Toxic Princess: On the Lacklustre Representation of Azura in the Elder Scrolls Franchise
((beware, typos ahead))
The Deadric Princes are fan favorites for good reason. Not only are they often highly instrumental to the universe’s deeper metaphysics, but also to many of the best stories and plots experienced by the player in any of the series’ entries. Deaderic Princes are often invested with a great amount of personality alongside being given domains over compelling subjects like hedonism, plagues, esoteric knowledge, madness, nightmares, and assassination to name but a few.
One of the most relevant Deadric Princes within the worlds of the Elder Scrolls is Azura. The Lady of Dawn and Dusk occupies a centre stage position in the theologies and the lives of both the Dumer and the Khajit, as well as having a central role in the plot of “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind”.
The portrayal and execution of Azura in every Elder Scrolls game- particularly in Online, Oblivion and Skyrim (don’t @me morrow-boomers) is awful. Perhaps the worst single missed opportunity of the series, I strongly think Azura needs to be given a make-over and a half the next time she shows up.
It’s worth noting here that I’m talking about how Azura interacts with the player, not about the things written about her in-game. Azura in writing and in theory is excellent and intriguing, whilst Azura once she’s made real is lacklustre at best.
Who, or what, is Azura then? It makes sense to try sketching out what she’s supposed to be before illuminating the disconnect between what ought to be and what is concerning her.
Azura spheres; or her “thing” is Dawn and Dusk thus all the moon and star imagery associated with her, but more interesting her sphere is also that of prophecy, visions and magic, alongside vanity and self-love, which in her case means extreme narcissism.
Just as Azura wishes for, or well, outright mandates, that her followers love themselves, she also proclaims that they love her just as much. Azura is demanding, petty, and almost insecure. For example, if Azura feels as if someone has betrayed her, she’s not above cursing an entire race of people (The Dummer) with grey skin and red eyes as a form of retribution.
There are however benefits to dealing with such an overbearing Prince given that Azura is known to take a proactive role in attempting to aid her followers. Azura is able to give once she has been given something herself.
If Azura is a being whose wrath knows no bounds but whose favour can also be tangible and somewhat counted upon, her portrayal in the games should reflect this tenseness. Getting too involved with another Deadric Prince or forgetting to pay Azura her dues should result in scary consequences for the player, just as sticking to worshipping her should result in plentiful boons.
In part, the lack of any of the Elder Scrolls games being able to have special dialogue and quest chains for Azura followers that intermingle with numerous other quest lines and systems is borne out of resource limitations and the series’ somewhat self-destructive need to let the player be everyone all at once. My gripe with how we see Azura in the games is not just that there’s no real representation of what happens when you the player fuck her over or earn her goodwill though.
Azura is the Prince of narcissism. Narcissism comes in two forms: there’s clinical narcissism and narcissistic personality traits. The former is a binary- in that a clinical psychologist either diagnoses you as being one or not- whilst the latter is a spectrum, meaning people can exhibition more or less narcissistic personality traits over their life. I would hedge my bets and say that Azura is the Prince of the later, given that almost everyone can display narcissistic personality traits, as opposed to her being the deity of a specific few people with a specific mental state.
Narcissism is an extreme form of self-love that refuses to accept criticism despite obvious facts. Narcissism is not confidence and it is not self-esteem, even though it may be hard to tell all of these things from each other. Narcissism is a self-obsession that leads to us not caring about the feelings of others, and at times being pretty vindictive towards the people who dare to challenge our divine self-image.
Even the libertarian **vomit** co-author of “The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement” Keith Campbell essentially notes that narcissism stops people from having the self-awareness needed to criticise themselves so that they can self-improvement and “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Libertarians lack of self-awareness aside, it’s terrifying to think that Azura is the deity of self-love gone so far that people can’t even help themselves because they think themselves already perfect.
This lack of self-awareness emerged with self-obsession is seen in how Azura realm “Moonshadow” is described to us. It’s the sort of place where the air is like perfume- sure that’s a nice smell, but it’s also not what you want the air to smell like all the time either. It’s just a little too much. Everything is always running and changing there too, not to mention the alleged unbearable brightness of the place. Azura realm is maximalist carnage. It is kitsch and fantastic. It’s too much but somehow never enough. It’s not the sort of place you’d want to be, even if you couldn’t help but look anyway.
To summarise then, Azura is a super-duper-powerful being who’s really into narcissism. Her realm is a art-pop-like fever dream and she has a history of taking revenge more than a little too far. Despite all of this though, she’ll go out of her way to help those who love her and themselves.
Let us now turn then to Azura in the actual games.
Voiced by Rener Strober who’s in some pretty big things like Veep and Shameless according to her IMBD page anyway, Azuras voice is fucking awful. For some reason, Azura has this slightly lispy attempt at what I think is supposed to be a sultry female mastermind type. This in theory is spot-on. Azura is playing one-dimensional chess and we’re just pawns, after all. The voice performance is a shambles compared to other examples of the type it’s trying to imitate like Destiny’s Queen Mara or WoW’s Slyvanas Windrunner. The execution of Azura as badass but evil queen type is badly botched, and it honestly comes across as some nerdy teenager larping over a prank call.
I think the five stepsahead of everyone else, selfish, wicked and cruel female villain type, although good fun, Cersi-mania perhaps, this type feels like it’s somewhat overdone right now. Instead, I think the Elder Scrolls should tap into something a little less grandiose for Azura, and opt to have her voice performance be a sort of frantic, crisis-mode psychiatric patient who’s also managed to invincible one of the nurses to give them extra privileges. I’m of course speaking about Angelina Jolie’s character Lisa in the 1999 film “Girl, Interrupted.”
Azura should be toxic and manipulative. When she likes you, or more accurately, when she wants something from you or to keep you strung along, she should be able to dole the compliments in a way that feels good without her comprising her power status. Azura should be too cool for all of us and we should be thankful she’s even speaking to us in the first place. She should also seem like the sort of unhinged person who doesn’t know when to stop and who you’re fully aware will take things too far. A half-subtle sort of vindictiveness should be thinly veiled in a way that makes you wonder if she wants you to read between the lines just to discover she is in fact –that bitch — .
Outside of the gameplay systems that I hinted at before that could involve commitments to Azura following the player around, I also think that the things Azura has us do when we have direct involvement with her aren’t all that well executed either.
Yes, Azura has us carry out her will like the good little mortals we are. So does almost every other Deadric Prince though. Yes, Azura does what she wants for very little reason other than it’s what she wants. But that’s about it. As the player, we don’t have to engage in any sacred acts of self-love. Azura's quests should see us erect by any means necessary monuments to our own glory. They should see us screw over the lives of people who said our new sword wasn’t that cool.
In the games, despite being (checks notes) the savoir of Nirn, the Dovakihn, the Nerevarine and so on and so forth, we’re reduced to being Azura’s errand boy at worst and clueless tool at best. We never get to act like her, just for her.
I want so much more for Azura. I want her to be the toxic princess she’s supposed to be. I want to feel on edge about offending her whenever there are dialogue choices on the screen. She should make us roll our eyes at her but also smirk at just how good she is at being someone who really shouldn’t have the power she does. Let us hope she’s something else other than the dull and badly voice-acted fetch-quest giver she is in Online, Oblivion and Skyrim by the time Necrom and TES 6 come out.
*This article needs a lot of work, so any kind of feedback or thoughts on it would be most appreciated. I know I should have organised it better, but I wanted to plant the habit of writing and putting it out there even if it’s far from perfect out of fear of always drafting and redrafting everything until the end of time :)
