#gd2go2

First of all, the slavery laws Azula proposes will bring in a much more humane treatment for slaves all around. Any slave owner found responsible for harming their slaves (from the lightest bruise all the way to causing their death) will be banned from owning slaves altogether. The punishment can’t be more severe than that due to the Fire Nation’s supremacist views, despite Azula would very much have wanted to advocate for that.

If anyone who is prohibited from owning slaves is found buying one or caught owning one clandestinely, they will be sentenced to prison. Slave owners have to be a lot more careful than they were, and cannot force their slaves into businesses that hinge entirely on hurting slaves or watching them hurt each other (be it the Amateur Gladiator League or the brothels, or outright owning a sex slave). New restrictions, then, would be imposed on the Amateur League: they can only continue their business if their fights no longer result in one gladiator killing the other. Which is practically a death sentence for the League, seeing as the unbridled violence was their main source of entertainment. Brothels aren’t exactly in the same position, but they would no longer be allowed to employ slaves altogether, which certainly would put them in an awkward situation, especially those that relied exclusively on sex slaves for their trade.

The laws also include new restrictions on slavery trade altogether: the markets will have to follow new guidelines to be deemed eligible for slave trade, starting from the humane treatment to providing proper reports on their slaves, where they were acquired, who they were sold to, so that they can be tracked down and found far more easily by the authorities if need be. There’s of course the problem of how slaves are acquired to begin with… but that particular thing is something Azula hasn’t unraveled yet: she still needs to figure out who’s profiting from slavery and how they’re capturing and selling people, something she doesn’t know anything about by the time she wrote the laws.

Now, you’ll wonder who the heck is going to make sure any of these restrictions are imposed properly…

And that’s actually a pretty big deal, something that I have been sitting on like a giddy idiot for MONTHS because I really couldn’t wait to talk about this particular matter since I first came up with it:

There will be a brand new branch in the army called the Enforcers. Their job, of course, is to enforce the new laws on every level of society: they’ll start with markets and crime dens (like Hui Yi, Fa Zhan, Shu Wo and such), and slowly move up in society to enforce the laws on the middle and upper classes too. Now, how could there be a whole new branch out of nowhere when the army is known to be spread so thin? Well, Azula already offered a solution for Ozai, back in 159…

“You propose the creation of these laws, and of a task force to control slavery throughout the city at first, and throughout all the territories that belong to us, later on” said Ozai “And you even suggested that, if there are no recruits to be found for said task force, that women should be encouraged to join the armed forces of the nation. You expect them to stroll through the city checking on every slave?”

“I do” said Azula, shrugging “And you always say the army is spread too thin, which is true. This is a solution for that predicament. There are already a few women in service here and there, aren’t there?”

“They enrolled a few years ago” Ozai confirmed, almost unwillingly “They serve with the domestic forces, though”

“Then it’s simply a matter of enrolling others and assigning the already trained women to this specific task” Azula said “You’ve kept women contained in domestic forces, not even a single one of them has risen to a position of power… so, with all that in mind, why not have them work on this project? There’s a decent chance they’ll want to be part of it if they’re promised they’ll advance through this task force’s ranks far more easily than through the domestic forces'…”

In the end, it’ll be more than just a task force, because that would have been a tad bit too small for the magnitude of this enterprise… but the point is that the Enforcers, a mainly-female army branch, are supposed to take care of ensuring the laws are followed properly.

So, the laws not only will be meant to ensure slaves are more protected than they were before, but they also resolve one of Azula’s biggest problems with Fire Nation society so far, meaning, the inequality between men and women on these levels. As ever, the efficient Princess we love and adore is figuring out how to change the world within her restrictions, and while Ozai certainly blocked this initiative before, now he’s taking it far more seriously than he did back when she first proposed it… :’D