Azula is a princess of the Fire Nation and she’s terrifying. She uses fear to intimidate those around her, her family, her friends, her subjects. Fear is how she lives, and she loves it.

Throughout the avatar series Azula has been terrifying. As a firebending prodigy she quickly controls any battle.

Now the reason I’m talking about this fictional character is because she was my favourite from the Avatar series. Avatar: The Legend of Aang (or Avatar: The Last Airbender depending on your location) is a story about a world split into four nations, the Water Tribes, Air Nomads, Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. Each is focused around one of the mythical elements with certain people in each nation having the ability to manipulate their element, known as ‘bending’.

Only the Avatar can master the four elements, the most powerful bender in the world. His or her job is to keep the balance between everything, the spirits, nature, humans. The Avatar is considered to be the spirit of the world. When one Avatar dies, a new Avatar is born in the next nation in the cycle. Water, Earth, Fire and Air. The cycle continues on, and there is always an Avatar.

One day the Avatar vanishes, and the Fire Nation uses a comet to strike a terrifying blow against the Air Nomads, all but wiping them out completely. Only one Air Nomad survived, the next Avatar.

The story follows how four friends, Katara (a waterbender), Toph (an earthbender), Sokka (a non-bender) and Aang (an airbender & the avatar) journey around the world so that Aang can master the four elements and defeat the world’s greatest threat, the Fire Lord. Leader of the Fire Nation it’s his mission to use the returning comet to end the war.

So anyway, back to Azula. She’s one of the villains in this series, second only really to her father. Always cool, calm and collected Azula strikes fear everywhere.

But as the chapters flip by, and we get closer and closer to the final battle, Azula starts to slip. You can really see this for the first time in The Burning Rock Part 2 where she’s hit by the biggest blow so far, being betrayed by her friends. I guess controlling them with fear wouldn’t last forever.

After that she was alone, and her appearances were disturbing at best. Gone was the cool calm Azula, her skillful firebending turned wild. You can really see the first example of this in The Southern Raiders where she attacks Zuko.

Throughout the last episodes, Sozin’s Comet you can see she’s becoming more and more paranoid and mad. She nearly threw a tantrum when told she wasn’t going to Ba Sing Se, until she learnt she was going to be named Fire Lord. Then she started banishing anyone who displeased her or anyone she deemed a threat or traiter. This eventually left her with pretty much nobody in the palace, all the servants banished. She even confused her old teachers, the scary twins, banishing one and not the other.

You can see that her mother was on her mind, from her conversation with her mother in her mirror. She never felt she had her mothers love, feeling that Zuko would have everything.

In the end her last battle was wild. The music as it was going on was pretty sad as you could see her losing it and her wild bending burning a lot of the capital city. She tries to kill Katara with a lightning blast, but Zuko takes it. Eventually Katara manages to trap her with her waterbending and ties her up, where Azula’s sanity is hanging on by a few threads. Screaming and trying to firebend she ends up collapsing in loud tears as she realizes she’s lost. She’s alone.

Which is why I say poor Azula, because even though it’s a fictional character, you get involved with the story. Watching her decline and her sanity leaving her was hard, as all that is left for her is pity.

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