Work Text:
Iroh in His Own Words
His life outside of the shadows
Iroh—tea connoisseur and Sozin Entertainment CEO—writes about his legacy, making peace with the past, and moving towards the future in this issue of TUI / LA.
I lived in the shadows for almost my entire life and only recently did I dare to fully step out into the light.
You see, I grew up in a home that was not very forgiving of mistakes. My father thought life is a race and if you didn’t want anyone pulling you back, you have to stay at least two steps ahead; mistakes — t hey take you three steps back.
So you learn to hide the ones you make. Then, to make a spectacle of the victories, no matter how small. Therein lay the problem. I did not have too many victories. Eventually it was determined that I was the lesser brother. Our father had a race to win and Ozai gave him better chances of winning.
With that declaration came the implicit order to stay in the shadows, lest I embarrass the family name. So I settled in a quiet life away from the limelight.
The business degree that I should’ve applied as head of Sozin Entertainment found use when I opened a tea shop. Father deemed its mild success a safe balance between discretion and proof of my having some business sense.
The shadows couldn’t keep me from being pawned off in marriage for a business partnership though. Azulon still had a race to win, after all. The first time I met my wife was in a boardroom, with contracts laid out awaiting only our signatures. She too was a pawn and she fit right into my quiet life.
Our first year of marriage was filled with realizations, painful but nonetheless necessary.
One of the most important—that a family is what you make of it. Tending to a tea shop in the countryside with her gave me more love and comfort than all the years I’ve spent in Azulon’s mansion. There was nothing to be done about the past, but we were determined to be a family unlike how each of ours had been as children.
Lu Ten’s childhood couldn’t be any more different than mine and my wife’s and my brother’s and his own son and daughter’s. Lu Ten was a busy child (studying and getting into trouble alike) and we were busy parents. Still, we made time to be busy together—cooking, cleaning the house, running to the market after closing up shop, a family trip every now and again.
When I first saw how everything was different for Zuko and Azula, I felt guilt. Misplaced, yes, but I didn’t know that back then. All I thought was that I should’ve been able to put a stop to it much earlier on.
But one can only go so far with his hands and feet bound together. It’s not a secret anymore that Azulon and Ozai had both judge and jury in their pockets. The threat of a restraining order was enough to stay my hand. At least I could remain within reach of my niece and nephew, should they need me.
On separate occasions they told me that it was enough for them to live vicariously through Lu Ten. The public school shenanigans, going to the beach on weekends, the whirlwind college romance. My son has always been generous with his stories, even acting them out whenever he felt like it — makes sense, with his passion for theater.
Around that time, Ozai, without the guidance of our father, mis-stepped and landed himself in jail. They had plans in place for Sozin Entertainment, so I still had little influence on Azula and Zuko’s career. With their mother Ursa barely in the picture though, I became their legal guardian.
Here was a chance for me to step up. Yet, it was foolish of me to think that things were going to start being as easy as giving Lu Ten his happy childhood.
Zuko and Azula were no ordinary children.
Ozai basically signed away their lives to his business. The first time we read their contracts, Lu Ten cried for his cousins. I knew I had to challenge Sozin Entertainment and it became a drawn-out battle, especially after realizing Azula and Zuko had their own dreams of making it in the entertainment industry, even though they were only forced into it in the beginning.
Despite it all, they made it. No, not when they debuted or made their first hit song, but as they are now.
It’s already been five years since Sozin Entertainment passed onto me. There had been so much to be done—undoing contracts that skirted labor laws, restructuring unfair royalty distributions, cutting off the company’s shady ties. Much has been done and much still needs work.
I’m proud of where Sozin Entertainment is now and I hear people say that this was me finally making a name for myself, finally getting ahead of my now-imprisoned brother in an imaginary race. It’s none of that. I’m only here to protect my children. I’ll leave it to the visionaries in the company to make a 5-year, 20-year plan, but I need to make sure everyone is okay now .
I owe it to Azula, because she only ever wanted to be in the spotlight to show off her talent and hard work, not just the image the company buys for her.
I owe it to Zuko, because he deserves to make his music and be in love and live , far far away from a mess that is not his own making.
I owe it to them, because I kept to myself during their difficult years. They shouldn’t have had to learn of the world’s cruelty from their own father, from the place where their dreams were supposed to be realized. I’ll only ever call this CEO stint a success if I can make Sozin Entertainment a safe place to dream in.
There’s still a long way to go, but we’ll move forward step by step. I’m not interested in racing, we can take small steps, so long as we make sure to take care of each other along the way.
Iroh is generous with anecdotes from his family life and the new era for Sozin Entertainment in Stepping Out of the Shadows . The autobiography comes out in physical and online bookstores in June 2026.