Indeed, I think if he awoke much earlier in this timeline, Azula wouldn't have all the pieces in place with which to convince him not to oppose her. What's greatly in her favor is that she's an unknown entity to him. What he sees when he meets her will be a nation apparently in love with her, and even if he travels to Ba Sing Se, which should be staunchly against her as far as he knows, he'll find more of the same. Nobody will risk talking to him honestly about it, because if they do they'll probably get caught, and even if they don't, they might talk the Avatar into doing something that would get himself killed, and then what could they possibly do against Azula? That, at this point, will be a minority of the population anyway, as the Dai Li are very, very effective at idea dissemination.<br/><br/>You're right that the war would be overall much less destructive and initially lower tech. They didn't end up needing most of the stuff they used in ATLA because everything was already going in their favor. And honestly, a lot of people might<em>genuinely</em>view Azula as a better option than Ozai. He was a brute who continued an old war - Azula ended it with much less bloodshed than Ozai would have preferred. Her espionage legitimately saved lives, and as you've said, the spiritual aspects of the world were pretty much entirely untouched.<br/><br/>Aang is walking into a world where Azula is right and everyone agrees that she's right. She's restored order and established a peace unseen for over a century. Jesus, I've talked myself into being on her side about this!<br/><br/>Basically, I think the hormones are just a bonus; he'll have every indication that things are going well.