I've talked before about how the Fire Nation in the comics were heavily whitewashed. How any and all moral ambiguity and their crimes are swept under the rug as all the characters are presented in the best light possible. The fact that they did any wrong doing in the past is gently brushed aside about how much progress and prosperity they brought to all that they...uh..."touched".
Thing is, you can't exactly have a post-war canon where there's no conflict. And since the Fire Nation were clearly the aggressors in the war, we can't exactly have them be squeaky clean morally either.
...not without a scapegoat.
In order to create conflict yet keep the Fire Nation morally white, Yang designates Azula as the scapegoat. The person that's responsible for all of the Fire Nation's woes as opposed to the natural consequences of a literal century of warfare. She's the old remnant. The enemy. The last vestiges of the old order that needs to be destroyed for the Fire Nation (Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, Ursa, etc.) to fully redeem themselves.
And to make sure she becomes that much more of a tempting target, her insanity and instability are brought to the forefront as all other characteristics and sources that made Azula her are quietly retconned into oblivion. Can't have squeaky clean heroes if their villain might be sympathetic after all.
Neither is she alone since her entire posse is made up of girls who were broken out of an abusive mental institution:
A group of mentally ill teenage girls who were likely the victims of a system that the narrative keeps trying to push as squeaky clean...are the bad guys.
To give you an idea of how horrendous this is, we see the same story in the real world. Whenever there is some societal ill or upheaval, the mentally ill are almost ALWAYS used as the scapegoat. Even though in reality it's usually the ones on top or the system who are to blame. It's just people who have been historically stigmatized are almost always the first target. Granted this treatment is not exclusive to the mentally handicapped (I mean there's racism, antisemitism, etc.), but I don't think it's a coincidence that Yang tried to play up Azula's insanity in order to make her a scapegoat.
Especially when instead of addressing the actual issues with the Fire Nation (inherent colonialism, rampant militarism, the amount of power the Fire Lord wields), they'd rather blame somebody else instead of helping themselves. That doesn't exactly make the post-war Fire Nation people you want to root for.
