how do you think taob zuko/swt would react if ursa ever came back? I've only been briefed on the promise comics but they kind of... disgusted me???? Maybe the siblings and her do reconcile in a healthy way that I just missed but it felt like the story immediately forgave her just because zuko missed his mom... like don't get me wrong she had IMMENSE trauma but... I just don't think she should've come back into zuko and azula's life, ESPECIALLY with how shittily treated azula was and her little sister replacement "kiyi".....
(In my mind Ursa just doesn't come back, and I think it'd be a lot more healing for BOTH fire siblings to learn to move on, instead of being dragged right back to the woman who (not intentionally, which is....worse) caused them a lot of trauma. They deserve a fam like the SWT, and a knife wielding menace brother like Zi Se <3)
i completely totally agree with everything you said here. like i've talked briefly before about my stance on ursa and it ultimately comes to 'she is a very complicated woman who as a parent can't be simplified to just being 'good' or 'bad' as she did things that fall into both categories', but if we're talking about ursa as a figure in zuko and azula's lives as opposed to just ursa as a person? yeah i reallyyyyy think re-introducing her was yet another shortfall of the comics. like this woman was the only point of love zuko has from his childhood. she protected him when no one else did and she was a good parent to him while she was there and she did her best. of course there's fondness there, of course he wants to find her the first chance he gets if only to get some answers. but ursa's treatment of azula? ursa leaving zuko and azula behind with ozai knowing full well what that would mean for them? she saved herself, and since she was a woman in an abusive relationship, i can't begrudge her that, but she isn't getting any mothering awards for it. and if atla just left it at that, id honestly be happy with it. it's another layer of depth to that family's story and it makes ursa more of a tragic figure, but letting her back into the plot once ozai is out of the way? like she refused to suffer him herself and was happy to let her kids do it, returning to her life when the threat was out of the way? fucking off to start again somewhere else knowing full well her children were suffering directly because of her absence? actively choosing to FORGET THEM because she didn't want to suffer through that thought? like ursa didn't just abandon zuko and azula, she abandoned all possible pain and simply left them to fend for themselves. she didn't even have it in her to remember them. it's literally like she looked at that family and went 'well this didn't work out. im going to completely wash my hands of them and start again' and that's exactly what she did. re-introducing her to zuko and azula's lives does nothing for them. there's the closure of at least knowing what happened to ursa, but that's about it. i genuinely think knowing the extent of ursa's abandonment would make zuko and azula's trauma that much worse. without her return to the plot, ursa is this figure of brightness in zuko's life, a woman who used her final moments in the palace to save him and was forced to leave by a man zuko knows is The Bad Guy. it's simple. ursa is good, ozai is bad. it's so simple. ursa returning robs zuko of that simplicity, makes him realise that maybe NEITHER of his parents were good. and azula; ursa wasn't even good to her when she WAS home. azula already thinks her mother didn't love her, and to find out she didn't even love her enough to remember her? that she went off to have another daughter that she very obviously does love? it's salt in a wound and it's gratuitous and i just think at best it overcomplicates an already complicated situation, at worst it makes everything much more painful