Azula was a princess of the Fire Nation, daughter of Fire Lord Ozai and Ursa, younger sister of Zuko, and older half-sister of Kiyi. She was a key adversary of Team Avatar, chasing Avatar Aang and her banished brother far across the Earth Kingdom accompanied by her then two best friends, Mai and Ty Lee.
A firebending prodigy, Azula was manipulative and obsessed with power. She was a skilled strategist who orchestrated the coup of the Earth Kingdom capital, Ba Sing Se, and halted the invasion on the Day of Black Sun.
Azula harbored deep mental instabilities, believing her mother loved Zuko more than her. Raised by her father in an environment without a mother-figure, Azula had to be nothing less than perfect in her father's eyes in order to gain affection and attention from him. After the betrayal of her two closest friends Mai and Ty Lee, these instabilities were brought up to the surface. Upon the arrival of Sozin's Comet, Azula was soon to be crowned Fire Lord; however, her defeat at the hands of her brother Zuko and Katara caused her to suffer a complete mental breakdown.
Following her emotional breakdown, Azula was put in a mental health facility to recover, though she eventually joined Team Avatar on their search for Ursa, as part of her secret agenda to betray them and usurp the throne from Zuko. At this quest's completion, however, Azula escaped the team's supervision.
Sometime after her exile, Azula returned to the Fire Nation Capital in secret. Having finally accepted that she would never be Fire Lord, Azula resorted to manipulating Zuko so that she could rule through him. Gathering a group of female supporters, she took on the guise of the mythical Kemurikage to intimidate Ukano into threatening Zuko. When that failed, Azula and her followers resorted to kidnapping children in the capital, setting the city into civil unrest. Though Zuko and his allies were able to rescue the children, Azula and her followers escaped.
Trivia[]
- Azula was the shadowed firebender in the original series' opening credits. Her bending, however, is orange instead of her trademark blue.
- Despite being younger than her brother, Azula sometimes condescendingly referred to Zuko as "Little Zuzu".
- Azula was the only known character to be able to create blue fire.
- Azula was the first character to be seen generating lightning, as well as the only known woman able to do so.
- She is the first known person capable of generating lightning instantly without any prior hand-arm movements.
- She is also the only known woman able to redirect lightning.
- Additionally, she is also one of a few known individuals who can both generate and redirect lightning, the others being her Uncle Iroh, Mako, and Lightning Bolt Zolt before the latter had his bending removed.
- Azula is also only the second person to be able to lie to Toph without her being able to sense it, the first being Old Sweepy.
- Forms of the word azul appear in several languages, including Spanish, Filipino, Galician, and Portuguese, all having the meaning of blue, which matches her trademark blue firebending.
- Azula's voice actress, Grey DeLisle, also voiced Ming-Hua and Ta Min, the latter being Roku's wife and Azula's great-grandmother.
- Azula displays symptoms similar to those of paranoid schizophrenia, a mental disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations with an impending sense of doom and paranoia.
- If Katara had not managed to revive Aang with spirit water, Azula would have been the first person to have broken the Avatar Cycle.
- Azula was one of the few characters to have theme music that played when she entered a scene.
- Although Azula was a firebending prodigy, her masters, Lo and Li, were not firebenders at all.
- The only person to whom Azula was ever known to apologize was Ty Lee, after hurting her feelings by calling her a tease.
- Although she was a usurper and never officially crowned, Azula remains as one of two known Earth Queens in history and the only known ruler of the Earth Kingdom without such heritage.
- She overthrew its governments by the age of 14, additionally making her the youngest known conqueror in history.
- Azula was originally supposed to have an arranged marriage in Book Three, but the idea was scrapped.
- Azula was the only named female firebender seen in the first series, with the exception of the female Avatars.
- Azula's firebending contains elements from the chāquán system.
- Azula was originally going to wear armor with a heavy phoenix theme, but the idea was scrapped.
- Dark Horse editor Rachel Roberts has considered the possibility of Azula featuring in The Legend of Korra graphic novels, imagining that "she's kept tabs on her brother all these years, and scoffs over her morning paper whenever he's mentioned."
- Rangi's appearance is based on Azula's appearance, with some differences being that Rangi doesn't care much about having some hairs out of place.
- The Avatar Cookbook portrays Azula and Mai as being on speaking terms. Though the interactions are not explicitly dated, the cookbook is generally set after the Hundred Year War. This suggests that Azula eventually reconciled with Mai to some extent after the events of Smoke and Shadow.