What gets me about the “Ursa thinks Azula is a monster” interpretation is that it kind of destroys the whole thematic point of the mirror scene. You know, that scene where hallucination!Ursa tells Azula that she’s always used fear to control people, and then Azula retorts that “fear is the only reliable way” and uses her mother’s alleged fear of her to support this. And then hallucination!Ursa claps back “no, I love you.” If Ursa really does fear Azula, that…sort of affirms Azula’s earlier point about fear being reliable? More than that, it affirms Azula’s internalized belief that she is a monster and she is unlovable. And I know you could point out that Zuko loves her (which is true), but that doesn’t change how taking Ursa’s insistence that she loves Azula as just part of the hallucination really undermines the overall point of that scene—which is Azula unraveling because the fear she thought would support her crumbles around her.
