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There is also Yue who has a semi-significant role, but she's also only around for 2(?I think!) episodes and it's still a role that is primarily significant to Sokka's storyline. Which makes two female characters who exist primarily to be romantic interests for a male character and advance his storyline.

Which could certainly cast negative interpretations over an Aunt Iroh, who would exist as another female character whose primary purpose was to teach a male character important lessons and advance his storyline.

If I may, though, can I suggest *Princess* Zuko as an alternative to Aunt Iroh? She could serve as a great female foil to both Princess Azula and Katara, she could give the audience a female character who is allowed to start off an angry disaster and then be redeemed into a mature and competent leader, and it would allow Uncle Iroh to serve as an example of an older male relative providing positive emotional guidance to a young woman who desperately needs some of that.

Having thoughts about gender representation in ATLA and how Katara is really our only significant female character with a speaking role for all of Season 1, with others being Suki (for an episode), Aunt Wu (for an episode), Jun (for an episode) and...Yue and Yugoda (for two episodes?)

And thinking about how an *Aunt* Iroh could have been so interesting, with what it could suggest about gender expectations and roles in the Fire Nation, with having a militaristic violent (successful and well regarded) woman character reconsidering her actions, with Zuko receiving support and guidance and training from a maternal rather than a paternal figure.

But wondering also whether any of that would have come through and been possible. Or whether an Aunt Iroh would have just been narratively bogged down by ideas of the inherent nurturing qualities of women, that of course she would have reformed her ways, that of course she would have found another child to mother, that of course the *choice* to be a parent would somehow mean less from an Aunt Iroh than from an Uncle.