"Heavy Hangs the Head that Wears the Crown."
By Eoraptor
"Avatar: the Last Air Bender" and "The Legend of Korra" are Copyright Nickelodeon Studios. I own nothing but this concept.
Zuko, Relict Fire Lord, Chancellor of the Republic City Charter Commission, Magistrate of the White Lotus Tribunal, and holder of about three dozen other titles he could not even recall most times, sighed deeply and resignedly. It was days like these, only the most forlorn days of his old age, that he began to understand how it was that mad men like his father could come to rule when sane men yet drew breath.
As he watched the young man before him rant and pontificate, he breathed out wearily.
Madness reigned he firmly believed because ruling a bunch of hotheads like the Fire Nation would drive even the most devout Air Nomad sideways with absurdity. It was an incredibly wearying, trying, gruesome task, to break the spirits of the strong. Sane men obviously tired and tarried when left too long under the weight of a crown, leaving only the insane to hold to the task.
His first taste of it had been in tarrying with his sister.
His Father… that man got what he had deserved. He'd sought to bring the entire world to heel merely to sate his personal need for gratification. Not because his nation demanded it; most citizens of the Fire Nation paid only lip service even in those days to Fire Nation superiority over the mongrels of the Earth Kingdom or the luddites of the Water Tribes, but simply because conquest was his and everyone should accept that.
But Azula… His sister, he knew, was truly insane. Touched by the dark light of the eclipse, they said. She'd hidden it well for years, enabled as she was by those who feared the wrath of their father, but she was well and truly mad following the events culminating in the arrival of Sozin's Comet. She spoke routinely to a vision of their mother which only she saw. Even healers of the Northern Water Tribe could not quiet her mind.
And much as Zuko hated her for all the things she had done to he and his friends and their nation, he could not hold her wholly to bear for something that was, in the end, beyond her control. And he pittied the people tasked with keeping watch over her. Azula's madness was insidious, for it gifted her with a treacherous tongue; at times as smooth as Earth Kingdom silk, and at times as cutting as the hardest forge steel.
If her custodians were not driven mad by her ranting demands, then they were swayed by her promises of power and rewards should they just help her. He had spent at least a day a week for nearly a year dealing with staff turnover at the facility housing his sister. The Lord of the Fire Nation reduced to staffing one mental hospital with very few patients.
Things only grew worse when he thought himself clever enough, at the end of that year to turn his two problems against one another; thinking to use Azula to goad his mad but powerless father into revealing where their mother had been banished. First his sister had manipulated their meetings, and then she had managed escape and the destruction of their mother's personal papers to leverage her position.
She had then wedged her way into a trip by the old team Avatar to find the former Lady of the Fire Nation, Ursa. During the entire trip Azula had been wracked by hallucinations and had been an unstable threat, disgracing holy sites and raising hell and making Zuko long for the days of Agni Kai and simply killing people who were such a threat.
Ultimately they found their mother, after a fashion, her mind cleaned by a benevolent spirit. Azula still wracked by her own delusions attacked the woman and then fled into the Forgetful Valley. Nothing was ever heard of the momentary Fire Lord Azula again, and Zuko could only presume she had found either death or amnesia in the spiritual place. Certainly, his erstwhile mother never reported encountering her again.
But this was only the first of Zuko's many trials as Fire Lord. And a watch word to him on how wearying the post could be. There had then been the chaos following the creation of the Republic City Commission. The idea had seemed so simple and righteous... A city beholden to none of the Bending Nations where benders and non-benders alike could live together in peace.
But the doing of the act had been anything but. Before even the first earth full of shovel was turned, all the nations of the world had screamed. The site, a former colony of the Fire Nation, violently opposed the annexation of its land, and populist sentiment in support of them burned in the Nation itself. The Earth Kingdom, who had historically controlled the land on which the colony now sat, righteously demanded that not only would a new city-state not be founded there, but that the Avatar and the Fire Lord were duty bound to return the land to them now that the 100 years' war was over. The Water Tribes also protested angrily, insisting on an ancient claim over the crescent-shaped Yue Bay that dated back to some of the early swamp-bender colonists who had left the poles and landed in the area.
Zuko, frankly, rapidly came to the point that he would rather glass the whole bay over with commentary fire than let the four nations continue to bicker over it. Aang on the other hand, showed a much better command of diplomacy, and pointed out to each of the nations how their long standing claims over the area made it a perfect melting pot for all cultures.
Indeed, it was days like the very day they finally signed the Republic City Charter that Zuko felt he was far more like his uncle Iroh than he was a Fire Lord. He would much rather be a simple soldier content to follow orders than to try to bear this responsibility. It was probably why he so often went off with Team Avatar on grand quests, leaving his wife Mai to oversee the Fire Nation.
Unfortunately for Zuko, Mai was a quiet woman with a calculating intellect and a deep reserve of passion. If he left her in charge for too long she would begin to orchestrate minor little crises, and then send him dispatches about how only the authority Fire Lord himself could resolve them. Still, on some levels he was grateful for his wife's careful council. While she could be cutting and deadpan, she could turn that cutting nature on his problems in ways he could not hope to, slicing away the extraneous cooly with the same precision she used with her fabled knives.
Which only lead to more madness of course. Mai made sure he adhered more closely to his duties as Fire Lord, particularly after the birth of their daughter Izumi. This left him less time to tend to his duties relating to Republic City. While Team Avatar initially formed the core of the United Republic Council and its governance, things changed as time progressed. Aang was Avatar to the entire world, and while Republic City was the symbol of his goals, it was not the only place he could serve.
Without Aang's resolute guidance, Sokka and Toph were left to grow the burgeoning city. It was a task to which neither was well suited. Toph, always an iconoclast and scofflaw herself somehow found herself saddled with the duties of Police Chief over the burgeoning town. The former Blind Bandit only complicated matters for herself with her love life, quickly ending up in two relationships which left her pregnant but the fathers' not in the picture.
Sokka conversely, was a child of a provincial camp in the southern water tribes, suddenly found himself sitting in a seat of prominence on the United Republics Council, overseeing matters of Law and State for a city that swelled in the span of a few decades from a few thousand Fire Nation colonists to encompass millions of benders and non-benders of all stripes.
Zuko watched, largely from the sidelines, as the city he helped to found slowly became a quagmire of politics in the upper echelons and organized crime syndicates in the lower echelons. Things only accelerated out of control as team Avatar aged. First Sokka retired from the City Council, badly wounded during a fight with a Cappo of one of the Bender Triads infesting the city's crime scene. Then Toph Bei Fong was quietly ushered out of office over matters that even his wife Mai could not fully uncover. Two years later, Aang passed away at an unusually young age. This launched his widow, Zuko's personal healer and confidant Katara, on a quest to locate and safeguard the new Avatar, who by the cycle must have been born in the Northern Water Tribes.
Only he or she wasn't. Avatar Korra was actually born in one of the most provincial of Southern water tribe communities. Only much later would it come out that she was actually the daughter of the crowned Chieftain of the Northern Tribes living in exile.
All of this left Zuko in hot water back home. He expended a not-inconsiderable sum of money bankrolling the search for the new Avatar, hoping to avoid the chaos which had ensued when Aang had disappeared a hundred and seventy years prior at the start of the Hundred Years war. Money which came from the Fire Nation coffers. Ships which served the Fire Nation Navy, Soldiers who were supposed to serve the Fire Nation, not the will of the Fire Lord personally.
Matters only became more unsavory when a sect of the White Lotus made itself known vocally in 157 AG, seeking to seek sole custody over the Avatar in place of Katara and the greater White Lotus's auspices. When their request was put down they turned, and attempted to abduct the toddler Avatar from the Dowager Katara's care.
The insidious rebellion was put down, but the benders and their non-bending White Lotus leader proved to be… formidable. Zuko again dipped in to Fire Nation coffers in dealing with them. Extensive, impenetrable prisons were built at the four corners of the world, and the four were secreted away.
This time his Fire Nation would not look the other way. He was able to conceal the threat to the Avatar and the schism in the White Lotus who acted at that time as a defacto world police force, but he could not disguise the tens of millions of Ban spent on the extensive prison works. Though the prisoners' identities remained secret, as did the facilities' locations, the Fire Sages and his advisors quickly maneuvered against the Fire Lord. Never again would he hold sway over the finances of the Nation as he did in his youth, and only the considerable resources of the White Lotus were able to keep the phantom prisons in operation once Fire Nation funding dried up.
Robbed of the authority to appoint funding, Fire Lord Zuko's frustrations only grew. He spent the next decade trying to maintain order at home, and restore order in Republic City. Finally, with the death of Lady Mai in 167 AG, Zuko had had enough. The elderly Fire Emperor decided it was best that he abdicate, lest he become some scheming old miser like his grandfather Azulon, clinging to the last dregs of his power through machination.
His daughter, bless her soul, was every bit her mother's daughter; quiet, calculating, intelligent, and with a deep well of passion. Fortunately for him, Izumi inherited his desire to be of service to her Nation, rather than her aunt Azula's quiet sort of gnawing insanity.
Unfortunately, as was today the case, that spirit of service blinded her to her duties as a world leader. When Fire Lord, Zuko had not relished his duties to the global community, particularly in making reparations on behalf of the Fire Nation to the Earth Kingdom and to Aang's Air Temple restoration projects, but he had done them.
Izumi, however, marked her ascent to the throne with a pointed withdrawal of the Fire Nation from world affairs. She appointed her son, Iroh, to head of the flag fleet of the Fire Nation and the United Fleets; and then had him promptly abdicate policing duties over Republic City's harbor and port. She was only forced to reevaluate this decision when Republic City itself was plunged into chaos by an Equalist insurrection three years later.
Following the Equalist insurrection, the United Fleets aligned themselves less closely with their Fire Nation shipyards and more with the United Republics Council and President Raikoh. Contrary to Zuko's concerns over this loss of prestige and face, Fire Lord Izumi actually seemed relieved to divest herself of more global policing duties, giving her son leave to attach himself permanently to Republic City.
Initially Zuko was torn over this move. Iroh reminded Zuko a lot of himself and of his namesake, and as much as he wished the boy success in the larger military arena, Iroh was also crown prince to the Fire Nation.
Such concerns only were driven home when a civil war broke out between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes. Zuko watched as his grandson attempted to render aide to the righteous side of the cause, only to be overridden by the President of Republic City. The aged Lord's frustrations only multiplied when Avatar Korra came to Fire Lord Izumi for military aid, to also be rebuffed by his daughter on the grounds that Fire Nation troops would not spill their blood over a sovereign Water Tribe issue.
It seemed to Zuko to be the best course to intervene. They had, after all, been responsible as a nation for sundering the Northern and Southern tribes; and making communication impossible between them for a century, and so the Fire Nation had played a historic hand in the roots of this civil war. He counseled his daughter on this as was his duty as the Relict Fire Lord. She may even have been about to come round to his point of view when the issue resolved itself in the chaos of Harmonic Convergence.
With that nightmare Zuko found his world totally upended. Republic City… His City, lay in ruins devastated by a spirit battle, and then beset by some sort of Spirit Wild which devoured a swath of the city's core. Then came whisperings to him that his beloved Uncle Iroh existed, in an existential form, in the Spirit World, and had been in contact with Air Benders known to the new Avatar. The old man had barely had time to process this when news broke that new Air Benders were appearing for the first time in a hundred and seventy years.
And one of them was Zaheer, one of the sectarian Lotus members who had once sought to control the Avatar. Now openly calling themselves the Red Lotus, Zaheer and his followers freed each other, and Zuko felt the call to action. A call he had not personally heeded since Aang's death nineteen years before.
Zuko personally sought to stop Zaheer freeing his friends, but was ultimately rebuffed at the ice prison of the Northern Water Tribe. His failure nearly cost Avatar Korra her life, and ultimately plunged the whole world into chaos as Zaheer and his Red Lotus executed regicide on the Earth Kingdom, wiping out 90% of its royal family and plunging the Kingdom into madness and schism.
Once again Fire Lord Izumi showed a distaste for global affairs, electing to appoint figureheads of the Earth Kingdom's surviving noble families in the form of adopted Bei Fong Daughter Kuvira and newly crowned Prince Wu over Zuko's own preferred option of committing United Republic troops and humanitarian aid directly. This was, because in her mind, the majority of UR troops would be Fire Nation assignees, and she 'would not have troops of the Fire Nation policing a land they had, just two generations before tried to conquer, thus sewing further discontent.'
With the Avatar in convalescence somewhere in the South, and Republican forces largely tied up with restoring Republic City, Relict Lord Zuko could only watch with growing concern as the Earth Kingdom was slowly brought to heel by a military-minded woman who was supposed to turn over command of the restored kingdom to the Republic's puppet.
Having some knowledge of how coups tended to go, Zuko had a creeping resignation that civil war would soon come to the Earth Kingdom. In fact it took only three years, faster than even the old Fire Lord expected. Kuvira was merciless in her reunification, and as he expected, she utterly failed to yield command when asked.
The old Fire Lord, humbled by his failure at the North Pole, and without a shred of military influence or financial wherewithal to his name, and largely disregarded by the current Fire Lord, was forced to watch from the sidelines as history unfolded most spectacularly.
To his ever-living shame, Zuko learned second hand that Izumi had refused to launch action against the Earth Empire's forces even when they directly threatened Republic City, effectively abdicating all but token gestures in policing the Republic City he and the Fire Nation had helped birth just a few decades before.
Weakened by his age, and perhaps more than a bit by his shame, Zuko was unable to attend to his duties as the chair of the Chartering Committee of Republic City, and abdicated even that in the wake of the destruction of the City's core. Thus the aged Fire Lord had no input at all on where the new city, largely a replacement for the previous settlement, would be placed. Nor did he have any influence over the handling of the new Western Spirit Portal which now sat where his carefully laid city once had.
Now he sat holding audience, the last of his duties as Relict Fire Lord. Before him General Iroh stood. He had already received medals from the United Republics and the Fire Nation for his worthy, but ultimately futile actions in defending Republic City from the Earth Empire.
Zuko understood how Iroh felt. He had been powerless, not before the majesty of a superior military force as his namesake once had been, but powerless instead because of bureaucratic maneuvering, denied the ability to fire even a single shot in anger as his ships were cut down. Zuko himself had once been in a similar position, stripped of his crown and his forces at the machinations of his father's hands.
"You know, General…" He began conspiratorially, "I always thought you had a better shot with Korra than either of those pretty boy benders she hung around with. I even talked you up to her a time or two."
"Grandfather!" Iroh huffed, mortification coloring his cheeks, "A little decorum, please. I have to work with Korra every day! I should hope you did not attempt to… set me up with the Avatar."
"Please, allow an old man his ideals and fantasies, Iroh." The Relict Lord shook his head, "Besides, how was I to know she preferred Lobsterclam to Lionturtle?"
The young General palmed his face indelicately, ashamed of the bawdy old man he called Grandfather and Lord. Finally he looked at the old man and sighed, "Was there a reason to this audience? Or did you simply want to tell dirty jokes at your grandson's expense?"
"Yes… There was." He sighed somberly, straightening his weary back. "I wished to talk to you about your duties as the Crown Prince. The Earth Kingdom may have chosen to democratize… But the Fire Nation is still a Monarchy."
"And?" Iroh frowned at this, feeling the mood of the conversation shift. "I am an officer in the United Republics Fleet you know. A servant of a sovereign nation."
"You are the servant of the Fire Nation. As your Mother is. As am I. As are ALL Fire Lords! The fact that you bend lightning is testament to this holy charge!" the Fire Lord snapped, causing all the braziers in the hall to embolden alongside his voice.
This cowed Iroh and he simply nodded, listening.
"Your mother is why we are meeting." Zuko finally began again, stroking his long white beard. "She is a capable Fire Lord…. But, as you just pointed out, not all of the subjects of the Fire Nation live within our borders. This is a fact she often ignores. She no longer seeks my council in these matters, but I have no authority to order her to observe what I say."
Iroh nodded. He had had these same thoughts, but it was not his place to voice them except to his mother the Fire Lord herself. And she, as Grandfather said, chose not to hear the concerns for what they were.
"You, my grandson, are heir apparent." Zuko continued, stroking his beard as though laying out his thoughts as much for himself as for his duteous grandson, "And you also have the ear of the Avatar. This is not something you should underestimate."
The old Fire Lord trailed off as he considered his grandson.
Finally the younger Royal cleared his throat, fearing that his Grandfather may have lost the thread of discussion.
The elder harrumphed at the nonverbal prodding, but sighed. "What I suggest is that you, my grandson, start acting more like the Fire Lord you will one day become. Even if you choose to do as that imbecile Wu did and abdicate the crown to the masses, you will still have at least one day as supreme ruler. And you must seek always to act as voice for all of our people, not just the ones living within our borders."
"What would you have of me Grandfather?" Iroh frowned. His grandfather spoke treacherous words. "I am not the voice of the Fire Nation."
"No… but you can be… ah yes… a Voice, with a title. This I can still do." The old man nodded, his scared face turning upwards in a rare and genuine smile. He snapped his figers and a scribe and a legal attendant entered, prepared to hear whatever the Relict Fire Lord had to declare of this audience thy had all been called to.
"Prince Iroh, General of the United Fleets, I do this day declare you to be Regent Prince, Voice of tribeless Fire Benders beyond the realm. This title to be passed on to the first of your children when you ascent the throne; a solemn bond to respect and uphold the traditions of the Fire Nation beyond its borders and to speak freely for its affairs in international matters."
"Can he really do that?" the scribe asked the attendant under her breath.
"Of Course I can!" the old man bellowed irritably. "I did not give up ALL my responsibilities when I abdicated you know! IF the Fire Lord does not like handling international affairs, then I will appoint someone in her stead who can. And seeing as how I am too old, I think my very handsome grandson will fill the role nicely. Now, see that that is notarized and sent out to the President of the United Republics, the President Elect of the Unified Terran States, And the Chiefs of the Northern and Southern Water Tribes."
"erm… Grandpa Zuko…" Iroh began uncertainly once the officials scurried off. "Just what does this mean, really."
"It means, my child," Zuko began pontifiously, "That if your other doesn't want to commit the Fire Nation to the outside World, then you can do so in her stead. Make all the International Accords you like, let the damned Fire Sages sort out what it means."
Iroh just sighed. It sounded like a hot molten mess that he wanted no part off. But who was he to defy the will of the Relict Fire Lord?
"Oh, and Iroh, speaking of International Accords…" old man Zuko began again with a keen and mischievous eye, "What do you think of the words 'surrogate father'?"
"Eh?" the young man, already set on his heels, was not sure what the meaning was.
The old man filled him in salaciously, grinning, "I'm just saying because, as wondrous as Future Industries' technology is, I don't think that their President has quite yet done away totally with the need for a man in certain… arenas."
"Grandfather!" the younger huffed again turning beet red.
"I'm simply positing… the Avatar and her partner WILL need an heir of their own some day, and you are a happily single and powerful young man…"
"Ugh… I think I hear the offices of politics calling, Fire Lord Zuko." The young man turned pointedly on his heel, still red-faced.
"Make Sure those offices have locking doors!" the old man chided, breaking into laughter as his grandson stormed off.
Then he set about planning how to assuage his daughter, the ruling Fire Lord, at this bald faced maneuver.
AN: A silly thing I came up with… the events of Legend of Korra, as seen through the eyes of a Last Air Bender character's perspective. I backstopped it with canonical information from the Avatar Wiki, so very little of it, aside from the interpretation, is actually my doing. Still, I hope you enjoy this.
I actually HAD been working on a Korrasami fiction, but then along came Season 4, and totally negated my need to assert Korrasami by just making it canon. Not that I am not ecstatic… but way to steal my thunder guys ;)