You Were Gonna Go Far (Then You Lost It) [Azula]

~Princess Azula~

Show me how to LIE
You're getting BETTER all the time
And TURNING all AGAINST the ONE
Is an ART that's HARD to TEACH!

Azula relentlessly drills herself towards perfection and settles for nothing less from herself or those that serve her. She believes that power and domination are what makes a person strong. She has absolute confidence in her "divine right to rule" which she believes she was born with. She has neither pity nor mercy towards those she marks as treasonous or inferior. Azula is marked by a distinct lack of empathy; even as a child, she reacted with hostility when outdone. She is prone to asserting herself and her authority in a grandiose way. She also shows a need for admiration from her father, whom she emulates to a great degree, and to a lesser extent from everyone else around her.

Azula is marked as exceedingly cruel by any and all who know her. From a very young age, she demonstrated sadistic aggression and a near total lack of remorse to friends, servants, family, and animals. Her own mother once wondered what was wrong with her, after observing her casual cruelties. Azula's first reaction to hearing of her cousin's death was to wonder whether this now made her father the heir to the throne. She later dismissed her uncle as a quitter and a loser when learning he had ended his two year siege to grieve for his son. She eagerly watched her grandfather proclaim her father’s punishment for trying to claim the throne and grinned maliciously when her older brother was burned and scarred by their father. She also did not seem to care when her mother disappeared or her grandfather died.

Her cruelty is infamous and extreme, with most willing to risk capture and death at anyone else’s hands, than be given over to her. Azula's characteristic blue flames symbolize the power she possesses and constantly seeks to increase. Her apathy also accounts for her ability to create and direct lightning, the "cold-blooded fire.” (According to her uncle, the skill requires complete control of all emotion, which would not prove difficult for Azula with her one-track mentality.) Because of these skills, she is also an excellent tactician, regularly displaying cunning, perception, and resourcefulness that allow her to take advantage of almost any situation. She possesses great self-control, facing down her captor and deceiving him when held captive. She can also lie with a straight face and without giving any sort of physical reaction.

In fact, she’s a pathological liar; she always lies without emotion or regret. Also, just as well as she can lie to others, Azula is able to tell when she is being lied to; she is a self-proclaimed “people person” despite the fact that she feels nothing for others and views attachments as worthless and stupid. She despises traitors and those who are weak, and will not hesitate to kill any that she deems as such. However, she is much more fond of diplomatic manipulation than of out-right brute force – she would rather stage a bloodless coup d’état than a military siege, and takes perverse pleasure in manipulating people into doing exactly what she wants, all the while having them think it is their idea. This was all before her mental breakdown, of course; betrayed by her brother, her only friends, cast aside carelessly, like yesterday’s trash one might even say, by her Father whom she so admired, and then with the weight of ruling a nation placed upon her shoulders and already fast-deteriorating mind, Azula’s sanity finally cracked and shattered.

This left her a raving, screaming, weeping mess, by the time she had lost the Agni Kai for the throne to her older brother. Her sanity still in question, Azula has begun to have what most on staff at the asylum call “episodic fits.” They have gotten so bad, that one might even say that she’s gone from a simple sociopath, to a psychotic sociopath who wants only three things: to get her throne back, to see her brother duly punished, and to see the Avatar dead by her hands. At least, that’s if her raving rants are to be believed…

As for relationships of any kind, they are few and simple, really. The only two friends she’s ever had were Mai and Ty Lee, and even then… she would never admit to have truly called them friends. Even if they were the only two people she ever loved, trusted, cared about… even then, she will never admit it, and hardly even to herself. She knows she has very many enemies, but can’t bring herself to care… unless that care involves seeing them DEAD. Family… she couldn’t give any less of a damn about them; her mother, brother, and uncle never cared, and her father only ever saw her as tool to be used and then thrown away once she had outlived her usefulness. If there was ever a time when she cared for her family, it would have been when she was still a child, but even then… she only cared for the one person who didn’t see her as a monster or a tool. She can truthfully admit to herself (but only herself) that Lu Ten was her first friend. It was why she said Iroh should have burnt Ba Sing Se to the ground, after all; she may not have cried or shown emotion about it, but she was as hurt by Lu Ten’s death as anyone else in their family was. As for love/lovers... see her friends section; that should explain things. Everyone else... toss ideas at me, and we'll see what happens~