I always thought that pushing Azula (and to a lesser extent Zuko) into the good/evil paradigm made no sense. They were both raised with the Fire Kingdom's methods being considered RIGHT. Zuko had his mother's influence, early on, which Azula says she never received in he same way, and then Iroh, who Azula had rejected as a role model, likely because she was younger and had more of her father's views on Iroh's weakness to shape her opinion without being old enough to form her own opinions when she idolized her father and wanted his approval. (Granted this is mostly assumption on my part and not strong timeline-fu.)

Azula's moral compass was shaped by her father, and even though she had those tendencies as a child. . . there are a lot of children who do AWFUL things without fully understanding the connotations of it. Morality, fairness, the "right" thing, I always assumed her upbringing wouldn't prioritize these things. Her father's priority was clearly CONQUERING and thus winning and he could give a shit about methods, so why would she have learned to when she saw that caring about those things only led to Zuko being seen as weak, anyway?

Though my insane love of Azula may shape my thoughts too much. Heh. I still wish we'd gotten a little more time to watch her unravel and they'd made it less sudden, because I think it would have come across as more heartbreaking, in addition to messed up, if it had been.

I can't really speak on the comparison to Jaime yet, since I'm only just reading the first book now and I doubt the show is exactly the same.