and gains freedom and peace after all the inner turmoil he'd been through was cathartic in a way few pieces of media manage to be.

I’m proud of you, Zuko.

But in retrospect, he wasn’t the character I found the most captivating, as this show contained some hidden gems I hadn’t heard about before.

Because as much as I love a hero’s journey arc that leads to triumph and a happy ending, sometimes I love a good fall arc even better.

And that brings us to his sister, Azula, who is introduced to us properly at the beginning of season two, having been sent by her father to capture Zuko and Iroh and bring them back to the Fire Nation after Iroh was branded as a traitor for his actions at the north pole.

Who is Azula?

Well, let me introduce her using the one and only monologue she delivers throughout the entire show. She has just taken control of the Dai Li, who control the Earth Kingdom, outwitted their leader Long Feng, and conquered the entire Earth Kingdom, a feat that has evaded the Fire Nation for a hundred years.

Long Feng: Now comes the part where I double cross you. Dai Li, arrest the Fire Nation princess. I said, arrest her! What is wrong with you?

Azula: It’s because they haven’t made up their minds. They are waiting to see how this is going to end.

Long Feng: What are you talking about?

Azula: I can see your whole history in your eyes. You were born with nothing, so all your life you’ve had to struggle, and connive, and claw your way to power. But true power, the divine right to rule, is something you’re born with. The fact is, they don’t know which one of us is going to be sitting on that throne, and which one is going to be bowing down. But I know, and you know. Well?

Long Feng: You’ve beaten me at my own game.

Azula: Don’t flatter yourself. You were never even a player.

I was actually gagged.

I don’t think even Anakin experienced such a severe burn.

And that man was on fire.

As the daughter of Fire Lord Ozai and Queen Ursa, Azula is the princess of the Fire Nation and her father’s favorite child. She may not be the firstborn, but she is far more talented and composed than her older brother Zuko. She is a prodigy, and already wields the highest forms of fire bending. Her father clearly wants her to be his heir, rather than her brother. After all, she was born lucky, and he was lucky to be born.

I’ll just say it right now: Azula is one of the best villains I’ve come across in animation and maybe just media in general. I was surprised I hadn’t heard more about her before watching this show, because she is a phenomenal character on a number of different levels.

I think she’s a villain who can easily stand among the greats like Scar, Maleficent, the Joker, Moriarty, and The Wicked Witch of the West. Her only caveat is she appears in a Nickelodeon kids’ show, which puts some limitations on her character, but even so she manages shake those restraints and rise to greatness.

The princess of the Fire Nation pretty much has it all as a villain character—the skills of a master practitioner, the charismatic flair of an old-school Disney baddie like Scar or Maleficent, the mental acuity of Thrawn or Moriarty, the confidence of a seasoned war general, and all the nuance of a tragic protagonist, blended into one character who effortlessly plays each part.

Most villains excel in one department—be it in physical prowess, intelligence, or their ability to manipulate others. Scar excels in manipulation, Moriarty in intelligence, and Tai Lung in physical prowess, but Azula excels in everything. She’s a villain who can break her enemies down mentally, outwit them with her intelligence, or crush them with her sheer fire bending powers.

But what truly sets her over the edge is the character writing. Azula is not just a villain…she is a developed character in her own right who has fears, flaws, internal and external motivations, and an entire arc that encompasses the two seasons she appears in. The story makes us root fervently for her demise, and yet when it happens, you feel…bad.

The journey the show takes us on, from rooting for her demise to ripping the catharsis of it out from under us, is one of the more striking character arcs I’ve seen. While I've seen it done before, it's always fallen flat for me. But with Azula, somehow the stars align and it works.

Her introduction

A villain needs a proper introduction to set up who they are and the stakes they bring to the story. Azula’s is masterfully done. Her first appearance is in season 1 episode 12 The Storm, where she can be seen next to Iroh when Zuko gets burned during the Agni Kai.

Tough crowd.

At this point she is nameless and we don’t even know Zuko has a sister yet, but we can already see this girl has a cruel nature. A few episodes later, when Zuko has captured Aang at the north pole, he talks about his sister.

This sets up an interesting dichotomy between the two siblings. Zuko was scarred and banished by his father, but Azula is his favorite child. Already this builds up the suspense and interest for what this person might be like. Then at the end of season one, we finally see her again, and it’s confirmed that she was the girl who watched as Zuko’s face was burned.

Once we see her properly, she is on a bigger ship than Zuko’s and being treated with deference by everyone present. Her cold ruthless attitude and the hard edge her voice actor gives her (shoutout to Grey DeLisle) sells us on the fact that she is going to be a dangerous enemy to our heroes, and it creates a sense of dread and anticipation.

She’s out here threatening her guard and the captain of the ship. Then the next thing we see is her bending lightning, which other than one instance where Iroh redirected lightning in the episode The Storm, (the same one we first saw Azula) is something we’ve never seen so far.

And she’s a perfectionist, and maybe a tiny bit unhinged, as she gets rattled by having one hair out of place.

Every scene with her throughout this first episode of season two, The Avatar State, builds more on her character, showing us her frightening powers, her manipulation, how much more skilled and balanced she is than her brother when she fights him without even bending, and her cruelty when she lies about his father wanting him back, only to berate him as a failure when the truth comes out.

And she bends a blue flame!

Which is so much cooler than the red flames and sets her apart visually from all the other fire benders, as well as testifying to her intense and perfectionistic nature.

Your science fact for today is that the color of fire has nothing to do with the temperature, and everything to do with the type of fuel and how cleanly and efficiently it burns. Blue fire results from perfect combustion without any soot or impurities rising through the flame to glow and taint the color to the usual orange color we are accustomed to. Yes, that is right, blue is the true color of fire. If you look at the flame on a match or candle, you will see that the base of it is a clear blue, because it is burning cleanly there with no soot or ash to taint the flame’s color.

Further up, however, it turns yellow because of the impurities in the flame.

Because fuels like alcohol and methane burn so efficiently, they do burn extremely hot, in fact your normal gas stove burns twice as hot as a candle or campfire, so there is some truth in the common belief that blue fire is hotter than red fire. But this is a situation where correlation does not equal causation. The true difference is efficiency and perfection, and Azula is nothing if not efficient and perfect.

Azula is a sharp-minded villain

So besides having those awesome blue flames, Azula is incredibly astute and intelligent, to the point that my jaw was actually on the floor sometimes because of how smart this girl is. Maybe I’m too easily impressed. But the fact remains that Azula is very intelligent, with the ability to quickly analyze situations and pick up on small details.

This is some Sherlock Holmes-level situational analysis right here.

Like when she’s pursing Team Avatar and Aang tries to lead her off with a false trail and she picks up on his ruse. Or when she gets cornered by Team Avatar and Zuko and Iroh, and when Iroh gets briefly distracted, wastes no time in striking at him, giving herself time to escape.

What's most interesting about Azula's intelligence, besides her psychic-level ability to read people (we'll get to that) is her uncanny ability to read and evaluate the dynamics of whatever situation she finds herself in. She is quick to perceive opportunities and make the most of them in order to swing the odds in her favor, and equally quick to identify weaknesses in her opponents and capitalize on them.

This is most evident when she enters Ba Sing Se undercover, and quickly recognizes the exploitable weaknesses within the city's government. She can see that the Earth King is ignorant, that the Dai Li run things, and there is turmoil within the city making them vulnerable to manipulation. My girl, a complete type A, decides to conquer it just because. No wonder her dad likes her!

This leads to her entire orchestration to dismantle Ba Sing Se by manipulating the Dai Li. She is playing some 4-d chess here, and while I have some issues with the way this is written, it still doesn’t come across as overly unbelievable. I don’t think the Dai Li switching sides is as big a plot hole as some people make it out to be, since they only care about themselves, not the Earth Kingdom as a whole. This new person comes in and makes herself their leader in the absence of Long Feng, so it’s not too much of a stretch for them to betray him for her, especially considering there are new threats looming with Team Avatar challenging their tyranny. Could it have been written better? Probably.

But anyway. As mentioned above, she outwits this man Long Feng, conquers the city in the name of her father, and when the Dai Li leader tries to double cross her, bludgeons him with the most savage one-liner I have ever heard.

She'd make a great queen, if she weren't so evil.

I love a villain who has…just plain common sense.

Common sense is a terrifying weapon. Azula processes it in spades, and it’s amazing. While other villains monologue, leave the heroes without making sure they’re actually defeated, or make dumb decisions, Azula never does any of these things. When Aang is powering up into the Avatar state, instead of waiting around for him to be ready, she instantly strikes him down at the most optimal moment. It’s so shocking because it’s…so clearly the most correct, sensible, and obvious move to make, but most stories wouldn’t allow the villain to be this smart and land such a devastating blow to our heroes.

When Zuko challenges her to an Agni Kai duel, she flippantly tells him no thanks, because she doesn’t have time for that nonsense. Also, her brother’s beneath her, so no sense dirtying her hands on him.

Azula is all pragmatism and I love it.

There’s never an instance in the show, besides the finale, where Azula is caught doing something dumb or nonsensical. She plans, she strategizes, she thinks ahead to cover every nook and cranny of her devious designs, and she always has backup. Even after striking down Aang, she considers the possibility that he might have survived the kill shot, and gives the credit to Zuko, allowing him to take the fall.

Man I love common sense.

I can’t stress enough how much this makes Azula a fantastic villain and character. Common sense alone puts her eons ahead of most other villains.

Azula is all finesse

But her real forte, besides being completely practical-minded, is that she’s not just a physical threat. Where she really excels at is being a psychological threat. Azula knows people—she has a deft ability to perceive others’ weaknesses and insecurities and use them to manipulate and control them.

She manipulates Zuko multiple times by using his desire to regain his honor and father’s approval, she taunts Sokka over his girlfriend Suki, delaying them during the eclipse and causing their mission to fail, and she coerces her friend Ty Lee into joining her mission after she refuses to do so by making her circus act as dangerous as possible, and in a very low-key way, threatening to continue to do so at each show.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Ty Lee gets the hint and joins her, because she fears what Azula might do to her. Her relationship with her two friends, Mai and Ty Lee, is shown to be built on fear and manipulation. Azula wields her tongue like another weapon in her arsenal, constantly playing and manipulating the people around her, and she prides herself on being able to read their thoughts and emotions.

I like the scene where she tricks Zuko into confessing that he visited Iroh in prison, just by using her own assumption and the fact that she knows how Zuko will react to her prying.

She also has a talent at lying and twisting the truth, to the point that even Toph, who is an expert at detecting lies, can’t tell if she’s lying or not.

As dangerous as she might be as a fire bender, nothing is more terrifying than being on the receiving end of her words.

Azula is a well-portrayed female character

I also want to mention that Azula isn’t a tomboy or a someone who displays mainly masculine traits, like so many women in media are portrayed today. She may be out acting in a militant manner, being a part of the warrior and ruling class of her nation, but she is still very distinctly feminine in the way she favors manipulation and mental games as form of control over straight brute strength. Generally speaking women are more emotionally intelligent than men and are better at perceiving and exploiting others’ insecurities. They tend to favor psychological attacks whereas men tend to be more physically aggressive. A lot of this is due to the fact that women don’t process as much physical strength as men, and have brains that are more wired towards reading and processing emotions and body language, so they tend to target mental weaknesses.

Azula leans into her feminine wiles and is able to navigate situations where she is physically outmatched, and it’s what makes her so insidious as an opponent. It’s far more menacing and interesting to watch than a straight-up windmill blade wielding war machine. Even her fighting style relies on precision and finely honed skill rather than sheer force, which again, women tend to be better at fine skills than men. (Yes, there are studies to back up everything I’ve just said here.)

The way she dresses and presents herself is in a very feminine fashion. The show doesn’t sexualize her (and is fairly good at not sexualizing the female characters in general, well, until book 3 unfortunately).

Well, maybe except for that beach episode.

Azula is able to inspire fear in the audience and the other characters.

Speaking of which, Azula’s also just…scary. It’s great to have a villain that’s competent and well-written, but it’s nice when they have a strong intimidation factor. Azula is someone you don’t want showing up, and you especially don’t want conniving, because you know our heroes are going to be in serious trouble, and most of the time they come off worse. And while she’s cold and calculating, there’s a tiny hint of unhinged chaos simmering beneath it all. This is further enforced by the eerie music that accompanies her. She manages to get even scarier towards the finale of the show when she starts to lose her precarious grip on sanity.

But it’s not just that she’s a physical or even phycological threat. No, it gets more sophisticated than that. The fact that she can pull the strings of people around her and does devious things like throwing Zuko under the bus when he returns to the Fire Nation, making him take the fall if Aang survived, makes her terrifying on another level.

Azula is actually a demon.

The tension and dread this creates for Zuko and the audience is insane, and the fact that this scene is intercut with Aang traveling to the Fire Nation further enforces how precarious Zuko’s newly won position of being in his father’s favor is. It’s also an incredibly heartless thing to do to her brother, since she knows it will cause him so much stress and worry and destroy any joy he had in returning home.

What’s a little disturbing is she has a nasty cruel streak that is not present in either Zuko or Iroh, despite them both being antagonists early on in the show and Iroh being a war criminal. Yeah, that Iroh.

She has no kind of empathy for the most part, displaying utter contempt for others’ feelings, and weaponizing her high emotional intelligence by prying into her enemies’ weaknesses and landing shrewdly aimed and wickedly barbed verbal attacks. Her loyalty to the Fire Nation and its goals come first to her, and nothing else matters. She is quick to turn on her brother and friends for no other reason than to continue her rampage on the warpath for power. Even the poor turtle ducks are traumatized by her.

This along with the way she can make other characters tick, wears down our heroes and causes so many problems for them, so the point where you feel really bad for them and want them to get a break, makes her a detestable character that you want to see get taken down and get taken down quickly.

She’s so frustrating and infuriating and easy to root against, she really feels like a major obstacle to our heroes’ goals, since she’s out here sabotaging their plans left and right and causing complications, and not only that, she gets major wins over them as well.

This girl facilitates the fall of the entire Earth Kingdom, foils Team Avatar’s plan A and their plan B, and sets Zuko a season back on his redemption arc.

Azula is a nasty piece of work who is twisted up all sorts of ways inside. She’s like a mean girl you would meet sometime in school, displaying all the snobbery, manipulation, and cruel taunts you would expect from such a person. Part of what makes her so off turning is we recognize her traits in people we’ve known in real life. She’s cruel to her underlings and citizens, manipulative to her friends (if such they are), abusive towards her brother, opts for underhanded tactics and dirty tricks, and never once does anything remotely honorable during the entire runtime of the show.

I don’t supports women’s rights, I support women’s wrongs.

You would think you would be cheering at her downfall, right?

Well, not exactly.

And that's where Azula's character gets interesting.

Read my analysis of Azula's character here., where I discuss Azula in season three.