Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

"You know Father blames Uncle for the loss at the North Pole. And he considers you a miserable failure for not finding the Avatar. Why would he want you back home, except to lock you up where you can no longer embarrass him?"

- Azula

Princess Azula, simply known as Azula, is the central antagonist of the animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. She is the princess of the Fire Nation, daughter of Phoenix King Ozai and Princess Ursa, and younger sister of Zuko. She serves as one of the main threats to Team Avatar from Book 2 onwards.

She first appeared as a minor antagonist in Book One: Water, the main antagonist of Book Two: Earth and the secondary antagonist of Book Three: Fire. She also appears as the main antagonist of the sequel comic series by Dark Horse.

Why She is Born Lucky

 * 1) Her character design is somehow attractive and intimidating at the same time.
 * 2) Her voice actress Grey DeLisle does a great job voicing her, especially.
 * 3) Her fighting style makes her a legitimate threat to the protagonists, and she's easily one of the most dangerous opponents they had ever faced.
 * 4) It’s made clear that despite all of psychopathic traits, Azula is still a teenage girl. We see her worrying about boys, and taking pride in her appearance, and hanging about with her two closest girlfriends. She still has insecurities (see more on that in pointer #8) which makes her very relatable to teenage girls.
 * 5) As a villain, she's a vast improvement over Admiral Zhao -- Season 1's main antagonist, who's too consumed with rage and pride to think his plans through. Azula had brought in a level of villain competence that hadn't been seen before. Aside from being a master strategist, not even Team Avatar is fully prepared to deal with her at that point, leading to Book 2 ending with a crushing defeat for the heroes and Azula killing Aang while he's in the Avatar State. Not only did Aang nearly die, the Avatar Cycle as a whole nearly ended! All because of one teenage girl, yeah, she's that skilled.
 * 6) She's pretty much a child prodigy with bending. At a very young age, Azula was shown easily pulling off firebending techniques that even her older and relatively skilled brother, Zuko, struggled with. She is also one of three characters in the original series (the others being her father and uncle) who knew how to use lightning and the only one known to generate hotter, blue fire and primarily fire bends with two fingers as opposed to fists or open hands to pull it off. Don't even get us started on her being a tactical genius.
 * 7) She's a master strategist who had proven herself as far more ruthless and manipulative than her elder brother Prince Zuko. Pursuing the Avatar, she later conquers the supposedly impregnable city Ba Sing Se by sheer guile after winning its secret police the Dai Li to her side by sheer force of will and charisma. After supposedly killing Avatar Aang, Azula gives her brother credit, knowing that if Aang is found alive then it is Zuko who will suffer the wrath of their father Fire Lord Ozai. And that's just the basics.
 * 8) Despite being a central antagonist, she somehow manages to be just as sympathetic as her brother Zuko. The same way Ozai constantly looks down on his son Zuko and favored Azula, Their mother, Ursa was the opposite case, as she used to see Azula as a monster (which, okay, wasn't too far from the truth) and favored Zuko, before Ursa was manipulated into killing her father-in-law Azulon and allowing Ozai to become Fire Lord and banish Ursa. A central reason Azula was always so obedient to her father was because she was hoping Ozai would actually respect her (even if it meant causing chaos) and make up for her mother's disdain. But she's such an evil princess, you forgot to feel sorry for her. This comes to surface towards the series finale when Ozai takes credit for her idea to burn down the Earth Kingdom, refuses to let Azula join on the reign, and places her in a meaningless position, proving that Ozai didn't actually care for her and was using her as a tool for world domination. At this point Azula had lost everything (including her closest companions Mai and Ty Lee) and eventually slowly started to break. Speaking of which...
 * 9) Her fall into insanity throughout season 3 was amazingly done and adds to Azula's insecurities and tragedy mentioned above.
 * 10) Another notable thing is that her mentally ill and failure-intolerant nature make her unable to relate to other people to the extent that she can’t understand their emotions and relies on fear to gain their support.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) In the critically panned live-action film, The Last Airbender, Azula is portrayed as a one-dimensional sadist who just laughs at Zuko’s expense when Ozai burns his face. She also doesn’t sound really intimidating in the epilogue when she verbally accepts an assignment from her father to prevent Aang from mastering earthbending and firebending, either. Those weren’t really needed since her signature smirk she gave in both scenes of the animated series were already enough to show how much of a threat she posed without needing to say that much.

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