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After the Ashes: A Fire Nation Chancellor Quest

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[X] "She's an associate of the Finance Minister - that alone is a good in, but I'm told that she also carries a fair amount of weight with the admiralty club and the mercantile concerns here in Caldera. The mercantilist clique is well established in court, though I find it unlikely that our new liege will share Ozai's disfavor; her appointment might prove a sufficient reinforcement to raise them back as a counterbalance to Ozai's clique and the militarists. Even more importantly, I imagine that she'll understand the importance of maintaining our economic position in these uncertain times; after all, if things falter too much, we risk far more than what is ultimately a minor dynastic squabble…"
[X] "Moderate" (Loyal Clique, Personal Interest)
 
I've always felt that of the Balance in Avatar was kind of bad.

Partly because the Balance gives the vast majority of the land in the world to Earth Benders and partly what is the virtue in doing good in a world where your not allowed to commit evil.
 
I'll give you that the official Fire Nation leadership never tried to genocide the Northern Water Tribes, that was Admiral Zhao's own bugbear... but he also wound up being a fucking Admiral, so the fact that they let someone whose plan was to eliminate Waterbending and doom the entire world get that high up in rank and then after he failed only have the objection of, "Wow, what a loser" rather than, "Holy shit we almost destroyed the world"... is also pretty telling.

Temes1066 said:
I've always felt that of the Balance in Avatar was kind of bad.

Partly because the Balance gives the vast majority of the land in the world to Earth Benders and partly what is the virtue in doing good in a world where your not allowed to commit evil.
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...what a take. Holy shit what a take.
 
[X] "She's a relative of the governor in Yu Dao… don't give me that look, young man, I know she's mixed, but the Fire Lord seems to hold a misplaced sympathy for foreigners and mongrels. She's a colonial, so we can at least expect her to know her place and heed our counsel; their kind is always quick to listen to their betters when it comes to this sort of thing, especially since she'll be without other friends in the court. More importantly, we can expect her to advocate for the interests of the colonies, which would hopefully offer a starting point in talking the Fire Lord down from whatever foolishness he might be contemplating in the colonies.

[X] "Moderate" (Loyal Clique, Personal Interest)
 
Temes1066 said:
I've always felt that of the Balance in Avatar was kind of bad.

Partly because the Balance gives the vast majority of the land in the world to Earth Benders and partly what is the virtue in doing good in a world where your not allowed to commit evil.
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The point of Balance in the world of Avatar is that it's a constantly shifting and flowing thing that changes as each Avatar interprets it differently for different times. The formation of the Fire Nation from its constituent warlords did not disrupt it, nor did the rise of people like Ching the Conqueror (up until he antagonized the Avatar herself).

Balance is not a frozen point the world stays at forever, and its main purpose seems to be to prevent the World from suddenly careening in one direction without a proper counterweight like the war had caused (and its broadly implied that the collapse of balance would have eventually led to the Fire Nation destroying the world).
 
The Laurent said:
...an Ozai thing.

Like, an operation like this requires planning at every level. Even if ultimately he's the driving force behind it, there were a lot of bureaucrats and soldiers alike who had to go along with this, a lot of Generals and High Officials who had to sign off on the, "Unlimited Global Genocide" plan.

That makes it seem more like a culmination of everything this new (well, it's a century old so not that new, but you know what I mean) Imperialistic Fire Nation stood for, especially when you remember that this isn't their first genocide.

...or their second, because I don't know how to tell you that I'm pretty sure that the Southern Water Tribe raids absolutely might check those boxes as a partial effort towards ultimate genocide and extermination of a people and a culture. E: And as BoSPaladin points out above, a largely successful one tbh.
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You misunderstand: Im not saying that they aren't just as guilty Basterds as Ozai at the end of the day. I have my doubts on extensively well planned and executed (see the Timeline where Ozai just proposes it in a relatively short time span before execution but that's Kid Cartoons for you) but yes, they defnitely helped plan it, delivered the materials and gave there consent to its activity. What Im saying is, I think they could of generally had doubts on the idea but didn't move against because All Hail The Fire Lord and then once it all went wrong, they desperately were rolling there positions back and viewing Zuko as there salvation from a vengeful,angry hand of god come to Earth (well they don't know that Aang isn't that way).
 
BoSPaladin said:
At the core? We've got a simple mandate. Negotiate an end to the war. And we're in the situation where we actually have to figure out. Okay, well what do we actually want the post-war world to look like? And how do we get there?

And those aren't easy questions. Thus the current situation.
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I think this is something of the wrong framing. The Avatar's mandate is to negotiate an end to the war. Our mandate is to represent the Fire Nation and the interests of its citizens while negotiating the end of the war. It's not our job to be an impartial neutral party seeking the right solution any more than its the job of a Public Defender's job to do anything but advocate for their client in the strongest of terms. Even if their client is absolutely guilty as sin.

Which, to be clear, the Fire Nation absolutely is.
 
The Laurent said:
...an Ozai thing.

Like, an operation like this requires planning at every level. Even if ultimately he's the driving force behind it, there were a lot of bureaucrats and soldiers alike who had to go along with this, a lot of Generals and High Officials who had to sign off on the, "Unlimited Global Genocide" plan.

That makes it seem more like a culmination of everything this new (well, it's a century old so not that new, but you know what I mean) Imperialistic Fire Nation stood for, especially when you remember that this isn't their first genocide.

...or their second, because I don't know how to tell you that I'm pretty sure that the Southern Water Tribe raids absolutely might check those boxes as a partial effort towards ultimate genocide and extermination of a people and a culture. E: And as BoSPaladin points out above, a largely successful one tbh.
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Ozai was a particularly bad actor, but the Fire Nation as a whole had little issue with the course of action he took. While the five years of his rule caused significant friction within the empire's elite, the bulk of that was over resource allocation, ideological priorities, and his favoring of the aristocracy over the bureaucracy.

We are shown pretty consistently that genocide and ethnic cleansing are a tool often favored by the imperial apparatus of the Fire Nation: Sozin perpetrated a near-total genocide against the Air Benders, Azulon ravaged the Southern Water Tribes, and Ozai sought to exterminate a sizable portion of the Earth Kingdom. There is little indication that any of them faced substantial domestic opposition to these actions, something that can, at least in part, be attributed to the wealth brought by the spoils of these conflicts. The War Council largely saw Ozai's plans in the Earth Kingdom - the devastation of a massive swathe of land in the central and north-eastern Earth Kingdom - not as a unique atrocity, but merely a continuation of the same strategy employed by Sozin a hundred years ago.
 
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Granite said:
Ozai was a particularly bad actor, but the Fire Nation as a whole had little issue with the course of action he took. While the five years of his rule caused significant friction within the empire's elite, the bulk of that was over resource allocation, ideological priorities, and his favoring of the aristocracy over the bureaucracy.

We are shown pretty consistently that genocide and ethnic cleansing are a tool often favored by the imperial apparatus of the Fire Nation: Sozin perpetrated a near-total genocide against the Air Benders, Azulon ravaged the Southern Water Tribes, and Ozai sought to exterminate a sizable portion of the Earth Kingdom. There is little indication that any of them faced substantial domestic opposition to these actions, something that can, at least in part, be attributed to the wealth brought by the spoils of these conflicts. The War Council largely saw Ozai's plans in the Earth Kingdom - the devastation of a massive swathe of land in the central and north-eastern Earth Kingdom - not as a unique atrocity, but merely a continuation of the same strategy employed by Sozin a hundred years ago.
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Probably also a lot of Competency complaints. From what we can tell, Ozai is bad at it. Bad at what? Yes.

He's legitimately, based on what we see of him, minimally competent at everything except Firebending (where he's world class, don't get me wrong) and having women who inexplicably love him or his children and do his dirty work for him (Ursa, Azula).

So probably plenty of bureaucrats who go, "I could have done the same genocide, but more efficiently and successfully."
 
The Laurent said:
He's legitimately, based on what we see of him, minimally competent at everything except Firebending (where he's world class, don't get me wrong)
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Or was, at any rate. Even without Zuko being declared the Agni Kai winner against Azula or any further intervention by the cast, Ozai's reign would not have lasted for very long after his bending got taken away, I don't think.
 
The Laurent said:
Probably also a lot of Competency complaints. From what we can tell, Ozai is bad at it. Bad at what? Yes.

He's legitimately, based on what we see of himi, minimally competent at everything except Firebending and having women who inexplicably love him or his children and do his dirty work for him (Ursa, Azula).

So probably plenty of bureaucrats who go, "I could have done the same genocide, but more efficiently and successfully."
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Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.

I implied it with the mercantilists, but his purge of their influence at the start of his reign is specifically what allowed incompetent sycophants like Admiral Zhao to rise to the rank he did. Ozai did a spectacular amount of damage to the bureaucratic apparatus in a very short time! The militarist faction would have been very happy to rally around Iroh if he'd sought to push his claim... but he didn't.

Sir_Travelsalot said:
Or was, at any rate. Even without Zuko being declared the Agni Kai winner against Azula or any further intervention by the cast, Ozai's reign would not have lasted for very long after his bending got taken away, I don't think.
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His own supporters would depose him; the bulk of them are pretty hardcore bending supremacists.
 
Well, they probably would have tried to jailbreak Azula if they could manage it.

Is this really viable? No. But Azula is an incredibly powerful Firebender and also fourteen, and so at least some of them would probably be stupid enough to think that was a plus in terms of manipulating her.
 
I personally think the Fire Nation could not recover Azula, they would have either found a pretender to put on the throne in her stead or just become a military junta and/or noble oligarchy instead.
 
Limabot said:
I personally think the Fire Nation could not recover Azula, they would have either found a pretender to put on the throne in her stead or just become a military junta and/or noble oligarchy instead.
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Or dig up a distant cousin and appoint them. Common place.

MonkeyTypewriter said:
I think this is something of the wrong framing. The Avatar's mandate is to negotiate an end to the war. Our mandate is to represent the Fire Nation and the interests of its citizens while negotiating the end of the war. It's not our job to be an impartial neutral party seeking the right solution any more than its the job of a Public Defender's job to do anything but advocate for their client in the strongest of terms. Even if their client is absolutely guilty as sin.

Which, to be clear, the Fire Nation absolutely is.
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THIS. Our job is not be impartial, it's make sure our side comes off in good condition. Because bear in mind, if we go too far in the 'needing to make reperations' area, our lifespan drops drastically and features a considerable amount of fire.
 
On the plus side, for all the internal problems the Fire Nation has from Ozai's idiocy I'm pretty sure that Long Feng caused if anything more issues. He seems to have focused almost entirely on Ba Sing Se's internal stability and neglected the wider warfront, something that the subordinate members of the Earth Kingdom probably noticed. Worse, from the standpoint of stability there are currently two obvious centers of power and legitimacy in the Earth Kingdom.

The first is King Kui, the 52nd Earth King and the leader of the single most powerful member kingdom of the Earth Kingdom: Ba Sing Se. He's got an immense legacy and store of legitimacy to draw on, but he was a functional puppet of Long Feng for the entirety of his rule. Still, he's got inertia behind him and that's a powerful force.

The second is Bumi, who as the King of Omashu is the leader of the second most powerful subcomponent of the Earth Kingdom and the birthplace of Earthbending. Additionally, on a personal level he's likely considered the single most powerful earthbender alive and a legendary hero who's served as the linchpin of Earth Kingdom resistance for most of a century. He also single handedly freed Omashu from Fire Nation occupation and was a key part of freeing Ba Sing Se.
 
[X] "She's a relative of the governor in Yu Dao… don't give me that look, young man, I know she's mixed, but the Fire Lord seems to hold a misplaced sympathy for foreigners and mongrels. She's a colonial, so we can at least expect her to know her place and heed our counsel; their kind is always quick to listen to their betters when it comes to this sort of thing, especially since she'll be without other friends in the court. More importantly, we can expect her to advocate for the interests of the colonies, which would hopefully offer a starting point in talking the Fire Lord down from whatever foolishness he might be contemplating in the colonies.

[X] "Orthodox" (Devoted Clique, Firm Orthodoxy)

===

Alright, time to throw my hat into the ring for once. The Fire Nation's not getting out of this war with the majority of it's colonial possessions, as the Hand of God and the Earth Kingdom (charred though it may be) want to put a decisive end to the Fire Nation's continuous, genocidal expansion so it might seem strange to get a Colonial in charge.

However, if there's anyone who can convince Zuko to not just unilaterally pull out of the continent (thereby shattering the economy and inciting a near instant civil war), it's a Colonial. They'd also largely be aligned with Zuko's newly gained egalitarian views, being mixed folk agitating for equality with the home islands already, so that's a good toe in the door with the new Fire Lord.

I haven't quite crystalized a vision of the post-war world, but if Zuko (and by extension ourselves) wants to survive it they'll need to strategically piss off factions and divide them rather than give them all a target they hate more than each other.
 
MonkeyTypewriter said:
I think this is something of the wrong framing. The Avatar's mandate is to negotiate an end to the war. Our mandate is to represent the Fire Nation and the interests of its citizens while negotiating the end of the war. It's not our job to be an impartial neutral party seeking the right solution any more than its the job of a Public Defender's job to do anything but advocate for their client in the strongest of terms. Even if their client is absolutely guilty as sin.

Which, to be clear, the Fire Nation absolutely is.
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Good point. But let's be realistic. Despite the fire nation overall being in the stronger position than the remnants of the earth kingdom... Aang Might not want to kill people. But past Avatars can and have done exactly that.

So dealing with the reality that the Avatar likely *will* come down on us like a tonne of bricks, means that, to save ourselves throwing soldiers blindly at an Avatar-State-Enraged Avatar. Means that right now, any negotiating position from the fire nation, will likely involve at least some concessions. And better to offer them now as a sign of magnamity, than to have harsher terms forced on us after the fire nation military has been smashed apart.

Ultimately, Aang right now wants the fire nation to get out of the earth kingdom. Zuko wants that too. (at least initially) The earth king wants that.

So. Most likely scenario is that likely at least some colonies will be handed back over.


Sidenote: And an amusing thought on Morality.

From a spiritual/religious point of view? Aang is literally correct. I'm not being facetious or flippant there. Previous Avatars have set precedent. Their word is law and if you want to try them they will crush dissent, and be seen as correct in their decisions, quite literally because "They're the Avatar."

Fire Lord Sozin tried to use Roku as his weapon, or at least to get him to ignore the fire nation colonies. Even tried to claim his position as Roku's Fire Lord and Monarch. Roku said no I'm the Avatar do not test me. Kyoshi too laid down the law with the earth king of her time that the Avatar will not be ordered about. Not only that, but as the Last Airbender left Aang is quite literally the head of state for all air nomads. Legally, spiritually, morally and even in bending power there is no-one above him.

Even past Avatars. They can guide and advise, and try to help the current Avatar avoid their mistakes. But ultimately the Avatar has nothing but their own conscience they're beholden to.

Aang taking away Ozai's bending? Is the correct decision. It would also be the correct decision if he *had* killed Ozai.

The Avatar is the one who decides what being the Avatar means. They can be reasoned with, debated, and some will even accept guidance, advice and even orders. But what all of this means for us. Is that whatever we choose to do, will be correct if we can do it with the avatars aproval.
 
The Laurent said:
Well, they probably would have tried to jailbreak Azula if they could manage it.

Is this really viable? No. But Azula is an incredibly powerful Firebender and also fourteen, and so at least some of them would probably be stupid enough to think that was a plus in terms of manipulating her.
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I think that azula's decision to break the rules of Agni Kai (involving someone other than zuko) probably make her quite unpopular when news of what exactly happened during it
 
BoSPaladin said:
Ultimately, Aang right now wants the fire nation to get out of the earth kingdom. Zuko wants that too. (at least initially) The earth king wants that.

So. Most likely scenario is that likely at least some colonies will be handed back over.
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Oh I agree. I don't even want to try to keep any ex-Omashu territory for example. King Bumi is likely to be too influential on Aang's thought process to antagonize unless we have to. He is, after all, likely the political figure that Aang trusts the most. Which could have interesting implications if Kui starts acting against Bumi as a means to reassert his authority, as would be entirely in line with his comic depiction.
 
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