Lunar Month

NAME: Azula.
NATIONALITY: Fire Nation.
GENDER: Female.
HAIR COLOR: Dark brown.
EYE COLOR: Gold.
POSITION: Main antagonist in season two.

Azula first appears in a flashback, specifically Iroh's story about the Agni Kai in which Prince Zuko receives his facial scar and sentence of banishment. Fans immediately began speculating upon who the girl standing next to Iroh might have been. Azula is not shown again until the end of the season, after the siege of the Northern Water Tribe, when Ozai orders Azula to arrest Zuko and Iroh for failure to capture the Avatar and betrayal against the Fire Nation respectively.

Although Azula's age is never stated in the series itself, the Avatar website gives her age at the time of her first appearance as fourteen. She is the great-granddaughter of both Fire Lord Sozin, through Ozai, and Avatar Roku, through Ursa.

In another flashback, it is revealed that she is named after her grandfather, Ozai's father Azulon and that she and Azulon are both firebending prodigies. Even when she was a child, Azula expressed her natural talents, along with her tendency for malice and perfectionism. Her sharp wit and the skill she displayed towards Firebending gained her much attention and acclaim, and her father showed her obvious favoritism, often at Zuko's expense.

Azula is depicted as interested in power from a very young age. She is shown destroying a doll that her uncle had sent her and young Zuko mentions that she throws food at the tame turtle-ducks that live in their garden pond. Young Azula suggests that her father would make a far better Fire Lord than the heir apparent, her uncle, Iroh, whom she also dubbed "a quitter and a loser" for abandoning his siege at Ba Sing Se after the death of his son and only child, Lu Ten. Years later, when her brother is burned by their father during an Agni Kai duel, she is shown watching with a savage triumph.

Azula first encounters the Avatar in Omashu during the second season, where she and Aang battle. Soon after, she names the Avatar as a personal target in addition to her brother and enlists the help of her friends Ty Lee and Mai. Azula continues to pursue the Avatar for the rest of the season, becoming the position in the narrative that the character Zuko had held during the previous season. While in Ba Sing Se, though, Azula is sidetracked by her conquest of the city. Eventually, she is able to convince her brother to help her secure Ba Sing Se and take down the Avatar. During their showdown in the catacombs, Azula appears to mortally wound Aang while he is in the Avatar State. It is assumed that the Avatar State has now become broken, and Aang is later shown explaining that his seventh chakra is now "locked." However, Azula suspects that Aang survived. She eventually blames this on her brother.

Upon returning home in the third season, it is revealed that Azula has not taken credit for the murder of the Avatar. She gave the credit to Zuko, claiming that she wanted to make him feel better as he faces their father and repay him for his aid in the siege of Ba Sing Se, knowing that her position in her father's eyes could survive without the additional glory to her name. After Zuko connotes that she's lying, Azula reveals that should the Avatar turn up still alive, all of Zuko's glory would turn to shame. This could lead many fans to believe that Azula planned to usurp the throne from Zuko all along, as hinted at during a prophetic dream that Zuko has in Ba Sing Se, where Azula was depicted as a blue dragon.

During "The Day of Black Sun," Azula serves as a distraction to keep Aang, Sokka, and Toph from finding Fire Lord Ozai, assisted by Dai Li agents. Later, Azula accompanies Mai and Ty Lee to the Boiling Rock, where Zuko has been captured, but Zuko, Sokka, Suki, and Hakoda escape. During the escape, Mai attacks the guards allowing them to escape. Azula's calm breaks, and in a fury, she attempts to attack Mai, but is stopped by Ty Lee. After having Mai and Ty Lee locked away, a crazed Azula leads a platoon to the Western Air Temple. There she duels with Zuko until they are both thrown from the airship. She survives by propelling herself to safety. This could arguably signify the beginning of her descent into madness.

In the finale, Ozai, after declaring himself the Phoenix King, names Azula as the new Fire Lord. However, Azula begins to show signs of strain, shown almost immediately as Ozai explains the change of plans over Azula's protests. She appears to harbour a fear of being compared to, and ultimately following Zuko and his chosen path of being ostracized by their father. Her fragile mental state can be calculated by the pitch of the accompanying music, which suggests that Azula has already started to degenerate at the very thought of achieving her life-long goal of ascending to the throne. Deteriorating into paranoia, she is shown banishing nearly every one of her servants, including the Dai Li, for the slightest infractions and for fear that they would betray her, which stemmed from the betrayal of her closest friends. While preparing for her crowning Azula cuts a large portion of her hair off in frustration, giving her a deranged look that she keeps for the remainder of her appearances. She then has a vision, possibly a hallucination, of her mother inside a mirror who tells her that she really loves her (Azula thought that her mother saw her as a monster), and furiously throws her hair brush into the mirror upon her mother's proclamation of love. As she is about to be crowned, Zuko and Katara arrive and Azula challenges Zuko to an Agni Kai for the crown. Detecting that Azula is "slipping," Zuko agrees and battles Azula (but advises Katara stay out due to Azula's state of mind), gaining the upper hand after a while. Her mental conflict clearly affects her fighting ability, as she fails to block or counter any of Zuko's attacks, settling for simply dodging and outrunning his blasts of flame, which contrasts her previous style. Zuko manages to taunt Azula into charging up her lightning; hoping that she will then throw it at him so that he may redirect it, but his plan backfires as Azula spots Katara and shoots the lightning at her instead. Zuko throws himself in front of the lightning to save Katara and is severely injured. Katara attempts to heal Zuko, but is then forced to dodge and evade Azula's wrath. Katara eventually manages to freeze Azula and chain her hands together behind her back, which ultimately allows them to defeat her and spare her life.

Azula, suffering from a tortured soul as well as dealing with her downfall (a final fate that she had recently begun to fear), finally slips into complete insanity and begins to cry and scream in frustration, even going as far as to uncontrollably breathe flames from her mouth. This is the last time she is seen as she wasn't seen in the aftermath of her father's defeat. The Nick website explains that "After Zuko and Katara defeated her in the Agni Kai, Azula was shipped off to a Fire Nation Mental Health Facility on a nearby island where she is supervised around the clock".

Azula is a complex young woman. Ever since she was born, she was raised by her father to be a cruel, ruthless firebender and to manipulate people by controlling them through fear. She is a dedicated nationalist, relentlessly drilling herself towards perfection and will settle for nothing less. Even as a child she was seen to react with hostility when outdone. In a flashback, a young Azula is shown pushing Ty Lee over after Ty Lee beats her at cartwheeling. She is rather vain and believes that power and domination are what makes a person strong. She is known for being one of the cruelest characters in the series. From a young age, Azula demonstrated sadistic aggression and lack of remorse. She lacks empathy, treats people as objects and seems unable to view them as living beings with feelings and emotions. Her cruelty and seemingly total lack of compassion extends to many born into her family. Her apathy also accounts for her ability to create and direct lightning, as the skill requires peace of mind. It's this peace of mind that enables her to be such an excellent tactician, regularly displaying a perception and resourcefulness that allows her to take advantage of almost any situation as well as predict a person's actions and thoughts with confidence that she's right, referring to herself as a "people person".

Ironically, for all her refinement and self-confidence, Azula does retain some insecurities. Although she is shown as a good strategist and capable of predicting what her enemies will do, she has a disadvantage in ordinary social situations. In particular, she does not know how to act around teenage boys, whom she tends to intimidate. Her over-competitive nature surfaces during a Kuai ball game, where, despite it being a friendly game, she turns an opponent's slight lameness against her and overly crushes her, comparing the game to an act of war. She later admits her jealousy over how much attention Ty Lee receives from boys after making her cry and giving a quick apology; the only act of genuine kindness that she gives throughout her appearances. It later becomes apparent that her bullying and abusive treatment of people, even "friends" such as Mai and Ty Lee, stems not only from her cruel nature but a deep-rooted fear and inability to trust others. From a young age, she believed her mother favored Zuko and didn't love her, seeing her as a monster; while Ozai obviously favored her over Zuko, it is clear that Ozai is incapable of true, unconditional love and dispensed affection and favor to shape his two children as tools that would respond to his will. This shaped Azula's fears that she couldn't count on love or affection from anyone, no matter how close they seemed. Unable to trust others, she instead tries to dominate them through fear - a paranoia that ultimately drives her insane following the betrayal of her closest friends.

Azula is proficient in the difficult technique of using lightning, a pure form of Firebending. The only other known firebenders who are capable of lightning are Iroh and Ozai. Aang and Zuko have been shown to redirect lightning by Iroh's technique, but have never been seen creating lightning. The second most noticeable feature of Princess Azula's bending is her ability to create blue flames. Azula has been seen using flames in previously unseen ways, such as jets of flames and whirling disks. Notably, Azula often firebends using only two fingers, rather than a closed fist or open hand. Azula can fight for long periods of time without tiring. (This discipline seems to deteriorate with her sanity; in her final battle with Zuko, she strikes with careless attacks and giant, wasteful bursts of flame, explaining why she tires so quickly and easily in that fight. Her reckless unpredictability in that battle, however, makes her all the more dangerous, especially since Sozin's comet was present at the time). She is also able to generate powerful shields of swirling flames, which she once used to withstand the simultaneous combined attacks of Aang, Zuko, Katara and Toph. She is even able to charge up her fire before releasing it, as was seen during one fight with Aang. She is able to propel herself, using her flames, in a manner similar to a rocket. This ability has also been extended as a means to fly for short periods of time as seen in the Boiling Rock. Azula is also a skilled melee fighter; in the "The Avatar State," she easily blocked or parried all of Zuko's attacks without the use of Firebending, and in "The Eclipse," avoided the combined forces of Aang, Toph, and Sokka for several minutes, without her bending to aid her. She is an extremely skilled liar, as even Toph was unable to detect her lying. (This ability to lie without altering her heart rate and breathing patterns may stem from her discipline, or from the detached aspect of her personality that allows her to inflict savage cruelty without any hint of hesitation or remorse.) She is also an accomplished tactician, as she was able to conquer Ba Sing Se, a city thought to be impenetrable, while usurping the entire Government and hierarchy of the Earth Kingdom capital. She also appears to have the famous 'Dragon's Breath' power of breathing flames through her mouth, but this is only used when she goes insane and is probably just a result of her weakened mental state.