worldends4me replied to your post:Re-reading some chapters, I don't think I completely understood something. Is Ozai expecting Azula to bring him Zuko's head atm, or was it just a mundane topic that got forgotten?
I used to imagine Ozai took a more personal interest in Azula not from the fact she was a prodigy, but b/c they’re both “second-born”.
Well, now that you mentioned it... I have always believed there's a lot more to Ozai's character than it seems at first sight.
I agree with you, I believe the source of his interest in Azula wasn't the whole 'prodigy' matter, but the fact that he had an older brother who was favored by his father just because he was born first. Ozai wasn't a military leader, according to the info we have on him, and yet he devoted himself to firebending, probably in hopes to prove to Azulon that he could be even more powerful than Iroh was, even if he was the younger sibling.
Ozai probably was determined to keep his second child from enduring the same hardships he did, and thus he always favored Azula over Zuko, without noticing that he was doing the exact same thing Azulon did, just, favoring the second child instead of the first. Which stems into Zuko becoming pretty much the same person Ozai was in his youth. Only, Zuko had influences Ozai probably didn't have, which helped him find his right path. And this is why I see Ozai and Zuko as different sides of the same coin. Ozai is Zuko's bad ending. Zuko is Ozai's good ending. If Ozai had found the Avatar when he was 16, who is to say the story wouldn't be just as the one we saw in the show, only, with Prince Ozai instead of his son?
