I started the audiobook of The Reckoning of Roku yesterday, and just rewatched “The Avatar and the Fire Lord” to refresh my memory of the context around Roku’s first months as the Avatar.
This reminded me of something I always wondered about: why the heck did they introduce the point of Roku’s headpiece, in reality the royal regalia of the crown prince, and then never bring it up again? Iroh had to have heavily leveraged his White Lotus contacts to get his hands on the thing in prison, which, sure, it drives the point home to Zuko of his dual heritage, great. But then Zuko never actually wears it. He should have put it on for his agni kai with Azula to visually stake his claim to the throne. (Or perhaps worn it when he confronted Ozai, but since he was declaring his intention to leave at that point, that would send the wrong message.)
tbh I think the books are a bit heavy handed at times. But yes, it's wild how they handle Sozin always being a possessive friend.
My AO3“The Avatar and the Fire Lord” does try to make Sozin a bit of a Well-Intentioned Extremist in his goals, and has him admit regret for how things turned out with Roku in his private journals, but that doesn’t excuse anything. And the book seems to be steering him back the other way, yes. I wonder, though, if Roku hadn’t immediately shut Sozin’s argument for expansion down, and instead countered with other ideas for sharing Fire Nation culture and technology with the world that didn’t involve stomping all over everyone else, if things might have gone better.
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I’ve heard that. I’ve thoroughly spoiled myself on the book, so I’ll just quote Fridge.The Reckoning Of Roku with some spoiler tags:
That makes him flat sexist as well. Part of that may be resentment over his father’s preference for his sister Zeisan (shades of Zuko and Azula there); the only reason he isn’t passed over as Crown Prince in Zeisan’s favor is that she isn’t a firebender. So a lesbian Fire Lord would have been no trouble at all before Sozin’s reign, apparently. Instead and unsurprisingly, benders are elevated over nonbenders.
Edited by HeraldAlberich on Dec 11th 2024 at 3:50:23 PM
On thing that strikes me about "The Avatar and the Firelord" is how little the air nomad genocide is brought up. There's one line at the end where Sozin references "burning the air temples" and that's it. The air nomads never come up in his narrative and he never expressing any negative feelings towards them, which seems pretty crazy for a race he exterminated.
It seems to imply he did it purely to kill the Avatar, making it the extremely bizarre genocide not motivated by racism.
Edited by TheMountainKing on Dec 11th 2024 at 4:37:11 AM
Dude already was all spouting the classic White Man's Burden, so there was already a lot of racism. It's just that the show never calls it that due to still being for kids.
Wake me up at your own risk.![]()
And if that’s the motivation (which does seem to be the case), it’s a stupid one because it only delays the Avatar’s maturation by 12 years, Aang having died at that age and reincarnated into the Water Tribe. The actual outcome of a 100-year freeze, which would have happened without the genocide (though presumably someone would have found Aang if there hadn’t been the ultimate distraction of a world war) turned out to be much better for Sozin’s goals.
How did Sozin know he hadn’t succeeded, anyway? He spent the rest of his life looking for the Last Airbender, whom he knew was out there. Did the Fire Sages tell him they hadn’t sensed a reincarnation?
Edited by HeraldAlberich on Dec 11th 2024 at 4:46:26 AM
I think the plan after the Air Nomad Genocide was to go after the Water Tribes next. Then the Earth Kingdom. And then subvert the future Fire Avatar the way they attempted to subvert Roku.
As for how they knew the genocide missed the Avatar...no clue.
Edited by M84 on Dec 11th 2024 at 11:53:31 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedHmm, still a dumb plan then. I could buy the Fire Nation either genociding or conquering the Water Tribes in time to kill the young Avatar (be hilarious if the kid turned out to be in the Foggy Swamp though), but there’s no way they’d burn through enough of the Earth Kingdom to prevent the various sages and leaders from spiriting their Avatar away to the far side of the continent and raising them at least to the point they could defend themselves. Place is friggin huge.
And come to think of it, they’d probably put the Avatar in the palace of Ba Sing Se next to the Earth King, behind all those walls. Being trained by the Dai Li would be rather terrible for a well-rounded Avatar, but hey.
Edited by HeraldAlberich on Dec 11th 2024 at 12:16:15 PM
IIRC they didn't know they missed the Avatar. They targeted SWT Waterbenders in case they didn't miss. Zuko's quest was a snipe hunt because Ozai didn't expect the Avatar was a real obstacle anymore, since it'd been 100 years without a sighting.
The sad, REAL American dichotomySozin knew. Instead of turning his attention to the Water Tribes immediately, he spent his final years fruitlessly searching for the last airbender, which is why the quest existed in the first place as an excuse for Ozai to banish Zuko without coming out and saying so. “Go and complete your great-grandfather’s last mission to restore your honor!”
And when Zuko landed in the SWT, he was expecting an old man, not a reincarnation. I do think it must be that the Fire Sages had been saying for 100 years, “Yep, he’s still out there. Nope, hasn’t died yet. We’d be able to tell. Why is he hiding instead of kicking our army’s collective ass? No idea.” Most of the Fire Nation leadership would naturally be complacent about the Avatar by then; if he hadn’t appeared in all that time there’s no reason to think he would for this battle or that campaign, when they’re so close to victory. So deprioritizing the Avatar Hunt to the point that only Zuko would take it seriously still makes sense.
They did have the (relatively) recent history of Kyoshi’s 200+ year lifespan as evidence that the Avatar could easily survive that long.
Edited by HeraldAlberich on Dec 11th 2024 at 12:43:36 PM
The Roku audiobook actually offers another plausible explanation. Sozin didn't know for certain he missed the Avatar. But the audiobook reveals that Sozin had a paranoid mindset. It's likely that his conviction he missed the Avatar — while accurate — was nothing more than his own paranoia.
You can honestly see a lot of his future great-granddaughter Azula in the young Sozin.
Edited by M84 on Dec 12th 2024 at 2:43:17 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedSozin was a close friend of Roku and, as we seen with the Avatar's friends, friendships can transcend reincarnations. Gyatso was a close friend of Roku and he was a father figure to Aang. Toph was Aang's Earthbending teacher and friend, and she greeted Korra like an old friend in their first encounter.
Sozin likely envisioned a scenario where he would recognize one of the Airbender as his old friend as he personally massacred the Air Temples. Or at least recognize one of their corpses to be Roku's reincarnation. But he never did and this would have made Sozin paranoid forever. And there's a sense of tragedy there to it as well. Sozin betrayed his friend Roku and karma repaid Sozin by denying him to see his friend's reincarnation at all.
I would suspect that if Sozin discovered immortality, he would have taken it just so he can continue his fruitless search for the Avatar. In a sense, the Avatar hunt that Ozai imposed upon Zuko should have been known as Sozin's Curse. Imagine Azulon telling his sons that Sozin's obsession with finding the Avatar drove his father insane and made several military blunders that allowed the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes to halt the Fire Nation invasion.
I think it's more likely that Sozin had no confirmation he did kill the Avatar, or that the Avatar was even sighted on the night of the genocide, so assumed that the Avatar most likely escaped. Aang can already go into the Avatar state at age 12, so it's not a stretch to assume that if the Avatar had been at a temple while everyone he grew up with was slaughtered, someone would have seen him go into the Avatar state.
As for Zuko- well, at that point the Fire Nation had been targeting SWT benders for years. If they hadn't seen a Water Tribe avatar in that time, it's entirely possible Zuko assumed that the Air avatar was in hiding and using the Kyoshi technique.
My AO3

I’m gonna share the images for Seven Havens.
And the leaked animatic on Twitter: https://x.com/fanaticus_off/status/1864857230475919737?s=46&t=7YT7yMPCw2VMMwQUxWj5_A
Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Dec 10th 2024 at 6:48:34 AM
You’re Gonna Carry That Weight.