ok so I feel like a lot ppl don’t fully appreciate meruem and poufs dynamic because they don’t fully understand it, or they mischaracterize it which also makes them not fully appreciate it cause their dynamic is rlly interesting. because there’s no way they could love each other without betraying themselves. Shaiapouf loves his king, not meruem the individual. He was born to be devoted to his king completely. His purpose was perfect and he was only perfect if his king was perfect. And perfection means cruelty. In his mind the perfect king takes whatever he wants. He loves meruem when he is the king, and when he is anything less then “perfect,” pouf isn’t perfect because he isn’t fulfilling his purpose. He feels like a failure and he would rather die than be a failure. I also wanna mention that when his king is “fulfilling his role,” he’s incredibly abusive to pouf, and we know how much he already sees himself as worthless. So even when pouf is being treated and loved how he think he should be, he’s miserable. A lot of people treat them as completely one sided, and yeah Meruem doesn’t love Pouf like Pouf loves him, but I feel like meruems feelings towards pouf are more symbolic of his confusion between his past and future. While komugi represents his growing compassionate and love of humanity, pouf represents his past of cruelty, the life he left behind. He’s torn between these two sides throughout so much of the arc. Pouf is obviously the LEAST passive when it comes to meruem and komugis relationship, tearing them apart becomes his central goal. Pouf is desperately trying to pull him back into his past. Because pouf does not love meruem when he isn’t king. And meruem isn’t happy when he’s king. So this dooms them. When Meruem is happy, pouf is miserable, vice versa. But I think post rose really shows what makes them so DOOMED. Because they both do love each other. As much as pouf is controlling and proud, he’s doing what he thinks is best for meruem because he loves him. And Meruem, after rose, comes to love him and youpi because they saved his life, and are now psychically part of him. He doesn’t want them to keep secrets in the name of love because that isn’t love and he knows that. He wants their bond to be open. And by refusing to tell meruem about komugi, pouf cuts off the love they could have had because it wouldn’t feel right to him. This is also what made their ending so tragic to me. Pouf realizes how much komugi means to meruem because she helped him find himself, and meruem realizes why pouf completely betrayed him. They finally reach an understanding, but it’s too late. Maybe if pouf didn’t try to erase meruems growing humanity, he could have been kinder to him, and maybe he could have learned to accept that. And even then, they may never mend what could have been. Pouf failed in every sense of the word. He failed himself, his ideals of a perfect king were ripped away. And he betrayed meruem, the man he was supposed to love unconditionally. Also nobody talks abt this but bc they could feel each others emotions due to the whole one of mind thing, meruem could probably feel the absolute anguish pouf was in as he was left to die alone, and exactly when it stopped. I think it’s rlly sad esp compared to how Meruem really was able to find understanding with most of the people he had connections too(pitou, palm, netero ect) except Pouf. And how if pouf just learned to go against his nature like meruem, and his fellow guards did, they both could have been happy. Anyway I love merupouf there’s so many more little details and minor things abt their characters that just add to that constant contradiction of why they CANNOT work but want too SO BAD. They’re also so mischaracterized it makes me rlly sad cause their actual real dynamic is so much better than yandere pouf or whatever also sorry that this is the ramblings of a crazy person I’m not good at cohesively stringing together my thoughts but I hope my doomed evil ant yaoi propaganda reaches somebody :3!!
