[quote]My own 2-cents. 17 and he's lieutenant, sounds too good to be true. I'd understand if he was prince, but he's only Irohs adoptive kid. And being adopted in strict monarchies, he wouldn't usually be treated on equal standards as those of the bloodline.

Edit, you already addressed the lineage issue, but to be a lieutenant at 17 is still out there. In my own opinion though. Whatever Prince deems fine is his business[/quote]

I'm already working with him on points. Before I even addressed being a lieutenant. Llieutenant is actually the lowest ranking officer. There are only two noted lieutenants, one later being made Captain. Wiki defines them as "having more power than regular soldiers, but not by much" - excluding Zhao, the one made captain and trained under Jeong Jeong. I'm actually not terribly opposed to him being a Lieutenant in the Police Force, as the Police Force is a lot less strict than the actual Fire Nation Army. I went to great lengths to explain the difference between the Phoenix Kingdom Police Force and the Fire Nation Army.

Granted, Zuko was trained with his sword under Piandao, albeit I'm not for sure where this took place as its never explicitly stated. If we just wrote it off as Piandao trained a small class of elites, such as Krane, Zuko, Kazuki and leave that open to later interpretation. Zuko himself was only so good due to his training under Piandao, whom is fucking badass. Lu Ten could also be part of this class, Azula could think it's silly for "potential bending masters to be wielding pointless weapons", etc. This could bind a few important characters together. I would admit that being a lieutenant so quickly seems odd given the only two ever shown are older, while most of the younger soldiers are just police force, privates or guards.