Jadzia Dax is so often made out to be this rebellious rule-breaker type character that it's really fascinating to see the ways in which she (by the writers' intentions or not) often ends up being quite a stickler for the rules. We see this in episodes like "Dax" (S1, E8) in which she's prepared to die to protect Enina Tandro's affair with Curzon, in "Blood Oath" (S2, E19) where she embarks on what is most likely a suicide mission (even if she does want to survive it) for an oath sworn, again, by Curzon, and in "Equilibrium" (S3,E4) when she largely takes the news about Joran and the implications for the Symbiosis Commission and Trill society at large in stride by the end of the episode.
To a significant degree, I think the writers had a nasty habit of writing interesting plot points about Jadzia and then just kinda dropping them (I wish we could have gotten a more direct exploration on her thoughts of her home planet's society), but this ends up characterizing her very uniquely. Because although I do make that criticism, it creates a fascinating pattern of when she decides to be a rule-breaker and when she's willing to make great personal sacrifice for the bigger picture.
Jadzia spent her pre-joining life working herself to exhaustion just for a fleeting chance at getting a symbiont, to the point where she (by her own admission) had very little else to say about her as a person before then. She dedicated her life to playing the game of the Symbiosis Commission and accepted what it would impose onto her (including, it would seem, its gravest injustices). Her pattern of accepting the circumstances detailed in the episodes mentioned above seems to grow from her learned reverence for her society's rules, which I think can be seen in "Tacking Into the Wind" (S7, E22). Ezri's view of the Klingon government and society are far less romantic than Jadzia's, and she's completely willing to criticize Worf's complacency in its failures than Jadzia ever would have been. By extension, I hardly think Ezri would have been willing to make the same self-sacrifices for Trill society that Jadzia did. This is not to suggest that Ezri isn't anxious to stand up for herself in that manner (she self-evidently is), but it does suggest that this part of Jadzia Dax's character seems to largely come from Jadzia rather than Dax.
Jadzia's relationship to Dax and its history also play into this: she perpetually lives under the shadow of her past hosts, Curzon chief among them, and beneath the confident, collected veneer, she's shown to seriously grapple with imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy (interesting then how she haunts Ezri after the latter's unexpected joining). Her grim acceptance of the abuse she faces at the hands of Trill society and Symbiosis Commission comes from the part of her that desperately needs to receive validation of those things (for which Curzon serves as a frequent stand-in). (By contrast, Ezri is far, far less interested in validating her role as host and mostly just bemoans what her joining has done to/taken from her.)
What all this amounts to for Jadzia's character is that, despite the fact that she was originally intended by the writers to be a mentor wise beyond her years, she ends up repressing a lot of her own feelings and selfhood, unwilling to assert that against the looming shadows towering over her. Her confidence and lust for life, though by no means ingenuine, often serve as a shield against self-introspection that might make her precarious respect for her society come crashing down (this post by @respocked is largely what inspired me to write this in the first place). Despite this, she does take genuine joy in her life, her friends, and herself. She is extremely genuine in her actions and in what she chooses to be, and certainly no one can accuse her of being unsure in her convictions. She's fun, she's her own person, and she's a truly irreplaceable presence in everyone's life.
Fascinating that the one time she's fully prepared to throw it all away is for Lenara Kahn in "Rejoined" (S4, E6).
