One of the main pieces of lore in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe is that the Avatar is constantly reincarnated into a new form. This means that there have been a slew of different Avatars from over the years, all with their own unique stories and life paths. Some of these Avatars are more well-known than others, as the series puts more focus on them, like Aang, Katara, Kyoshi, or Roku, for example.

Another Avatar from the past that gets some mention is Avatar Yangchen, who was the Avatar before Kuruk. She only briefly appears in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series. However, a recently released novel that serves as ancillary material for the series focuses on Yangchen: The Dawn of Yangchen by F.C. Yee. But where did Avatar Yangchen come from, and what made her interesting enough to dedicate a whole book to her?

Related

Avatar: The Last Airbender — Why Did Avatar Kyoshi Live So Long?

Avatar: The Last Airbender only scratches the surface of what makes Avatar Kyoshi so iconic.

Where Is Yangchen From?

Yangchen was a part of the Air Nomads and lived at the Western Air Temple. From a young age, she could hear the voices of past Avatars in her head. These voices would send her into fevers and fits that healers were unable to find a cure for in her childhood. Her ramblings soon became recognizable as names and sentences. Yangchen would even re-enact scenes from her past lives, and it distressed her to relive the losses of past Avatars. Eventually, her mentor Jetsun, who was like a sister to Yangchen, realized that reading texts written by these past Avatars could help ease her pain.

Due to the fact that she relived these past lives so vividly, Yangchen became aware of her status as Avatar by age eleven, and her fits became less painful over time. She visited the Spirit World through meditation, and came upon a group of shishi spirits. Even though she was not afraid of them, one of her past lives was. This triggered a memory that caused the shishi to grow dark, as Jetsun yelled at her to wake up. Yangchen survived this encounter, but Jetsun did not. She was trapped in the Spirit World and passed away.

Yangchen As The Avatar

Yangchen was eventually able to get the memories of her past lives under control through mental exercises. When she was a child, the Platinum Affair took place, which led to a long period of isolationism between the four nations. Yangchen did her best to fight against corruption in the shang cities, which resulted in her discovering the Unanimity project.

This project was a plot proposed by the shang merchants that would have used combustion benders as human weapons to gain leverage on and even assassinate various world leaders. Yangchen confronted the combustion benders, but one of them, Thapa, got away. Yangchen tracked him down, and a heated battle between the two ended in Thapa's death, bringing an end to the Unanimity project.

Yangchen created multiple agreements between spirits and humans during her time as Avatar, and even signed a treaty with the leader of the Fifth Nation pirates. No threats of war were present for a whole generation after her death, and her time as Avatar brought a period of peace to the world.

What Happened To Yangchen?

Yangchan went on many adventures and faced challenges with her companions. She also became well-studied in many kinds of philosophy. She died in 345 BG (before the genocide of the Air Nomads), and the spirit of the Avatar was reincarnated as Kuruk in the Northern Water Tribe.

Though Yangchen did not like the idea of being treated like a figurehead, many people, especially the Air Nomads, revered her after her death. People in the Earth Kingdom would pray to her for protection and luck, and they also built shrines in her name.

Yangchen tried to negotiate between spirits and humans. However, when the two came into conflict, she would often side with the humans, trusting that they would uphold their ends of the various bargains. When they inevitably didn't, though, the spirits would grow angry. This led to an abundance of dark spirits during the time of Yangchen's successor, Avatar Kuruk. Yangchen's choice to favor humans over spirits would lead to issues for her reincarnations in the later Avatars, and this weighed on her in the afterlife.

Yangchen was remembered for her compassion towards others. As previously mentioned, her political decisions led to a prolonged period of peace, even in the years after her death. The island where Yangchen first learned waterbending was treated as a holy site, until Avatar Kuruk accidentally destroyed it. The Air Nomads erected giant statues of Yangchen at the Eastern and Western Air Temples, venerating her even in death.

More

Does Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Deserve More Seasons?

The live-action remake received mixed reactions and some are questioning if giving it more seasons was the best idea.