Azula Character Analysis (2024)

• Born a princess with a high position
• Was favored by her father and second in her mother’s eyes
• Deeply skilled bender from a young age
• Attended the royal girl Fier Nation academy and had private tutors
• Was around severe abuse emotional and occasionally physical
• Abandoned by mother due to political intrigue which affected her
• Aware of her parents’ murder of her grandfather
• Rose to crown princess after her father coronation and brother banishment which she watched
• Was used as a weapon by her father against her uncle and bother by age 14
• Had a few friends who became partners in hunting the avatar her brother
• Was a skilled tactician able to infiltrate the heart of the earth kingdom
• Overthrow the earth king
• Nearly killed the avatar
• Achieved high status for this but shared it with her brother is a skilled protective manner
• Had a tumultuous relationship with her brother
• Betrayed by her friends
• Attempted to kill her brother
• Became fire lord but felt rejected through this as she was unable to claim victory along with her father
• Suffered a mental health breakdown
• Was beaten by Zuko & katara in an Agni Kai losing her status

Overview:

Azula is a complex character who is gifted, clever, beautiful, and deeply psychologically injured. Her story is one of abuse, manipulation, and war. She was raised by abusive people in a cult of power and supremacy; by the age of 14, she was being used to put the same trauma out on the entire world.

The prime driver for Azula’s character is the necessity to retain control over her situation and due to her status as the princess of the world’s dominant power, this is control over everything. Control and power are the only things Azula truly understands as valuable. This control also equals safety, safety from physical harm during a battle, and emotional harm by others. We can see this control manifest in her emotional distress at having even one hair out of place during her training (2x01). She uses her place of power to hold fear over other people, those she considers lesser than her, by invoking the fear of losing their place and physical harm. Her social power and skill in bending back up the threats.

Azula’s need for control started as a child who grew up being taught through the iron hand of Ozai who demanded perfection. Her status as a prodigy with fire bending, physical aptitude, and intelligence gave her positive attention from her father but also led her to be inculcated even stronger into the idea that fear is the only way. Her father taught with the fear of retribution for failure as much as any positive attention. The more blatant abuse Zuko suffered from their father for showing what was perceived as weakness and emotionality was another teacher that she must always control every part of her. (2x07, 3x06)

This control via strength without understanding was worsened by her other connections. Her mother failed to connect and attune to her daughter so even in early childhood they were always moving past each other. Azula’s failure to show empathy was met with judgment and punishment and we don’t see them ever repair the relational rupture. Their mother then abandoned them accompanied by their parents murdering their grandfather and threats against her brother. Leaving her with only Ozai as a point of influence and even more surrounded by violence. (2x07)

Azula also gained little perspective outside of the pure ideology of the fire nation royal family and royal academy for girls. She carried the beliefs of fire supremacy and nationalism with no outside input which left her with the schemas of power in her nascent socio-political awareness and added to the stunting of her ability to gain empathy. She was taught to view the world as nations and people only worth understanding to beat not for its own sake. (2x07, 2x19-20, 3x05, 3x06)

This pain leaves her spending the whole second season [spanning months] as a weapon of her father. She is forced to travel around the world, originally with only staff, with the goal of hurting her own family in the name of not being shamed. To prove she can do it she gives herself the task of stopping the avatar. Azula is able to escape a fight with some of the strongest benders we see in the show easily and is persistent to a fault. (2x03) We see her skills of strategy and combat shine here as well as many of her trauma responses. The biggest one being she is acting in a mindset that can not shift from using the world and not experiencing it. (2x01, 2x03, 2x07-8, 2x13, 2x15)

Azula’s pure genius shows in her ability to take over Ba Sing Se on her ability to read other people, manipulate court games, and her sheer belief in her infallibility. We see her play the Dai Li and Long Feng with only the backup of her two friends. She has an iconic moment of power “Don’t flatter yourself you were never even a player” and invokes her belief in the divine right of kings or lords. (2x18-20)

Once she proves herself and can bring her brother and uncle home, if in a way not planned, putting her back in a secure place of princess she longs to keep. We see her try and maintain control by being the one who understands both her father and Zuko. We see her struggle greatly with normal life but thrive within the system of the place. (3x05-6, 3x11)

However, we see her set world start to collapse when Zuko leaves and her only two friends choose to take a chance for love versus staying in her control bubble. This challenges her sense of safety she works so hard to maintain. It also goes against her understanding of interpersonal relationships and her innate power. (3x11, 3x13, 3x15)

This causes a breakdown in the end. However, this leaves her without a throne and a sense of safety. After the show, we see her mental health stay in a deteriorated state, struggle with the past, and joins a group that wants to harm the new age of peace. (3x18-20, Comics: The Promise Part Three, The Search. Smoke and Shadow)

Relationships:

Zuko

Zuko and Azula are one of the key family dynamics within the story. Azula acts as a foil to Zuko during their childhood being the golden child to his scapegoat. She was Ozai’s favorite whereas Zuko was closer to Ursa. They both suffered severe trauma as young people but Azula spent the time trying to not be viewed as poorly as Zuko. (3x07, The Search) Something she directly tells their father, to not be treated like Zuko (3x18). Building your relationship with your sibling as wanting to prove you are better than them sets them up too but heads, something she acknowledges was also going to come down to them deciding who is the right one to succeed their father.

During the main plot, we see them start as the predator and the prey (2x01, 2x08). Both of them lived in the mindset Ozai Taught them, she was born lucky and he was lucky to be born (1x20, 2x07). She is the long arm of their father only claiming some autonomy when she chooses her team and attacks the avatar as well (2x03, 2x08).

Azula brings Zuko back into their fold because next to Iroh she understands Zuko the best. She knows easily the only thing he wants is to feel in control of his life and craves the respect of their father, these are things she also needs. We see her also offer the double-sided act of letting Zuko take credit. It is partially protective as should he live Azula is protected, Suko would be the one who failed. It can also be some degree of kindness for her brother because she does like the system the way it is and Zuko being in pain causes worse stress.

They continue to bump heads as we see Azula feel most at home within the bureaucracy whereas he struggles to feel as if it was right. Zuko still carries the pain of shame for his actions at the same time Azula pushes much of her emotion down. Part of this is Azula knows where she stands and as long as others play the part she has no worries. Zuko breaks this steady normal as a child when he wants to be empathetic to soldiers and again when he feels the need to save the earth kingdom she wanted to kill in total war. (3x01, 3x05, 3x16)

Their reactions during The Day of Black Sun (3x11) set them on their paths for the end and they mirror each other. Azula uses the time to play her role and waits for the fire bending to turn on to win. Zuko uses the time to pull away from their father for good. They continue to be antagonistic and Zuko is an axle in her relational rupture with Ty Lee and Mai. (3x14-16)

Their final Agni Kai for the title of Firelord shows how much Zuko has learned in his complex bending style and ability to hold control while we notice Azula loose form entirely relying almost completely on her raw power. Her very body language giving off how sick she is currently in her movements now disjointed and lacking precision which conflicts with the controlled fighting we see from Katara and Zuko. (3x18-21).

They have spent their whole life used as pawns by their parents and stuck in the milieu of war and suffering. Azula’s status as her father’s favorite offers her the status Zuko wants but she also lacks the time and ability to grow Zuko earned through his relationship with Uncle Iroh. Their understanding of each other is strong but Azula fails to offer sympathy to her brother when he chooses things she wouldn’t and treats him poorly. And Zuko needs to be able to challenge her so he can properly heal, along with team avatar, the fissures in the world.

Ursa

We see that Azula and Ursa do not understand each other and the abuse they both suffer disallowed them to properly attach. Ursa didn’t understand Azula’s natural predispositions or her trauma which left Azula often being told off by her mother or treated as separate from the bond Ursa had with Zuko. I wouldn’t go as far as to say Ursa was forming a scapegoat golden child dynamic more so she couldn’t bring herself to look past her trauma. (2x07, The Promise, & The Search)

During the fire nation teens’ conversation at ember island, we see that Azula generalized her mother’s view of her as a monster as much as the other conditioning she had as a kid. This whole where her mother’s attunement should be opened even more space for what Ozai taught her. Azula lack’s a full ability to process this but it is the one time we see Azula even come close to verbalizing painful emotions other than paranoia and anger. (3x05)

If we are to believe the memory we see from Iroh (1x12) she was already immune to violence as a pre-teen believing that Ozai’s assault of Zuko was justified and even taking gratification from it. This play into her relationship with her mother as the gentleness her mother might have displayed towards her child was missing making the hardest part of the indoctrination become the most prevalent. Worsen when Ursa abandons her children and seeks out her new life. The effects of this are her willingness to be cavalier with life, and failure to attach to others (3x17).

Azula’s relationship with her mother ends up being the breaking point in space after the betrayal of her friends. When we see her experience hallucinations and paranoid thought they center around her mother and their relationship, rather there was love or not being the central question. (3x19)

Paranoid delusions around her mother continue in the comics where we see Azula unable to interact from a clear headspace. (The Search)

Ozai

Ozai is Azula’s main force of identity shaping her internal and external perceptions to the point of making her more of a human tool than a real daughter. The craving for her father’s need is just as strong as Zuko’s but instead of trying to restore it her job is to keep it and not rock the boat. This is seen in her letting Zuko take credit for the killing the avatar which brings her brother back in (3x01) and when she asks Ozai to not treat her like Zuko when he becomes the phoenix king (3x20)

Throughout the show, everything she does is to please her father from going after her brother and then succeeding in killing Aang. (2x01-2x20). She also parrots her father’s belief about weakness, fears power, and the might of the fire nation. Examples include naming the city New Ozai, demanding the divine right of kings, and her obsessive focus on acting and appearing perfect.

Ozai’s abuse permeated everything Azula was and is leading to her becoming the shadow of a person we see at the end of the series.

Ty Lee & Mai

Next to her blood family Mai & Ty Lee are her most influential relationships. She considers them generally friends starting when they went to the same school (2x07). We see that even as a child she had the highest status in the group and already needed to win. However, they do seem to have some genuine care for the princess even if it is never balanced. For example, when recruiting Ty Lee she uses manipulation and fear to force her back into serving the fire nation. (2x03). Mai and Ty Lee are skilled fighters making them useful to Azula, something she values more than anything other than loyalty. She has trouble conceptualizing their emotions as validly seen in her calling their emotions performances, however in the same episode we see her care about making Ty Lee cry and experience very human emotions of envy herself. They bond over their traumas and their shared love of destruction (3x05).

None of the three of them are particularly well adjusted but what Azula has on her side is an utter belief in her competence and her belief that their friends will fall in line with that ambition. For the most part, they do; Ty Lee often flatters her and Mail generally does as she’s told when Azula is around. However one of Azula’s most pivotal moments comes when this obedience falls through. Mai loves Zuko more than she fears Azla’s wrath and Ty Lee can’t bear to see them hurt each other. Earning one of Azula’s most characterizing lines “You should have feared me more”. This betrayal and shift in her stable world put Azula over the edge and fuels paranoid thoughts and a slip into worse mental illness. (3x14)

To consider Mai and Ty Lee to be the manipulative ones or otherwise treat them as the bad or abusive party to Azula is unfair. They are doing what they can as they believe Azula has the right to be in charge and suffer consequences when they step out of line. However, it’s equally unfair to assume everything Azula does is machiavellian; she too is acting on sincerely held beliefs and as a daughter of abusive or neglectful parents. I think Azula has a hard time conceptualizing others as full people objectifying them in her schema of the world but unlike some of her behavior to Zuko, I doubt it’s intentionally cruel.

Developmetnal Trauma

1. Adulti-fication (2x01,2x03, 2x07, 2x08, 2x13 2x19-20, 3x01-2, 3x05, 3x15, & 3x18-21)
2. Anger (3x13-20)
3. Control fixations (2x01, 2x03, 2x07, 2x7, 2x13, 2x19, 3x01, 3x05, 3x15, & 3x18-21)
4. Conditioned Value Systems (2x01, 2x07, 2x19-20, 3x01, & 3x05)
5. Empathic Deficits (2x03, 2x07, 2x15, 3x05, & 3x11)
6. Harm to Animals (2x07 & 2x15)
7. Hypervigilance (2x01, 2x03, 2x07, 2x08, & 2x19-20)
8. Obsessive Thoughts (2x01, 2x03, 3x05, & 3x18-21)
9. Locus of Control breakdown (2x01,2x07, 2x15, 3x05, 3x14, & 3x18-21)
10. Paradoxical Arousal, [Functions best during high-stress situations and worse under normal or positive] (2x03, 3x05, 3x13-5)
11. Paranoid Thoughts (3x18-21)
12. Perfectionism (2x01, 2x07, 3x05, 3x13, & 2x17-20)
13. Positive & Negative Psychosis Symptoms (3x18-21)
14. Recklessness (2x03, 2x07, 2x08, 3x05, & 3x15-16)
15. Risk Seeking Behaviors (2x03, 2x13, 2x15, & 3x11)
16. Social issues (3x05)
17. Trust Issues (2x13, 3x01, 3x11, 3x13, & 3x18-21)
18. Violent Play Behaviors (2x07 & 3x05)