Avatar: How Uncle Iroh’s Son, Prince Lu Ten, Died

The course of history in Avatar: The Last Airbender might have been different if it wasn’t for the death of Uncle Iroh’s son, Prince Lu Ten. Throughout the series Iroh acted as a wise and calming father figure to the angry exiled Prince Zuko, providing the positive influence that eventually led Zuko down a path of redemption. But Iroh wasn’t always the kindly old man that fans know from the series.

The Avatar season 2 episode “Zuko Alone” was key in revealing the story of how Iroh lost his son, and in turn lost all interest in ruling as Fire Lord. Known as “The Dragon of the West,” Iroh led the famous 600-day Siege of Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom’s nigh-impenetrable walled city. During the siege Iroh cultivated a great deal of admiration for Ba Sing Se, and later returned there under more peaceful circumstances. However, Ba Sing Se isn’t just important to Iroh because of its impressive defenses. It’s also the place where he lost his only son.

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Prince Lu Ten was a soldier in the Fire Nation army, and died in the Hundred Year War, during the Siege of Ba Sing Se – though not necessarily in that particular campaign. A letter from Lu Ten to his father reads, “See you after we win the war,” implying that Lu Ten may actually have died fighting elsewhere in the Earth Kingdom, far away from his father. Unlike Ozai and Zuko, Iroh and Lu Ten were extremely close and Iroh loved his son very deeply. The death of Lu Ten killed Iroh’s appetite for war. He ended the siege and returned home to the Fire Nation with his exhausted army. Iroh’s father, Fire Lord Azulon, had also been killed – secretly poisoned by Zuko’s mother, Ursa, in a bargain for Zuko’s life. Despite being the younger of the two brothers, Ozai had ascended to the throne of the Fire Nation, claiming that it had been Azulon’s final wish. Under other circumstances Iroh might have challenged this claim, but in the wake of Lu Ten’s death he had no interest in ruling.

Had Prince Lu Ten lived, things would have played out very differently in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Though Iroh was more enthusiastic about war before he lost his son (in a letter to his family he joked that they might not be able to see Ba Sing Se if he burned it to the ground), he wasn’t anywhere close to being as evil as his brother. In a flashback, a young Azula disgustedly refers to her uncle as “his royal tea-loving kooky-ness,” and other snapshots from the past show Uncle Iroh being affectionate towards his son and sending gifts to his niece and nephew. It’s hard to picture Fire Lord Iroh carrying out Ozai’s plan of using Sozin’s Comet to destroy the Earth Kingdom.

Though it happened years before the series begins, the death of Lu Ten is one of the great tragedies of Avatar: The Last Airbender. In the season 2 episode “Tales of Ba Sing Se,” Iroh offers help, comfort and guidance to several boys and young men around the city, before arriving at his son’s grave to celebrate Lu Ten’s birthday. The lullaby he sings, “Leaves from the Vine,” is particularly heartbreaking because it reveals that from a young age Iroh referred to his son as “little soldier boy,” unwittingly setting him down the path that would eventually lead to his death.

Still, if Lu Ten’s death was a dark turning point for the Fire Nation, it was also the tragedy that made Iroh a better man – and Zuko as well. Before his nephew went to hunt down the Avatar during the Siege of the North, Iroh told him that ever since Lu Ten’s death he had thought of Zuko as his own. And thanks to Iroh’s tempering influence, Zuko eventually became a far wiser and more noble Fire Lord than his father ever was.

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