Chapter 2 - Ursa

Life in the court of the Fire Nation is elegant, cultured, exciting, and intoxicating. It is also quite deadly. This is the lesson my mother taught me when the Second Prince asked me to become his wife. Though I was a nobleman's daughter and the grand-daughter of Avatar Roku, I had not spent much time in the court, because my father wanted to protect me from that way of life. The petty alliances, the intrigue, the shallow courtesans and their equally vapid lovers were deemed as a bad influence on my education. Partly, they were correct. In growing up away from all that I was able to live my life without the desire to advance my position through underhanded means. They taught me that all the honor one sought in life could be found within oneself (as my father joked that getting some bestowed from the Fire Lord couldn't hurt). But in sheltering me from this, they left me unprepared to deal with the lengths people will go to in order to gain a little power.

Unfounded rumors. Accusations of disloyalty. Affairs. Blackmail. Poison. The deaths that have budded in the court since Lu Ten was killed in battle are about to blossom. I wish I could be there to protect my children when the flower finally fruits.

Ever since Ozai and I became parents, I have tried my best to shelter our children from the darker side of court life, but growing up in the center of the Fire Nation has taught them everything that my childhood did not. Now one is eager for control, one wary but enthusiastic. I love my children, though I cannot understand that part of their natures. My father always told me that ones who seek power are not fit to rule, that the truly great have power thrust upon them. I can see him now, sipping palm wine before the fire, his feet up on the table in one of the rare moments that mother wasn't around to tell him off for it, praising the Fire Lord for his wise choice in wife for his son.

He died soon after, and within days my mother followed. I like to think that it was natural causes; my parents had me late in life, after nearly two decades of trying to conceive, and they were very near their time.

But.

As I said, people in the court will do anything for a little advancement. And Nobleman Wu had his eyes on my family's estate for a very long time.

There's no use thinking about it.

I love my country. I love my husband, though he frightens me sometimes. I love my children, my sweet, well-meaning son, my talented, courageous girl. Though, like her father, there's something in her that makes me shrink back in fear. I don't blame them; all they've ever known is treachery, control, and the thirst for power. Ambitious and intelligent Ozai against the favored Iroh, clever and talented Azula against her earnest brother Zuko. Fire Lord Azulon against the resisting world.

They say that people hungry for power are capable of many things. Until tonight, I never knew the depth of that statement.

We received word this morning that Iroh's son and third in line for the throne, my nephew Lu Ten, was killed in battle at Ba Sing Se. Iroh has withdrawn his troops, though they have already cracked the outer wall of the untouchable city, a feat which no other person in any nation's history can claim to have accomplished. My heart as well as his have been broken today. His for his son, and mine...

Lu Ten is dead, and something is happening. I can see it in my husband's eyes surely as Sozin's Comet approaches. And his eyes are on the throne. He tells me he is going to secure our family's future; I am not so certain.

My name derives from the roots of our language, an ancient word meaning "she bear." All my life I have disliked my appellation, for it puts one in mind of a great lumbering beast, fierce and not at all elegant, as I have striven to be since I was very small. Now, however... now I wonder what my mother knew when she named me.

I will protect my children. They will not be sacrifices on the stairs of my husband's ambition. They will not be thrown into fire at the behest of a king. And they will not serve as reminders of the price of disloyalty.

I will do what I must.