Secrets of the Royal Family
Irreplaceable
Sozin never married. There were plenty of pretty women available to him, women who would make the perfect wife for a Fire Lord, quiet, dutiful, devoted all of them, ready and willing to bear his children and then retreat into the background where they belonged. But none of them caught his fancy.
He wanted someone like Ta Min, Roku's wife. His best friend, the boy he grew up with and the boy, who just happened to be the Avatar, had been in love with her since he was a child. And she waited for him through all those years of Avatar training, years away in other nations learning to master all the elements. Neither ever looked at anyone else. They simply knew the wedding would happen when the time and circumstances were both right.
They were both of noble birth, but somehow different from everyone else of that class. They were freer, looser and much more fun. Sozin loved them both, so much so that his feelings often shocked him. He would gladly have allowed them to live alongside him in the Fire Nation palace. He would love their children as his own. They would be a part of his family.
But circumstances changed. Sozin changed and an ideological rift appeared. Their nation was at its apex and he wanted to share its glory with the world, even if he needed to force the glory upon everyone. Roku didn't agree and the three of them drifted apart, the Avatar and his wife on their little island and him in the palace, growing angrier and lonelier by the day.
The need to produce an heir was an annoyance, one his council members never let him forget. So he lay with woman after woman, servants, whores, even a few more adventurous nobles. He imagined them all with Ta Min's sweet face but that didn't make the experience any less sordid for him. Finally, a pregnancy occurred. The Royal Physician couldn't wait to give him the news that the cook's assistant, a plain girl of average intelligence and not a firebender, carried his child.
Sozin never looked at her after that. He wasn't even sure of her name. She gave birth and the child was ripped away from her, handed over to a wet nurse, then a nanny. The little boy was six years old and already producing powerful flames before Sozin took any notice of him. His name was Azulon.