The four nations in Avatar: The Last Airbender was forever thrown off balance when the leaders of the Fire Nation decided the rest of the world was ripe for the taking. Firelords from centuries or millennia before, like Zoryu, might not consider this, but when Firelord Sozin came to power after his father Taiso, everything went wrong. It was the Fire Nation's leadership, not the country's common people or culture, that led to disaster.
The Fire Nation's own culture is a remarkable one, shaped by sheer willpower, refined taste for theatrics, and an emphasis on respect and manners. This island nation is also home to the world's first example of industrialization, to the extent that Fire Lord Ozai's royal banner depicts him standing amidst the gears and exhaust pipes of progress. But Ozai and his fellow Fire Lords and a would-be Fire Lord nearly brought the Fire Nation to ruin. Even after heroes like Aang and Zuko saved the day, some scars remained that only slowly faded with time. Somehow the damage is done, and the glory days of the Fire Nation are over, at least in the minds of men.
The Fire Lords prized ambition and cunning over benevolence
Zuko's own family suffered greatly due to royal regulations
One effect of the Fire Nation's questionable leadership was the suffering of the royal family. Many of Zuko's own flashback sequences made it clear that he was born into a nest of vipers, even by the standards of most fictional royal families. Being a prince is never easy, with all the high expectations, but Zuko had it bad even compared to other princes. When Zuko was born, Fire Lords and their kin valued ambition and cunning above all else, with cruelty almost seeming to be the rule. It seems that the fire lord Sozin started this trend, with his long reigning son Azulon perpetuating it. In turn, Azulon passed this on to his own twisted son Ozai, who extended it to his daughter, Azula.
The effects of such monstrous leadership were not often seen Avatar: The Last Airbenderas the cartoon only had limited time to depict the full effects of the Hundred Years War, and the story was mostly about Avatar Aang himself. Even so, the Fire Lords turned into harsh authoritarians who pushed people to their limits, and it affected the daily life of the Fire Nation. An example was that Aang went to school, where dancing was forbidden and disobedient students would be sent to the coal mines.
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That and the Fire Nation's militaristic ways no doubt greatly strained the nation's resources and manpower, and the Fire Nation continued a century-long conflict in distant lands. Fighting the entire world for so long must have been exhausting, regardless of the Fire Nation military's victories in places like Omashu and Ba Sing Se, along with the extermination of the Air Nomads.
Worst of all, the negative effects of the Fire Nation leadership on the royal family and the country itself tended to overlap, with Azula's upbringing causing her to abuse and terrorize her own subordinates. Azula, as the crown princess, projected all of Ozai's harshness onto her own people, enhanced by her own ingenuity and drive to succeed. Eventually it got so bad that Azula fired all of her staff, the Imperial Firebenders and even her Dai Li agents, much to Lo and Li's dismay.
Around the time Sozin's comet arrived, Azula was falling apart and was in no shape to become a Fire Lord, but she was still about to be crowned, an alarming sign of how far the royal family had fallen. Only Zuko's intervention and following fierce firebending Agni Kai prevented the Fire Nation from collapsing into Azula's unprepared hands.
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The Fire Nation's past crimes haunt the present
Firebenders are convenient villains, even for Amon
The Fire Lords Sozin, Azulon, and Ozai also did lasting damage to the Fire Nation in less tangible ways, which ultimately became Zuko and Aang's problem to fix. Aside from the massive physical scars the Fire Nation leaders inflicted on the world, these three Fire Lords also earned the world's hatred for what was once the most prosperous and possibly most respected kingdom in the world. During the eclipse invasion, Zuko made this very clear when he confronted his father and described his country's many transgressions. One of Zuko's best quotes within Avatar was how the Fire Nation's actions inspired the world's hatred of this country, not admiration, and Zuko even said that the Fire Nation deserved it.
Ozai didn't want to hear it, but Zuko was right, with an entire century of Fire Nation aggression making it the enemy of humanity, and definitely the Avatar cycle's greatest enemy at the time. When the war ended, the remaining mental scars were in Dark Horse Avatar: The Last Airbender series and The Legend of Korra. Firebenders were often seen as “bad guys”, as dangerous people not to be trusted or befriended. The term “ash maker” was even thrown around, months after the war was over.
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Perhaps most damning is the fact that even in Avatar Korra's time, decades after a flashback sequence jumped forward in the timeline, Firebenders were often feared or still regarded as the bad guys. Professional bending athletes got along well with their Firebender teammates, but the common people of Republic City felt differently. The masked bloodbender Amon took advantage of this fact and falsely blamed a non-existent Firebender for the loss of his family and the fake burns on his face. The Fire Lord Izumi, Zuko's daughter, was terribly unwilling to go on the offensive even to save the world against Kuvira's Earth Empire. Izumi was haunted and ashamed of his own country's many misdeeds, all because fire lords like Sozin and Ozai decided war was preferable to peace and true prosperity.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Release date
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2005 – 2008
- Network
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Nickelodeon
- Showrunner
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Michael Dante DiMartino
- Directors
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Giancarlo Volpe, Ethan Spaulding, Lauren MacMullan, Dave Filoni, Joaquim Dos Santos, Anthony Lioi
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Zach Tyler Eisen
Aang (voice)
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