Epistemic status: 100% true as of Book Two Episode One.

Lord Ozai is a loving father. He cares for Zuko deeply, and wants to see him grow and flourish, but is bound by his responsibilities as the Fire Lord to act in certain ways. Lord Ozai’s actions, while on the surface appear harsh, are merely the result of external pressures and are a cover for Ozai’s love and protection for his son.

We can all agree Zuko is an idiot [0].

What happens if you make the son and heir of the Fire Nation an idiot? They get manipulated, they get used by the court, and they get caught up in schemes by evil nobles. Lord Ozai feared for his son’s life, if Zuko were to stay in the Fire Court he surely would have been caught up in some honeypot scandal or some other such foolishness causing a headache for the Fire Lord and destabilizing the Fire Nation. Worse, the Fire Lord couldn’t bear to see his son be chewed up by court politics and turned into a bitter and jaded man.

Thus, Lord Ozai needed a way to make Zuko safe. However, Lord Ozai is not all powerful, he could not simply decree that his son was off limits. It’s been one hundred years and the war is still not won, and the avatar is still not captured. Any historical ruler in such a position would be desperately trying to control an overextended empire, leaving gaps for his enemies to exploit for their own ends. While the Fire Lord may appear to be an absolute ruler, he is most assuredly not.

Thus, when Zuko foolishly committed extreme disrespect during a meeting of the war council, even after explicitly being warned by his uncle not to speak up, Lord Ozai had reason to banish his son, thereby protecting him.

Of course, saying “you’re exiled for your foolishness” would not be enough. Mere exile would still leave Zuko as heir and still a pawn on the table, ready to be manipulated, brought back to the Fire Court at an inopportune time, or otherwise ensnared in some Fire Court plot to be used as leverage against the Fire Lord.

No, Lord Ozai had to make it clear to the court that Zuko was a non-entity, that he could not be used as leverage, leaving Zuko to be a footnote in history. Thus, he disinherited Zuko, and all but disowned him. Zuko would never have survived as a ruler anyway. But Lord Ozai’s opponents are clever, they would see through such a simple scheme as surely as you or I would have.

This meant that Lord Ozai had to put up a show of hating his son, severely punishing him in public. Thus, the duel and subsequent scarring. But note that the scarring on Zuko’s eye is purely cosmetic, his vision doesn’t seem affected at all. Lord Ozai must have intentionally limited the damage with his unparalleled firebending skill, causing what would appear to be a grievous wound but is in practice only a scar on the skin, something that is surely not unusual or severe wound in the Fire Nation.

Now the stage is set to keep Zuko safe. However, Ozai’s love is stronger than that, mere safety for Zuko is not enough. No, he ensures that Zuko is sent on an open-ended mission to travel the world, gain familiarity with command, bond with his wise Uncle Iroh, and be free from the stifling fire court. It’s everything you would want in a boyhood coming-of-age adventure.

Note as well, that it is only when Iroh betrays the Fire Nation, and Zuko continues to associate with him that Ozai’s hand is forced and he is required to act against his son. For as much as he may love Zuko, the crown weighs heavy, and the needs of the Fire Nation must come before his wants as a father.

Lord Ozai is misunderstood, and is playing 4D chess to keep his son safe and happy.

Footnotes

[0] I mean obviously. He repeatedly has the Avatar in his clutches and makes idiotic errors that result in the Avatar escaping. Consider how easily he fell for Azula’s obvious ruse of “The Fire Lord wants you home”, and her obvious tells of looking away when telling the crux of her lie:

This rube would have been a pawn in a civil war a week after his majority, ready to be killed and discarded if he ended up being too willful as a puppet. He even keeps the weapons he used as the Blue Spirit around, instead of discarding the evidence! Almost everything he does on-screen is marred with incompetence.