The people of the Fire Nation were imperialistic; everything and everyone had to be like them, act like them. It sickened me to my very core. When my father, Iroh, began his attack on Ba Sing Se, my brother was killed in the process. It destroyed me. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep, I lost my morals; I cried day in and day out. When my grandfather died, my father refused to take the throne, my brother, the original heir to the throne, was dead, and I was too young. My uncle Ozai took the throne, and that is when all hell broke loose. Literally.
With the source of the Avatar in ashes, Ozai began his reign of terror. It began with the Fire Nation Colonies in the Earth Kingdom. Earthbenders were imprisoned, and non-benders were effected by poverty in the most harsh ways. It broke my heart to watch everything, the peace and harmony, wash away as though it had never existed. The airbenders had been slaughtered, the waterbenders had been wiped out in the South, and the earthbenders were being denied the right bend their natural element. Only people who had been born and raised in the Fire Nation were benefitting from this; I was one of those people.
My name is Princess Jen, but you can leave out the Princess part. I'm not like all the other stuck-up noble girls in the Fire Nation, despite where I grew up. I can deal without the pleasures of everyday life in the palace. I can live in poor conditions without a problem, I would rather live in poor conditions. My cousin Azula, I am beginning to find out, is nothing short of a monster. I've seen with my own eyes the joy it brings her whenever their is pain or suffering, even when her own brother was being punished for his cowardice, and then banished from his home. My father left with him.
Zuko and my father were the only two that I had left to talk to, and they were gone. And now I have a task to fulfill; you'll never guess who my companion is.