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Avatar's Obsession With Hereditary Heirs
So I've been hoping someone with a decent understanding of history (and specifically early 20th century Asian history) would make this post for me, but noone has, so I'm going to do my best and apologise up front for my shallow understanding of history.
Anyway: A subtext which bugged me about Avatar: The Last Airbender which has just gotten worse in The Legend of Korra is the idea that there Rightful Heirs to Power, False Heirs, and Common People. It is Heirs who become world leaders and world changers, on behalf of the Common People who deserve love and compassion but who are cheerleaders at best and a mindless mob working for the False Heirs at worst. Anyone who is born Common and tries to become Important is doomed to become a False Heir. Children of False Heirs can become True Heirs.
First we have the Gaang:
Aang: A hereditary god-like being
Katara and Sokka: The closest thing the Southern Water Tribe has to royalty
Toph: a noble with Special Congenital Disability Powers
Zuko: the rightful heir to the Fire Nation throne
And I mean they all made sense in their roles! And were great characters! But I didn't actually realise at first that Katara and Sokka's dad was the Chief and it made me kind of sad that they weren't just random kids, especially with the way Toph kept calling Katara a peasant.
On the other side we have Azula and Ozai, Evil Second Daughter of an Evil Second Son, who both stole power from their nicer older brothers. There's the implication that this "unnatural" contradiction of the status quo helped put the world out of balance, and thus that the world needs to be put back into balance, not changed, despite the fact that the world we saw had a lot of injustice beyond the Fire Nation overstepping it's bounds. There's also Jet, common leader of a popular revolt who is...actually a dangerous terrorist who need to learn to let the True Heirs fix things.
It would have been silly to expect the ending of Avatar: The Last Airbender to involve democracy and equality for all. I have no problem with the overall goal being to install a Better Fire Lord and the Avatar rather than overhauling the whole system. And it's nice that Aang and Zuko themselves went on to try and overhaul things slowly after that. But when I saw that Korra was going to have "Equalist" bad guys I had my doubts about Bryke's ability to handle it well.
And then my main issues turned out to be the AWFUL LOVE TRIANGLE and TERRIBLE PACING but this post isn't about those ;)
Books 3 and 4 fixed those problems pretty well, and are overall fantastic, but as the show has tried to handle 20th century-esque history in a world where democracy is an option, the same problem with the common people remains.
On the plus side, Mako and Bolin are pretty explicitely designed to be Regular Guys From a Poor Immigrant Background, and I'm really glad that meeting their family only strengthened that. But they are largely followers. From a gender POV I really like that they're happy to be sidekicks and assistants etc to powerful women like Korra, Lin, and Kuvira. (The OTHER thing that bugged me about TLA was the lack of powerful older women and Korra has fixed that wonderfullyand sexily) But they kind of stick out in their regular dude-ness.
Let's look at everyone else.
Heroes:
Korra, hereditary god figure, who is also BY COINCIDENCE also royalty in the Southern AND Northern Water tribes
Lin: daughter of Toph, head of police and the daughter of the previous head of police (supposedly not a hereditary role, but it did turn out that way)
Tenzin: Son of Aang, heriditary leader of the Air Nation, one of the world's only air benders by birth
Tenzin's kids: heirs to the air nation
Bolin and Mako: regular guys whose parents were noone in particular
Asami: daughter of a Rich Industrialist, hereditary heir to his industrial empire
Suyin: daughter of Toph, self made...is she a dictator? Or just a perenially elected president? Has her own little utopic fiefdom anyway.
Tonraq: Rightful Heir To The Northern Water Tribe, father of the Avatar
Raava: Spirit Of Order
Wen: Just some dude, gained power through merging with Raava
Toph: Toph ;)
Raiko: democratically elected leader. Has very little actually do, and we never see him try for the role he's kind of just there. Role was created by benevolent royalty.
Bumi and Kya: Aang's other kids.
Iroh: Grandson of Zuko
Pema: regular person, mother of True Air Nation Heirs.
...others
Villains:
Yakone: regular street thug who taught himself blood bending and used it to become a mob boss.
Various other mob bosses.
Noatak/Amon: seems like some regular dude who got sick of being mistreated and decided to form a popular political movement, actually the Son Of Aang's Old Nemesis Yakone, and Heir to the Secret Art of Blood Bending
Tarrlok: seems like just some regular Water Nation guy who got democratically elected, actually also the Son Of Aang's Old Nemesis, Heir to the Secret Art of Blood Bending, and the brother of the villain.
Hiroshi: Self made business man, proves himself to be evil by aligning with revolutionaries.
Varrick: Shonky self made business man, proves himself to be evil(ish) by aligning with an evil king.
Unalaq: Evil Second Son Who Stole Power
Desna and Eska: Heriditary heirs to the Water Nation (but only via an Evil Second Son). Become Good Rulers in the end.
Vaatu: Spirit of Chaos
Hou-Ting: rightful queen of the Earth Kingdom and yet still awful omg!
Prince Wu: her heir, just as bad!
Zaheer: Regular person who decided to fix the system by becoming a sort of anarchist terrorist cult leader
Ming-Hua, Ghazan, P'li: regular people who experienced injustice and decided to join Zaheer to fix things
Kuvira: somewhat regular person, military leader who got sick of incompetent royalty and decided to take power for herself
Baatar Jr: Son of Suyin, joins forces with Kuvira
And a bunch of others, I ran out of steam. I think I got all the major ones. But that's a lot of "children of"s.
I don't have a problem with characters like Zaheer, Kuvira, and Amon in and of themselves. Fascists and terrorists who spout a bunch of nice sounding logic about equality and injustice but actually just make the world awful are totally a thing and make for great villains.
But what we don't have is regular people who saw the problems with society and tried to fix it WITHOUT BECOMING TERRORISTS OR FASCISTS. There's this false dichotomy with Rightful Hereditary Rulers (personified most intensely by Korra) on one side and terrorists, fascists, mob leaders, and Evil Kings on the other, and the more Books of the show stick to this dichotomy the more it bugs me.
There's Suyin, who created her own city from scratch, but she is Toph's daughter and thus kind of Series Royalty, and to some extent she's tried to make her city consist entirely of Special People. And there's Raiko, bland but competent elected president of a new city created by Zuko and Aang as an "inspiration" which has apparently inspired...absolutely no other places in the world to try democracy. It's like the only people smart and powerful enough to install democracy are All Powerful hereditary leaders, and they do it by creating whole new cities and consulting with noone. Democracy does not come from the top down! THAT'S KIND OF THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT DEMOCRACY IS.
Like, this is a setting inspired by early 20th century China with no socialists. People who talk bit about equality without actually fixing anything, yes. But (and here we hit my terrible historical knowledge) as much as Chinese Communism went to the "dictatorship thinly veiled with rhetoric about equality" place overall I am sure there must have been/are SOME small groups of people who were genuinely just trying to create democratic communalistic villages or whatever. Even if they didn't have a name for it, there have ALWAYS been small groups of common people working together WITHOUT A HEREDITARY OR FASCIST LEADER to make the world better. China has had a whole heap of peasant revolts and if that's what Zaheer and Amon were supposed to be representing then we have an issue.
Zaheer kills the Earth Queen and tells the common people to create a new better world...and there is only chaos, requiring a Tough Ruler put in place by the powers that be to fix it. There's no indication that any of the Earth Nation commoners did anything but loot or sit around waiting for Someone In Power to fix things. I'm not saying Zaheer should have been shown to be right, randomly killing royalty is not a good way to create better government and is likely to lead to looting and violence. But the people of Ba Sing Se could have been shown to be SLIGHTLY less like headless chickens.
Yes, political groups usually have someone in charge. But they don't all have Great Leaders, and even when they do it's usually a bunch of people who came to similar ideas independently dediding one of them is best suited to be in charge, not The One Messianic Prophet Of Social Change and their acolytes. That does happen, but it's not the ONLY form of political organisation outside of a monarchy. Even the Air Nation is basically a monarchy at this point, though it's possible that will change once some air benders who aren't descendents of Aang have enough experience to start becoming Masters.
I was discussing this with Cam and realised the PERFECT Bryke solution to Kuvira would be to put Suyin in charge as a democratic leader. They get to "make a point" about monarchies not always being best and vaguely gesture towards democracy, but still totally avoid any sort of popular movement or a Regular Person Seeking Power. The could have Prince Wu realise the error of his ways and become a Good King, but it feels a bit too blatantly a step backwards from Kuvira's (so far) genuinely popular and efficient Republic.
So, yes. We'll see how things play out.
I feel like I haven't articulated the issues perfectly, but hopefully the basic gist gets across.
Anyway: A subtext which bugged me about Avatar: The Last Airbender which has just gotten worse in The Legend of Korra is the idea that there Rightful Heirs to Power, False Heirs, and Common People. It is Heirs who become world leaders and world changers, on behalf of the Common People who deserve love and compassion but who are cheerleaders at best and a mindless mob working for the False Heirs at worst. Anyone who is born Common and tries to become Important is doomed to become a False Heir. Children of False Heirs can become True Heirs.
First we have the Gaang:
Aang: A hereditary god-like being
Katara and Sokka: The closest thing the Southern Water Tribe has to royalty
Toph: a noble with Special Congenital Disability Powers
Zuko: the rightful heir to the Fire Nation throne
And I mean they all made sense in their roles! And were great characters! But I didn't actually realise at first that Katara and Sokka's dad was the Chief and it made me kind of sad that they weren't just random kids, especially with the way Toph kept calling Katara a peasant.
On the other side we have Azula and Ozai, Evil Second Daughter of an Evil Second Son, who both stole power from their nicer older brothers. There's the implication that this "unnatural" contradiction of the status quo helped put the world out of balance, and thus that the world needs to be put back into balance, not changed, despite the fact that the world we saw had a lot of injustice beyond the Fire Nation overstepping it's bounds. There's also Jet, common leader of a popular revolt who is...actually a dangerous terrorist who need to learn to let the True Heirs fix things.
It would have been silly to expect the ending of Avatar: The Last Airbender to involve democracy and equality for all. I have no problem with the overall goal being to install a Better Fire Lord and the Avatar rather than overhauling the whole system. And it's nice that Aang and Zuko themselves went on to try and overhaul things slowly after that. But when I saw that Korra was going to have "Equalist" bad guys I had my doubts about Bryke's ability to handle it well.
And then my main issues turned out to be the AWFUL LOVE TRIANGLE and TERRIBLE PACING but this post isn't about those ;)
Books 3 and 4 fixed those problems pretty well, and are overall fantastic, but as the show has tried to handle 20th century-esque history in a world where democracy is an option, the same problem with the common people remains.
On the plus side, Mako and Bolin are pretty explicitely designed to be Regular Guys From a Poor Immigrant Background, and I'm really glad that meeting their family only strengthened that. But they are largely followers. From a gender POV I really like that they're happy to be sidekicks and assistants etc to powerful women like Korra, Lin, and Kuvira. (The OTHER thing that bugged me about TLA was the lack of powerful older women and Korra has fixed that wonderfully
Let's look at everyone else.
Heroes:
Korra, hereditary god figure, who is also BY COINCIDENCE also royalty in the Southern AND Northern Water tribes
Lin: daughter of Toph, head of police and the daughter of the previous head of police (supposedly not a hereditary role, but it did turn out that way)
Tenzin: Son of Aang, heriditary leader of the Air Nation, one of the world's only air benders by birth
Tenzin's kids: heirs to the air nation
Bolin and Mako: regular guys whose parents were noone in particular
Asami: daughter of a Rich Industrialist, hereditary heir to his industrial empire
Suyin: daughter of Toph, self made...is she a dictator? Or just a perenially elected president? Has her own little utopic fiefdom anyway.
Tonraq: Rightful Heir To The Northern Water Tribe, father of the Avatar
Raava: Spirit Of Order
Wen: Just some dude, gained power through merging with Raava
Toph: Toph ;)
Raiko: democratically elected leader. Has very little actually do, and we never see him try for the role he's kind of just there. Role was created by benevolent royalty.
Bumi and Kya: Aang's other kids.
Iroh: Grandson of Zuko
Pema: regular person, mother of True Air Nation Heirs.
...others
Villains:
Yakone: regular street thug who taught himself blood bending and used it to become a mob boss.
Various other mob bosses.
Noatak/Amon: seems like some regular dude who got sick of being mistreated and decided to form a popular political movement, actually the Son Of Aang's Old Nemesis Yakone, and Heir to the Secret Art of Blood Bending
Tarrlok: seems like just some regular Water Nation guy who got democratically elected, actually also the Son Of Aang's Old Nemesis, Heir to the Secret Art of Blood Bending, and the brother of the villain.
Hiroshi: Self made business man, proves himself to be evil by aligning with revolutionaries.
Varrick: Shonky self made business man, proves himself to be evil(ish) by aligning with an evil king.
Unalaq: Evil Second Son Who Stole Power
Desna and Eska: Heriditary heirs to the Water Nation (but only via an Evil Second Son). Become Good Rulers in the end.
Vaatu: Spirit of Chaos
Hou-Ting: rightful queen of the Earth Kingdom and yet still awful omg!
Prince Wu: her heir, just as bad!
Zaheer: Regular person who decided to fix the system by becoming a sort of anarchist terrorist cult leader
Ming-Hua, Ghazan, P'li: regular people who experienced injustice and decided to join Zaheer to fix things
Kuvira: somewhat regular person, military leader who got sick of incompetent royalty and decided to take power for herself
Baatar Jr: Son of Suyin, joins forces with Kuvira
And a bunch of others, I ran out of steam. I think I got all the major ones. But that's a lot of "children of"s.
I don't have a problem with characters like Zaheer, Kuvira, and Amon in and of themselves. Fascists and terrorists who spout a bunch of nice sounding logic about equality and injustice but actually just make the world awful are totally a thing and make for great villains.
But what we don't have is regular people who saw the problems with society and tried to fix it WITHOUT BECOMING TERRORISTS OR FASCISTS. There's this false dichotomy with Rightful Hereditary Rulers (personified most intensely by Korra) on one side and terrorists, fascists, mob leaders, and Evil Kings on the other, and the more Books of the show stick to this dichotomy the more it bugs me.
There's Suyin, who created her own city from scratch, but she is Toph's daughter and thus kind of Series Royalty, and to some extent she's tried to make her city consist entirely of Special People. And there's Raiko, bland but competent elected president of a new city created by Zuko and Aang as an "inspiration" which has apparently inspired...absolutely no other places in the world to try democracy. It's like the only people smart and powerful enough to install democracy are All Powerful hereditary leaders, and they do it by creating whole new cities and consulting with noone. Democracy does not come from the top down! THAT'S KIND OF THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT DEMOCRACY IS.
Like, this is a setting inspired by early 20th century China with no socialists. People who talk bit about equality without actually fixing anything, yes. But (and here we hit my terrible historical knowledge) as much as Chinese Communism went to the "dictatorship thinly veiled with rhetoric about equality" place overall I am sure there must have been/are SOME small groups of people who were genuinely just trying to create democratic communalistic villages or whatever. Even if they didn't have a name for it, there have ALWAYS been small groups of common people working together WITHOUT A HEREDITARY OR FASCIST LEADER to make the world better. China has had a whole heap of peasant revolts and if that's what Zaheer and Amon were supposed to be representing then we have an issue.
Zaheer kills the Earth Queen and tells the common people to create a new better world...and there is only chaos, requiring a Tough Ruler put in place by the powers that be to fix it. There's no indication that any of the Earth Nation commoners did anything but loot or sit around waiting for Someone In Power to fix things. I'm not saying Zaheer should have been shown to be right, randomly killing royalty is not a good way to create better government and is likely to lead to looting and violence. But the people of Ba Sing Se could have been shown to be SLIGHTLY less like headless chickens.
Yes, political groups usually have someone in charge. But they don't all have Great Leaders, and even when they do it's usually a bunch of people who came to similar ideas independently dediding one of them is best suited to be in charge, not The One Messianic Prophet Of Social Change and their acolytes. That does happen, but it's not the ONLY form of political organisation outside of a monarchy. Even the Air Nation is basically a monarchy at this point, though it's possible that will change once some air benders who aren't descendents of Aang have enough experience to start becoming Masters.
I was discussing this with Cam and realised the PERFECT Bryke solution to Kuvira would be to put Suyin in charge as a democratic leader. They get to "make a point" about monarchies not always being best and vaguely gesture towards democracy, but still totally avoid any sort of popular movement or a Regular Person Seeking Power. The could have Prince Wu realise the error of his ways and become a Good King, but it feels a bit too blatantly a step backwards from Kuvira's (so far) genuinely popular and efficient Republic.
So, yes. We'll see how things play out.
I feel like I haven't articulated the issues perfectly, but hopefully the basic gist gets across.