>>110807587>It would mean she’s worse, understanding morality and but actively holding no regard for them herselfTrue, but it also raises the question, why did she choose amorality? Why did she embrace "evil", as it were? Simply because she is evil herself, or was it a mix of inward predisposition and outside pressures?
>There were still plenty of other people in her life that didn’t live like this that she could have observed.Who? From her perspective, Zuko is the lesser sibling, the defective brother she must not emulate, lest she falls out of her father's graces. Which, as we know, can have terrible consequences. Iroh is a "quitter and a loser", a has-been who is not worth considering. Ursa, while an important presence in Azula's life, is little more than a glorified servant. Anyone, literally anyone else is either her subject, who is supposed to serve her without questions, or an enemy. This is her whole world.
The only other active player, Azulon, is an enigmatic figure but he is someone who burned down villages for the sake of terror (referenced in one of the Book 1 episode, can't recall which one), continued and pretty much carried out the ethnic cleansing of Waterbenders in the South, and ordered Ozai to kill Zuko because "an eye for an eye". I think it's safe to assume he was cut from the same cloth as Azula and Ozai, if at least with a rigid sense of justice.
>She gravitated to Ozai because Ozai was the most like her, not vie versa. Otherwise Zuko would have been like her too.I would argue that another important factor, indeed, the deciding factor, is the difference in bending talent between the two siblings. Ozai saw that, and so discarded Zuko and elevated Azula, because she was useful and made him look good. This played out almost to the letter when Ozai pimped Azula to Azulon in his bid for the throne.
