If you're in the mood for it, please share lots of thoughts about Fire Lord Zuko and the palace staff/guards
The palace staff see extreme changes between the comet and Zuko’s coronation (which is only like a week later). The war has been raging longer than any of them and their parents have been alive, and then, suddenly, it’s over in a day. They go from Azula’s unravelling insanity, banishing every other person who crosses her path, to Zuko, who looks embarrassed every time he asks the servants to do something for him.
Also: someone would have had to pluck up the courage to like… tell Zuko about the servants who were banished? They’re probably lowkey terrified, but Zuko just groans and waves a hand in the air and says everyone his sister banished in the last few weeks can come back, and then goes to try and find a record of who was banished in the last few years decades and see if those decisions need to be overturned
Being a baby Fire Lord is… very hard. The palace staff often find Zuko asleep in the library, the gardens, his offices. At first, it’s awkward, like all things are back in the very early days, when everyone is still trying to judge what kind of ruler Zuko is, but the servants get used to cleaning around him or quietly waking him up
Iroh has spies in the palace. Zuko know about some of them - they’re the ones that seem the most unimpressed by his crown, and chide him when he’s being dumb about his health, but he knows there are more who report back to Iroh about how he’s really doing. It’s how Iroh knows when he should come to the Fire Nation for a visit.
(Iroh doesn’t really need spies, though. He’s on such good terms with all the palace staff and guards, and he’s so charismatic and well-respected that he can walk up to almost anyone and ask for a full report on how Zuko has been coping, and they’ll just give it to him)
At first, Zuko is super wary of the guards. He doesn’t know if he can trust them, and he’s already paranoid about attacks, and what if there’s a leak
But after a time, he collects guards he knows he can trust with his life. Maybe they saved him during an assassination attempt or jumped in front of an attack for him - in one case, the woman who would go on to guard him for over twenty years, grabbed him by his sleeping robes when he was being stubborn about fighting the assassins and finding out their true identity, and carried her sixteen year old sovereign to safety like a misbehaving cat.
After years in exile or on the run, having only Iroh or a band of kids to look after him, Zuko isn’t used to being surrounded by such protectiveness. It frustrates him and soothes his paranoia all at once.
Zuko takes the guards he trusts the most with him to Ba Sing Se, and they sit in plain clothes in the Jasmine Dragon, drinking tea and casually surveying the area for threats and watching their Fire Lord in an apron and a ponytail serve tea to oblivious customers.
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