#azulon

[throngsss]

second son.

[late-draft]

I sketched out the Fire Nation royal family, it's curious to follow who resembles whom physically and which traits got passed

[sailorluna15]

idk if this is considered an unpopular opinion but I hate when I see fics on Azula redemption or Zuko's reign and it's written in a way that makes it seem like the Fire Nation hates Azula. Azula was the pride of the Fire Nation and royalty, the Fire Nation wouldn't have hated her. If anything, they would've felt like it was some sort of injustice that Azula was removed from the throne. Y'all have to remember that Zuko was seen as a traitor of the Fire Nation. If anything, people would've hated HIM in the beginning and even towards the middle of his reign.

Deconstructing colonialism takes a long time. Truth be told is would take DECADES for the Fire Nation to dislike Azula and even after decades, she probably would still be socially acknowledged for her prowess and dedication to the Fire Nation by many.

It would go something like this:

"Yeah, Azula capturing Ba Sing Se was bad, but you can't lie, she did in 3 days what General Iroh tried to do in 600. That's fucking amazing."

That's how people talk about some conquerors now, why wouldn't they talk about them like that in ATLA?

FYI: I deleted the last paragraph of this bc I didn't like what i wrote. I stand on everything else tho.😭

[kibutsulove]

one billionth azula and azulon drawing done aaaandddddd boom. posted

[wileycap]

old man zuko time travels and becomes his own grandfather (ilah, azulon's wife, has already passed)

raising iroh is surprisingly easy

raising ozai.

Ozai isn't, strictly speaking, a bad child. He's driven and a talented Firebender. He is obedient and respectful towards his elders and superiors. He has a Prince's arrogance toward his inferiors, but that's not exactly something Zuko can correct him for. Not outright, anyways.

So.

He tries to set up lessons for Ozai. For one such lesson, he orders a hunting competition between the princes. He staffs Ozai's hunting party with skilled, educated commoners and purposefully gets them lost in bad weather. But Ozai doesn't come back from his ordeal with a newfound appreciation for the lower classes, or even the men who were with him. No, Ozai comes back and stares at Iroh's prize catch.

Zuko isn't stupid. He immediately declares the contest meaningless and focuses on celebrating the miraculous return of his beloved son. Ozai grinds his teeth as Iroh toasts him.

Ozai hates pity.

The other lessons go much the same. Zuko has to hope that some of it sticks.

He has regular tea with Iroh. It's fun to see his beloved uncle as a young man. Pointing him toward a poem he knows Iroh will come to love, introducing him to tea blends and teaching him Pai Sho - these are the only pleasures Zuko has as Azulon. Ending the war seems impossible, at least without starting a civil war in its stead. He's managed to freeze the conflict, though. He keeps trying.

He finally comes up with a plan. He'll promote reckless, stupid officers - he handpicks the General who planned to sacrifice the 41st, as a delightful bit of payback - and he'll let Qin start work on the Drill, wasting resources. Then his stupid new ministers will crash against Ba Sing Se's walls.

A public loss, with an enormous cost. He'll imprison his Council, blame them for misleading him, blame them for the loss. In private, he'll then gripe about how bad their position has become, but only to a select few. Let the rumors fly.

After a year or two of shouldering the blame, he'll abdicate in favor of Iroh. A popular young leader with no love for the war and even less love for Zuko's new council, even if he isn't quite the wise man who taught Zuko. (Lu Ten will live, this time, and Iroh will have to find his wisdom another way.) He'll find the board set for a gradual disarming leading to a peace.

To Ozai, he speaks of all the honorable things that a second son might do. He could pursue greater mastery as a Firebender, command one of the fleets or a division of the Army, or he could rule a great city in his brother's name. He takes care to frame them around Ozai's strengths - his ambition, his skill with Firebending, his... cunning, of a certain sort. (Ozai has learned to hide the grinding of his teeth by now. But he listens carefully, as his father sneers and tries to find a hole to stuff him in so he doesn't embarrass his perfect brother.)

The first blow to his plan comes from Iroh, who sets out to conquer Ba Sing Se. Zuko pleads his Uncle not to go, but Iroh won't be swayed. He knows the band of vicious idiots who now sit on Zuko's council. "You won't see it, Father, but I do," he says. Zuko wants to shake him, tell him.

"We have to win the war now, or we never will," Iroh says, painfully loyal to his senile fool of a father. Zuko wants to tell him everything. Zuko keeps his mouth shut.

(That night, Zuko apologizes over and over again, through his tears. But Lu Ten's life and Iroh's suffering are a good trade, if it means Iroh will be that much more willing to end the war. Every day the war goes on, it claims thousands of lives mostly through famine and displacing people. What is Lu Ten's life, when compared to how many will be spared if the peace comes early?)

Iroh leaves. Zuko sits amidst his den of lovingly reared vipers.

The expected news arrives some months later. Zuko forgets about Ozai in his grief. He did this. He killed Lu Ten.

Ozai requests an audience.

Zuko purposefully never took an interest in his younger self or Azula. It just seemed wrong, somehow. As he watches Azula perform her smugly perfect routine, followed by his own stubbornly poor routine, he feels... annoyed, mostly. He might be able to salvage a peace from Iroh's failed campaign, but he'll have to find some way to take the blame himself, and Ozai's idiotic narcissism is a distraction.

"Enough with this pomp," he scoffs as Ursa shields his own younger self behind her sleeves. He dismisses them, grimacing a bit at his curt tone, and demands that Ozai just get it over with.

Ozai asks for Iroh to be written out of the succession and Zuko knows that one way or the other, he'll be forced to make another terrible sacrifice.

A final test, then. Zuko orders Ozai to do what he did in his first life. Sacrifice his firstborn.

If Ozai refuses, then Zuko has succeeded and Ozai is now a measurably better person - he'll plan around that if it happens. And if Ozai tries to go near little Zuko's rooms, the Imperial Firebenders will kill him. That he planned for the moment Ozai asked for the audience.

The taste of filicide doesn't sit well in Zuko's mouth. He finds himself rinsing it out with tea in the small hours.

He doesn't think much of it, when Ursa asks to be admitted in the night. (It's funny how his mother looks nothing like the Mom-shaped towering figure of his memories, and much more like a scared young woman who hasn't slept well in years.)

He sets tea for them both, and graciously ignores the way Ursa shifts their cups into their proper positions when his back is turned.

He sits down to drink tea with his mother-daughter and to reassure her that he's not going to kill her son, just her husband. He sips his tea and explains that there aren't very many good ways to dismiss a prince, and that Ozai attempting to kill his own son is the reason he needs to remove him.

Across from him, Ursa is pale and shaking. He's about to ask her what's wrong, except his lips have gone numb.

He looks at Ursa.

"Oh," he breathes.

He doesn't get to say anything else - things like "take your son when you run", "stay and help Iroh end the war", "expose Ozai and the Imperial Firebenders will do the rest" - because it's all going black already.

Ursa flees in the night.

Ozai is crowned shortly.

The Avatar sleeps beneath the Southern seas.

[trashfactorysstuff]

Avatar dump because I feel like getting back into the fandom again 😭

[pandaofsecrets]

In the show, Ozai's name is written with two characters that roughly translate to "full of arrogance", but was most likely chosen for its similarity with Mandarin 火災 (huǒzāi), meaning "conflagration", or more literally "fiery disaster". Iroh's name, meanwhile, sounds like a shortening of the Japanese name Ichirō (sometimes romanized Ichiroh), meaning "first son".

Azulon literally named his sons "firstborn" and "disaster".

[ozais-lobotomist]

worst thing i’ve ever made probably

tlok