#without negating that both FUBARed their kids in different ways

[lightdancer1]

The Eugenics experiment was an unnecessarily 40K-ish retcon as far as the comics go but it does make a useful background for AUs:

It basically turns Azula and Zuko on paper into more or less copies of the Primarch concept, warriors literally engineered to be not merely fighters but generals from the cradle....and then like the 40K Primarchs this concept goes horribly right. In two different directions. Personally I find the concept as implemented in the comics done with far too 20th Century Western a lens for a world that would perhaps have variants of the concept, but not exactly that precise form of it.

The experiment forms a good part of the elements of 'Ursa is not defined by her relationship with her children even if people say she is' and this is the main reason for including the Ikem relationship in some form in every single AU. It gives her a life that she intended to live, sets up a contrast between mentally ill APD-suffering Ozai who in all AUs but one gets the worst kind of reinforcement and reacts accordingly....and deeply empathetic and wise Ikem who avoided the corruption of the Palace. And where Ozai stood in line on the day of creation for a second helping of asshattery Ikem stood in line for a second helping of common sense. He's far from flawless, but where he's written in the Palace his defects are more human and he's not quite dealing with the Palace-amplified versions of faults.

it also in every single universe, with the Sins-verse and the Fire Lord Ursa AUs the most explicit in doing so gets directly and mercilessly subverted. Both Zuko and Azula were intended to be weapons. *He* is by every possible standard a 'failure' in the eyes for which his existence was intended. Zuko has no real empathy for Azula but is rewarded for expression it where she was punished. Zuko has an actually healthy parental background with one parent, Azula canonically had no healthy relationship with any adult in her life (and in the heroic AUs having this and that emotional equilibrium is a vital part of the changes to get there).

Azula is a success....up to a point. The goal was, at least as I write with a wee bit of 40K backdated into it a literal Primarch-like concept. Two super-generals who would wage war with fire and sword (literally) and scourge the Earth for Fire Lord Lu Ten. Azula defies her own indoctrination with restraint where she could easily steamroll anyone short of the Avatar or her equals as Benders (of which there are several. Older Benders have advantages over younger ones primarily in experience and time devoted to exploring the nature of their abilities. Ozai is not superior to either of his children or his wife in raw power, but the man compensates by sheer driving focus on drilling his power and prowess to a point that it's easy to neglect that as a Bender he's a mediocrity with middling power.

One of the main cores in Ozai's specific brand of abuse to his children is that this tunnel vision boosted by his APD *did* work for him. It made him one of the most powerful Benders in the world and it made him one of the most powerful men in the world in political and temporal power. He expects far too much of children and when they cannot meet this because even Azula, as powerful as she is from a very young age is a *child* and tends to overexert and push herself to her limits, he reacts violently to this. Which accelerates astronomically when he becomes Fire Lord and gains absolute power to do so at his discretion.

The irony is that in this sense Ozai did his one major act of rebellion against his father and quietly signaled he knew the entire premise that blighted his life was bullshit. By sheer monomania he outpaced people far more 'naturally' gifted than he was. Firebending is always associated with willpower as a spiritual pattern, so one thing Ozai gets entirely right for the wrong reasons is *willpower literally fuels it* and the man has Victor von Doom tier willpower. If there were lantern rings in the Avatar-verse Ozai would be a Green Lantern, albeit in the Thaal Sinestro vein.

It's a small element of humanizing him and even in spite of his APD and inability to get emotions at any real level, the Ozai I write fundamentally fucks up everyone around him because what he did worked for himself in the short term and he very woefully misread this as 'if it worked for me it'll work for everyone.'

These angles get worked into the treatment of the eugenics program in every single AU. One of the main means of humanizing Ozai without making him any less a genocidal son of a bitch is that for all his other flaws he knows the eugenics program is fucked up and really is marginally less evil to his children even with everything else he does than his father. And that marginal gap is that Ozai really does think of Azula and Zuko as human beings with pronouns and names and Azulon doesn't really bother at any consistent level with Azula *or* Zuko.