>>82455
I believe that's supposed to be a dragon. They became extinct well, nearly under his reign, remember.

Although I don't know why you'd commemorate something like that. Fire Nation is a messed up place.

>>82457
It might be a dragon turtle, which are supposed to be symbols of success (especially financially). Perhaps the growth of a war economy?

The sun/moon symbol under Sozin's father could represent the Darkest Day in Fire Nation history; the solar eclipse that inspired Sokka to plan the Day of Black Sun Invasion. His eyes are closed; perhaps representing his failure to prevent the Darkest Day?

>moon-and-sun symbol
The sun is a star.
"Azula" is phonemically very close to "Azura."
Can't unthink.

Look at the first two. First fire lord has all of this lush plant life behind him. Second fire lord has his eyes closed, and all the plant life is replaced by fire and smoke.

I think second fire lord fucked up bad. I think maybe there was something going on during the darkest day, something like a big volcano or other fire related event and in the middle of it, the eclipse happens and no one can control fire and the entire country just gets majority fucked and craggy. I'm not sure how accurate this is, since we saw some pretty lush plant life during the Roku and Sozin episode, but then again those kids were in the palace.

So maybe it's like this. Second fire lord watches the country burn and spends the rest of his life trying to fix it. Sozin spends the first part of his term as fire lord finishing that job, and it's the first time in a while that anyone in the fire nation has known life that isn't total shit. That's the prosperity that Sozin wants to share with the world when he conquers everybody.

I'm really digging these theories, guys, especially the "Darkest Day" ones. I wish they could be explored more. If only that "Legend of Korra" thing would be in the past instead of the future. Sigh.

>>82459
Those things are awesome, we should've seen some of them in the series.

>I am now realizing how much Wang Fire's and Sozin's facial hair looks alike.

>>82480
CAN'T UNSEE

Also, notice how the pauldrons are different on the first Fire Lord from the others (no gold edging and smaller flame decoration) that falls in line with the comment that Sozin's father was the first Fire Lord who held absolute power over the Fire Nation; whereas before him they were merely the head of a council of Fire Sages who ruled the country jointly, perhaps the change in the Fire Lord's role has something to do with the "Darkest Day" disaster (emergency powers?)

>>82486
Yeah, they all seem to get more and more ornate as you move down the line to Ozai. Definetly a sign of the fire lords consolidating their power/getting crazier.

We need to get a talented fanartist to draw up Zuko's.

>>82505
Ozai also has a big Ego.

>>82508
Please see >>82454 and >>82453

>>82509
Oh, is that the euphemism the kids are using these days?

>>82512
About the Zuko one, the artist wrote:
>Zuko holds two censers of fire, red on his right and blue on his left. This illustrates Zuko's dual nature, the choices he's made, and the balance he creates in his life and the world.

>His sash represents the harmony of all four elements; Water, Earth, Air and Fire. Zuko is the first Fire Lord in several generations who appreciates the usefulness and fellowship of all four elements together, courtesy of his Uncle Iroh.

>The lotuses represent peace, and Zuko's search for his own knowledge and truth, and his association with the Order of the White Lotus. He may not be a member yet, but I don't doubt that he would eventually become one.

I love royal portrait symbolism.

I dunnoh, the darkest day thing doesn't really make sense to me, those kinds of paintings tends to be "look at how awesome I am" not "wow I suck".

The first Fire Lord from the left has a literal "black sun" as a sort of halo which suggests that the previous eclipse happened during his reign. As others have noted, the plant life behind him is lush and growing. His sash is tied in an all-inclusive circle. To me, these things suggest a more peaceful time driven not by war, but by unity that transcends tragedy.

The plant life behind the first fire lord... are those white lotuses? :3

>>82618

That makes sense to me, that the first Fire Lord faced a great national crisis due to a solar eclipse, while still the senior Fire Sage, and rallied the whole nation to face the crisis. I guess the closest real-world analogue would be Ataturk, or maybe Alfred the Great.

I have a feeling that these five Fire Lords are the only ones the Fire Nation's had. Everything we know about the Fire Nation, its rapid industrialisation and intense nationalism, reminds me of very young, powerful states like Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, that had unified extremely recently and were rather overenthusiastic at making their mark on the world. In contrast to the Earth Kingdom, which had been 'unified' for so long that they'd become complacent and completely fell apart under pressure.

So a lot of the Fire Nation's traditions are still new and in a state of flux, so we have a crown prince that prefers to be called 'general' and Fire Lords able to mix and match their successions at whim. There's great emphasis on gathering honour so that you may secure your family's future, allowing the peaceful succession to a comparatively young Sozin, but on the whole the Fire Nation seems to function more like a junta than a monarchy.

>>82638

Huh that's an interesting way of having it. Though if you really want to get speculative, not even the first one need have been a "real firelord". Sozin's father could have unified the Fire Nation, retroactively working to enchant his own cult of personality by elevating his father.

Though to actually took a leaf out of Ancient Japan. The state may have been nominally unified before but for all practical purposes it wasn't. Going on this theory just as the introduction of guns allowed those best able to utilize them to unify Japan it was the introduction of a tech that radically changed the face of warfare to allow the Fire Lord to unify the country.

Specifically the metal ships, which are an absolute game breaker in naval combat. (with their only offensive weapons being catapults, I'd actually say they are more of a gamebreaker on sea than early guns would have been on land.) And on an island nation control of the seas is everything.

>>82639

Eh, I'm happy to take the portraits at face value. The first Fire Lord reigns over a tranquil garden in the shadow of an eclipse, a testament to his creation peace and unity where before there was chaos.

There's less greenery and more legal paraphernalia in the second portrait, so I'm guessing he built on the state his predecessor established, creating the political infrastructure and forming a permanent civil service. He might've originated many of the traditions subsequent Fire Lords adhered to, like the fire-screen throne room and other trappings, mimicking the practices of more successful states in the Earth Kingdom in the same way that Meiji Japan adopted the practices of powerful Western states in the hope that this would grant them greater recognition. He might've even imported the hereditary principle from the Earth Kingdom, since there's no special reason why the first and second Fire Lords need to be related to each other (after all, the first Fire Lord seems pretty pale and puff-faced compared to his successors), and the Fire Nation instinctively values power over tradition. Whatever the case, he created the conditions for the peaceful succession of his son.

Sozin seems to have been the Wilhelm II of this gang, a convincing argument against the hereditary principle if ever there was one. He grew up in a united, centralised, stable and effective Fire Nation, surpassing the Earth Kingdom states it had mimicked, and like his real-world counterpart grew the understandable impression that the Fire Nation seemed to be better at the whole 'civilisation' thing than those clowns, so what justified the foreigners' places in the pecking order above one of the most powerful countries the world had ever seen?

Azulon struck me as a sort of Brezhnev figure, keeping the machinery of war chugging along due to a complete failure of imagination that there could be any different state of affairs. The war stagnated for a hundred years under his watch, so he couldn't have been a terribly effective strategist. His son the Dragon of the West had the makings of an Andropov: he'd seen enough of the world in his tide-turning campaigns to know that something needed to change, but when push came to shove the Fire Nation were the good guys and everyone else were the bad guys. It took the death of his son for him to reconsider his place in the world, but before that his brilliant strategies must've been keeping the Fire Nation in the war in spite of its Fire Lord.

Ozai was a monster before he got anywhere near the throne, but his ascension did seem to give the war effort an immense shot in the arm. It could've been down to the links he built amongst like-minded genocidal lunatics in the Fire Nation's economic core while Iroh was absent. After Iroh's downfall, general policy seemed to favour a long-term industrial slog over the fickle fortunes of individual generals, which showed an appreciation for proper allocation of resources. After all, that was his calculation for exterminating the Earth Kingdom upon the arrival of Sozin's Comet: it'd be cheaper than occupying it. He'd spent so long surrounded by military officials and captains of industry that human beings had been reduced to numbers to him.

I'd conclude that the whole concept of a Fire Lord is not only a recent development, but an aberration of the firebending character. To group passionate, individualistic people motivated by personal honour into an Earth Kingdom-esque hierarchical state leads to Bad Things. The corruption and genocidal fury of this state was inevitable once you pent up all that passion and ambition into a unitary power-structure.

So the best thing Zuko could do is disband the state and abdicate. :)

According to the Avatar Wiki, which I think took it's info from the Lost Scrolls books, the Fire Sages were originally the leaders of the Fire Nation:

>Long ago, in its earliest years, the Fire Nation was ruled by the ancestors of the current Fire Sages. A council of Sages led the Nation with a strong sense of spirituality held to the highest degree, much similar to the spiritual Air Nomads. However, the Sages have since lost their power to the Fire Lord lineage and currently direct their energy on serving merely as counsel to their ruler. They used to be completely loyal to the Avatar and the Avatar alone.

I guess at one point, the office of the head sage became the office of the Fire Lord, or the Fire Lord came along and seized power somehow, and the Sages were relegated to Avatar-related duties, but that's no marker on how old the office is.

They don't list a specific source, but I figure it's likely the Lost Scrolls books.

>>82644
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's from the Nick website (which has since been taken down) on the "characters" page for The Winter Solstice Part 2: Avatar Roku.

I remember it mentions in the Fire Sages' description that at some point the head Fire Sage became the Fire Lord, taking power and having his (now royal) family succeed him instead of another Fire Sage.

>>82640>>82638>>82618

I like this views.

I realize the solar eclipse is literally the darkest day in Fire Nation history, but why would it cause such tragedy? It only lasts for a few minutes...

>>82658
Well, a ragtag team was able to tear ass into the firenation capital at the height of it's military power, so if a stronger enemy had made a similar attack before they were ever heavily militarized then it's possible the whole nation could have been occupied, even if just for a while. Once the civilian population had mostly been captured, freeing them would have been an ordeal once the bending had turned back on.