"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
A fitting quote for Aknadin, who genocides an entire village of bandits to create items there, could save his land from invaders.
If he just killed all of them.
That single survivor was a young boy who later became Thief King Bakura, a man who wanted to see the royal family burn for what they did to his family.
"An Eye for an Eye"
which he did. he desecrated Aknadin's brother's tomb and body. He turned Aknadin against his own family, and he killed nearly everyone around him.
"An eye for an eye and the world goes blind," that fits both of them really. The blood on both of their hands is as slick as the gold Bakura's village was made into. Both of them only cause death, grief, and destruction wherever they go. One did it to save his brother, but ended up killing him. The other did it because he had nothing else to live for.
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soooo something i missed the first 4 times i read the ygo manga was THIS statement mahad makes when heâs fighting bakura:
and on the 5th time around that really stuck out to me! itâs just one line, it probably doesnât mean much⌠right?
well in ch30/308, where we learn abt the origins of the millennium items, the magician that wields the ring (as seen in the scene where they defend the palace) is there with akhenaden when he proposes creating the items to akhnamkanon
the other two magicians with him donât seem to match up with any of the item wielders, so i think itâs safe to assume that theyâre not very important. what i think IS safe to assume is that this mysterious unnamed magician contributed to the translation of the millennium tome
and he may have even steered akhenaden towards the massacre of kul elna, though thatâs pure speculation on my part.
what iâm really focused on is the idea that 1: the previous magicianâs âevilâ (or perhaps âevil intelligenceâ ? hmm?) resides in the millennium ring and 2: that this âevilâ is what causes unfit wielders to burst into flames & you need extremely strong magical power to suppress it
the ring has the power to seal souls into items, as seen several times throughout the series, but i think it also absorbs souls. this would be a unique quality among the items, since (i assume) none of the other items are possessed (besides the puzzle and that was on purpose). i think the only reason that mahad isnât also inside the ring is because he fused with his ka and became dark magician, thus separating his soul from the ring even though he was in possession of it when he died.
basically what iâm saying is that yami bakura might be even more complicated than we think. there are a lot of popular theories about him, and i myself have a lot of thoughts on the topic, but for now i will stick with the one where he is an entirely new personality formed from a little bit of thief king bakura, a little bit of zorc, and 3000 years of marinating in darkness and memory loss. that one little sentence from mahad adds a new spice to the mix: the âevilâ of the previous ring holder.
i think this could explain a LOT of the apparent inconsistencies in motivation and action for yami bakura. i wonât be going into all of those bc then iâll be here all day but i do wanna point out a few things
hereâs a bit of dialogue that always tripped me up:
hereâs yami bakura, talking as though he himself is not the thief in the ring. and we know he isnât, heâs something else, but the funny thing is that he usually does identify himself as a thief!
and the phrasing âthiefâs soulâ perhaps carries the implication that there is more than one soul housed within the ring. i always assumed that was zorc, because right now yami bakura is acting as/for zorc, but then i thought, âdoes zorc even have a soul?â
i think the answer is no. zorc is the embodiment of evil, darkness, chaos, malice, what have you. he exists in peoples souls but i donât believe he has one himself. but then again itâs hard to say anything concrete about something that doesnât even actually appear in the series (which i would go into but thatâd be a whole other post). what iâm getting at here is that the unnamed magician likely contributes to yami bakuraâs actions as much as the the thief king and zorc do.
in fact, i would even go as far as saying that the only reason akhenaden survived his encounter with bakura was because of the magicianâs influence. zorc/yami bakura didnât really need another pawn. a backup is nice, sure, but judging from the way that he let TKB crumble into sand for no reason instead of promoting him shows that he really doesnât need more than one pawn and that it doesnât particularly matter who he uses as long as they can wield an item.
i mean, if you were the lord of darkness, which one would you want on your side? the guy with the demon god ka thatâs been raised on revenge and the screams of the dead from the tender age of (???) who is hell-bent on destroying the pharaoh and all he stands for and the whole world, too, while heâs at it? or the old absent father with a magic eye who doesnât even have a personal ka and who just wants to put his son on the throne?
not to mention, it wasnât even really zorc that made akhenaden into a pawn. it was TKB. he spared the guy that was responsible for the massacre of his entire village. you know, the village that heâs getting revenge for. why in the world wouldnât he just rip his eye out and be done with it?
well, that goes back around to the mysterious unnamed magician. i mentioned earlier that i thought that he could have steered akhenaden towards the path that he took back then. why did he order the massacre of kul elna? because he was desperate. why was he desperate? because they were being invaded. why was that so bad? besides people dying, which akhenaden doesnât seem too bothered by, it was because the invaders were after the millennium tome. but the tome has gone untranslated for 100 years⌠oh wait a sec. itâs translated now. but who translated it? well it probably wasnât just akhenaden. my moneyâs on our unnamed magician. oh and it just so happens that our friend the magician got to wield one of the items! how nice! but none of his other magician buddies did.
what im saying is that our mysterious magician may have also been a master male manipulator. he influenced TKB to spare akhenaden because olâ akh was his ticket to power back in the day. this is really all just speculation, but it makes sense to me. mysterious magician couldâve been the mastermind behind a lot of things. too bad he died offscreen of unspecified causes. itâd be funny if he did all that and then just died of old age or got into a palanquin pileup or something and spent the next five years trapped in a necklace getting his evil machinations suppressed by manaâs algebra tutor
alright i wrote way too much. iâm not that invested in the mysterious unnamed magician, iâm just interested in what he might reveal about the history of the millennium items and what, exactly, yami bakuraâs deal is
so, TLDR: the previous wielder of the millennium ringâs âevilâ is sealed within the item, which may account for some of yami bakuraâs inconsistencies. this previous wielder may have also led to the creation of the items
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I think Aknadin/Akhenaden from the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise would be pro-cop.
The dude literally sacks Kul Elna as sacrifices for the Millennium Items specifically because it was allegedly âa village of thieves and criminals, and was chosen by Aknadin for that very reason.â. The village couldâve just been one of the poorest villages of the kingdom and only had high crime rates as a consequence of poverty and lack of trade or whatever.
Just a random thought.
So I was making a little spreadsheet to procrastinate help while fic-writing, which keeps track of how Iâm romanizing names, character stats like ages and heights, etc etc, and I in doing so I noticed something I thought was interesting.
While I was adding Akhnamkanon (mostly for the name thing), I had all these blank spots for the rest of his info and was like oh, he and Akhnaden are twins (in the anime, at least), I can use Akhnadenâs stats for some stuff like age. So Akhnadenâs canon age is 46 (thatâs a hard-lived 46; all the genocide probably isnât good for your skin), which means Akhnamkanon wouldâve been 46 too if he were still alive.
So then I was trying to figure out how old he wouldâve been when he died, and itâs implied it was about five years (ish, since nothing in YGO can be nicely explicitly states) before everything with Zork, so he mightâve been 41 when he died. Okay cool, but then I was like wait a sec, he wouldâve been 30 or 31 (depending again on vague canon) when Atem was born, and that stood out to me as potentially very interesting.
We know Atem was probably an only child, since thereâs never any siblings mentioned and his first cousin Seth is considered (only by Akhnaden, but still) to be the next in line for succession. It couldâve been that Atem was the only child born to the Great Royal Wife and he has half-siblings with different mothers, but itâs really unlikely that they wouldâve never been mentioned in canon at all, especially since sibling bonds are so important in Yuugiou as theme.
And, speaking of sibling bonds, itâs stated in the anime Akhnamkanon and Akhnaden are twins (though I donât think it ever says if theyâre identical or fraternal, and in the manga Akhnaden may simply be younger, but Iâm going with anime for this since itâs more detailed.) Akhnamkanon is chosen as the crown prince, indicating the twins were the first born sons of the previous pharaoh. Again, there are never any siblings mentioned (male or female) and since the relationship between Akhnamkanon and Akhnaden is an important part of the plot, it seems pretty unlikely they had other siblings themselves.
So basically, it seems like Akhnamkanon and Akhnaden were the only children of their father (and were born at the same time, being twins; if they arenât twins in the manga, then they were still the only children but were born at different times), and both Akhnaden and Akhnamkanon had one child each (again, if Seth had siblings it surely wouldâve been a plot point considering present-day Seto and Mokuba, and there were no older children shown in Akhnadenâs flashback about leaving his family.)
Seth is slightly older than Atem (heâs 19, and Iâm using Atemâs official age of 16 for this, even though he should probably be slightly younger than that), so Akhnaden had Seth at around 27, and Akhnamkanon had Atem around 30 (again, give or take a year on all these ages due to unclear dates, rounding months, etc etc.)
That certainly isnât too old for either of them to be having kids, but is is unusual in terms of ancient Egypt, and especially unusual for the pharaoh. This leads me to wonder if this family mightâve had trouble with conceiving or, more generally, having healthy children.
If so, that might suddenly make Akhnadenâs resentment of Atem have more layers to it than it did before. Itâs a little out there for Akhnaden to legitimately think Seth shouldâve been pharaoh (aside from Akhnaden feeling cheated about not becoming pharaoh himself), but if Akhnaden mightâve had reason to believe Akhnamkanon would never produce an heir at all, he mightâve started to believe Seth would be in line. If Akhnamkanon couldnât have children and never produced an heir before he died, Akhnaden would likely be the next pharaoh and could then pass that onto his son. What wouldâve originally been an unattainable, slightly delusional dream of his son being pharaoh couldâve looked for a time like it might have a chance at, against all odds, being reality.
Except then Atem was born, and that ruined everything. Shortly afterward, Akhnaden created the Sennen items and, in the process, decided he had to give up his family to do so. So, for the second time Akhnaden felt cheated out of being pharaoh and passing that power down to his son, but this time heâd gotten so close to it happening only to end up losing even more than he already had.
The possibility that this mightâve intensified his resentment toward Atem (and Akhnamkanon, probably) feels like it would fit, and it could explain why the moment it looked like he could use Atemâs disappearance for his own benefit he jumped on the opportunity; instead of it having always been a foregone conclusion that Akhnamkanon would have children and one of them would inherit the throne, Akhnaden had truly deluded himself into believe he and then Seth would be pharaoh, and then Atem had âtakenâ that from them. But now Atem was gone, so why shouldnât Seth be pharaoh? Not only was he Akhnadenâs son, but he was high priest and that also put him in line for succession. It was perfect. Somehow everything was falling into place.
Only Atem wasnât dead after all, and just like that, this vision of the future that was miraculously within Akhnadenâs grasp was gone once again. But this time, especially with the power of Zork on his side, Akhnaden wasnât going to just accept reality; instead, he was going to take what was ârightfullyâ his.
And, of course, Akhnaden does eventually get what he always wanted in the end: Seth became pharaoh. It just came at the cost of almost everyone Seth had ever loved, including his cousin, but that was okay; Akhnadenâs got what he wanted, and that was always more important than family anyway.
