#figarland garling

When Harald said that Shanks looked familiar in chapter 1167 I wondered if Harald had met their mother before on one of his journeys.

Just get under the mistletoe already bro

Kay so we went from Shanks being excited about his little brother a couple chapters ago to revealing that he shares Ace’s trait of feeling worthless because of who he is and whose blood runs in his veins… But while Ace doubted his right to live because of the world’s negative perceptions about Roger and pirates in general (which are largely unfounded and rooted in navy & govt propaganda), Shanks instead has to live with the horror of being the child of a celestial dragon; not a vilified pirate and criminal in the eyes of the world, but a falsely exalted member of the corrupt elite.

So while Shanks lived his early life as Roger’s adopted son, blissfully unaware of the fact that his biological father is the OP world’s equivalent of a gestapo officer, Ace’s position was essentially opposite to Shanks’, being Roger’s biological son but being orphaned by his father’s death and living out his early life with his adoptive mother Dadan but without any real father figure. Yet Ace finally found a father in Whitebeard and could move on from the shadow of his biological father and his reputation as the worst criminal in the world, while Shanks lost the father that raised him and soon thereafter his life became shadowed by the knowledge that his biological father, Garling, is actually one of the world’s worst criminals in practice, and having to continue living with the shame and self-doubt of being the child of a truly evil person.